Dear Sir

Downing Jan. 16 1784.

Last night I received your most acceptable present: which will enrich me past measure. but your generosity ties me up from future requests. Moses shall do all you want. at length we have begun our books¹, & I do assure you he shall work only for you & me till they are done. indeed he is anxious to do his best for his friend M^r Bull. I have put the three first ^all the volumes into boards: which keeps the prints safe, & drawings clean: & you know we can take them to pieces when we please. I have done the same by three of my volumes of scotch tours & made them very handsome. You may remember that by cancels I can divide the original three into six.² if you have the first edition, pray change it & get to which my cancels are adapted. M^r Taylor's scenes of shakespear³ furnish me with four excellent prints for my mention of Macbeth. I believe the new edition of vol. 1 Welsh Tour will soon come out of the press. I meant one for M^r Burrel but you must not tell, else he will do nothing for me, having the fear of bribery & corruption before his Eyes. But I never bribe [...]but do good to my poor neighbors. Alas poor M^r Storer, but he is so used to falls, that he never minds them. The Post is remarkably late this day: which fills my mind with rebellions, depositions abdications & the Lord knows what. seriously the times have an horrid aspect, & must make honest men dread events.

I passed two days with my family at the most hospitable house of Lleweny. Its master M^rFitzmaurice returned your Complim^ts tenfold. his Bleachery⁴ is an amazing sight: & I hope will turn out to his profit. for his expences have been most amazingly great.

adieu
most truely y^rs

Tho. Pennant

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Editorial notes

1. This refers to Bull and Pennant's extra-illustration projects on their personal copies of works by Pennant.
2. Pennant's extra-illustrated copies of A tour in Scotland 1769 (3rd edn., 1774) (see here [external link] and here [external link]), together with A tour in Scotland 1772, part I (1774) (see here [external link] and here [external link]) and A tour in Scotland, part II (1776) (see here [external link] and here [external link]), all at the National Library of Wales, make up a six-volume set. 'Cancels' are pages suppressed and, possibly, reprinted. See OED s.v. cancel, n.
3. Macbeth featured in No. 2 of Charles Taylor's The picturesque beauties of Shakspeare [sic]. It was published on 1 May 1783, and included four plates. Taylor's engraving of 'Macbeth meeting the Witches' by Robert Smirke is found in Pennant's extra-illustrated A tour in Scotland [external link] (5th edn., 1790), p. 166/6.
4. Fitzmaurice erected a large bleaching works at Lleweni, Denbighshire, at a cost of £20,000, for the treatment of linen woven on his Irish estate. See here [external link]. For Moses Griffith's watercolour drawing of the Lleweni bleachery, see Pennant's extra-illustrated A Journey to Snowdon [external link], p. 30.