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Henrietta Jane Speed to Thomas Gray, [October 1750]

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Sir,

I am as much at a loss to bestow the Commendation due to your performance as any of our modern Poets would be to imitate them; Every body that has seen it, is charm'd and Lady Cobham was the first, tho' not the last that regretted the loss of the 400 stanzas; all I can say is, that your obliging inclination in sending it has fully answerd; as it not only gave us amusement the rest of the Evening, but always will, on reading it over. Lady Cobham and the rest of the Company hope to have yours' tomorow at dinner.

I am your oblig'd & obedient
HENRIETTA JANE SPEED.
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Letter ID: letters.0176 (Source: TEI/XML)

Correspondents

Writer: Speed, Henrietta Jane, 1728-1783
Writer's age: 22
Addressee: Gray, Thomas, 1716-1771
Addressee's age: 33

Dates

Date of composition: [October 1750]
Date (on letter): Sunday
Calendar: Julian

Places

Place of composition: [Stoke Poges, United Kingdom]

Content

Language: English
Incipit: I am as much at a loss to bestow the Commendation due to your performance...
Mentioned: A Long Story

Holding Institution

Availability: The original letter is unlocated, a copy, transcription, or published version survives

Print Versions

  • Gray and his Friends: Letters and Relics, in great part hitherto unpublished. Ed. by Duncan C. Tovey. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1890, section V, 197
  • Correspondence of Thomas Gray, 3 vols. Ed. by the late Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibley, with corrections and additions by H. W. Starr. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971 [1st ed. 1935], letter no. 155, vol. i, 331-334