Dear Sir

Downing Jany 30^th– 912¹

A sudden call my eldest Daughter has to town to her worthy aunt who has long labord under a painful illness enables me to send you the History of quadrupeds with wooden plates; & my print. In the first is the drawing of the Whiff.² at the latter end (by mistake) is a letter of the author’s:³ be so good as to take it out & return it by post. I send you the print that you may paste it on such paper as inclosed: When returnd moses shall decorate it. If you send for these at 7 o’clock on Thursday evening to M^rs Pennants upper Grosvenour street, they will be deliverd to y^r order. If you can push it so as to be deliverd by 3 the next day, It may be brought me by a returning Servant. you are the only one that shall have a copy of this print till it is publish’d.

I was a good deal startled the other day by seeing a poem by [sic] mine in a newspaper: I could not account for it: till I recollected I had given copies of my miscellanies to Lort & Grose: both their effects were sold: & thus I am given to the public much malgré moy.⁴ I have given also copies of my literary life. I have no fear of you nor yrs: but of other the executors of others I may. I shall therefore publish it myself with some droll advertisement. you know I have declared myself dead as an author. so my literary life may fairly be publishd. Moses will immediately undertake the Lusty Packingdon.

My Son's want of confidence will prevent his taking your excellent advice but I trust the world will have the sagacity to discover what he will never be forward to disclose. The treasures he brings home will be no small embellishments to my margins.

S^t. Caecilia is a beastly affair: but there is some humour in the Genius.

I rejoice at the reform I have workd among the burial grounds:⁵ I wish I could to the same among the daughters of Pharo.⁶

Adieu
Y^rs most truely

TP.

I conclude most abruptly as I am calld to the funeral of a respectable tenant.

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Editorial notes

1. The year may have been added by a later hand.
2. The presence of the drawing of the whiff inside the copy sent to Bull of Ralph Beilby, A general history of Quadrupeds, does not appear to relate to the content of the book. See further 1147.
3. Pennant refers to a letter written by himself, inadvertently included in the parcel brought by his daughter, Arabella, to London.
4. 'in spite of myself'.
5. See marginalia to 1147 for a newspaper cutting relating to Pennant's 'admonition on the Burials at St. Giles'.
6. See Bull's reference to the popularity of the 'Faro tables' in 1147.