Dear Sir

Downing April 27^th. 1784.

To accompany a letter which will contain nothing I send you a few prints & a small addition to my miscellanies.¹ The peace of this county has been preserved by my neutrality: but I trust our representative will take warning. I look on this general election² as our dernier resort: if our young minister³ & his collegues cannot save us ––––– desperandum est.⁴

Moses has had no work but on your & my account for some months. Please to say how far you will be content & your book shall be sent. The number of drawings done you will find at the foot of this.⁵I: shall not bind up till we meet in Town next month. He did this last week Sir Peter Mutton from an excellent portrait & this week shall do those at Llewenny vide page [...].⁶ Do you wish copies? I suppose my new edition is come out by this time: but M^r White will inform you. In respect to Sir Benj. Wright, it must be Rudiard whom Lord Mulgrave meant: for in him there seemed a great indecision. Do want a collection of prints of 7000 Litterati one is offered to me by my friend Professor Zimmerman of Brunswic.⁷ he says they will be cheap., but I fear will not be very interesting to us. Do you know L^d Ossory: I have had civilities f^m him & would venture to ask a small sketch of Cath Cornaro: if he is not of y^r acquaintance. if he is we may ask jointly.

adieu
Y^rs most truely

T Pennant

as I can get a frank I send this by post: but please to send for the Prints next week to Sir R. Mostyn's Bruton street.

My protegè M^r Cordiner at my instance has drawn VIII. drawings which he proposes to sell at 1.1.0. each. I thought he merited that since M^r Sandby last year sold others of the same size & less merit for 3.3.0 each. I wish you would be so kind as to get these by virtue of the inclosed order, & if any of y^r friends will take one or so I shall be glad. he is poor but very ingenious. I never saw these he now sends.

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Editorial notes

1. This addition to Pennant's Miscellanies, which can be identified as A letter from a Welsh freeholder to his representative (Chester: J. Monk, MDCCLXXXIV [1784]), post-dates the material published by George Allan c. 1781.
2. Polling for the general election in 1784 closed on 17 May, with parliament summoned the following day.
3. A reference to William Pitt the Younger, victor in the 1784 general election.
4. 'It is desperate.'
5. This information has not been preserved with the letter.
6. In A tour in Wales (2nd edn., 1784), pp. 25–7, Pennant describes in some detail the portraits at Lleweni. For Moses Griffith's copies of them, see Pennant's extra-illustrated A tour in Wales, here [external link], pp. 28/3, /4, and /5.
7. Zimmermann's letter of 14 August 1783 to Pennant does not throw light on the issue of the collection of prints mentioned here. See WCRO, CR 2017/TP401.