Diplomatic Text
I send my dear Miʃs Hamilton the Volume
of Boileau I promised her. -- Tho' the French
think the 10th Satire one of his beʃt perform-
-ances, yet I never could read it without finding
it tedious, & thinking that moʃt of the
Characters are outrés, & not calculated for
the meridian of these parts. -- I alʃo ʃend
you two Volumes of the Italian Molière;
a french & Italian Volume of Gil Blas[1]
which have ʃtray'd with me to this Town;
& a Volume of Montesquieu, for the ʃake
of his Chapter on the Britiʃh Conʃtitution,
which is all of his Esprit des Loix[2] that
you have occaʃion to read. -- When At
any time that I find your Mama &
you by yourʃelves, I ʃhall be happy to
help you out with the pronunciation of
the Italian; “and when you go to London
(by a little practice) you will ʃoon be
mistreʃs of what you may have begun
with your ʃincere & affecte: Friend” --
[J H]
[3]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. 'L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane [...] is a picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage published between 1715 and 1735' (Wikipedia).
2. Montesquieu, De l'esprit des loix (Geneva, 1748).
3. The reverse of the letter has 7 lines in a different hand, consisting of 6 rows of pounds, shillings and pence under the headings ‘L s d’.
Normalised Text
I send my dear Miss Hamilton the Volume
of Boileau I promised her. -- Though the French
think the 10th Satire one of his best performances
, yet I never could read it without finding
it tedious, & thinking that most of the
Characters are outrés, & not calculated for
the meridian of these parts. -- I also send
you two Volumes of the Italian Molière;
a french & Italian Volume of Gil Blas
which have strayed with me to this Town;
& a Volume of Montesquieu, for the sake
of his Chapter on the British Constitution,
which is all of his Esprit des Loix that
you have occasion to read. -- At
any time that I find your Mama &
you by yourselves, I shall be happy to
help you out with the pronunciation of
the Italian; “and when you go to London
(by a little practice) you will soon be
mistress of what you may have begun
with your sincere & affectionate Friend” --
John Hope
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Notes
Metadata
Library References
Repository: John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester
Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers
Item title: Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: HAM/1/6/8/15
Correspondence Details
Sender: John Hope
Place sent: Northampton (certainty: medium)
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: Northampton (certainty: medium)
Date sent: 1773
when 1773 (precision: medium)
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton. He forwards to Hamilton a number of books including a volume of Boileau [Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux] and offer his opinions of the work. He also sends her two volumes of the Italian Molière, and works written in French. Hope is happy to call on Hamilton and her mother if they wish help with the pronunciation of the Italian. By the time she is in London, he notes that with a little practice she will [soon be mistress of what you may have begun].
Length: 1 sheet, 163 words
Transliteration Information
Editorial declaration: First edited in the project 'Image to Text' (David Denison & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, 2013-2019), now incorporated in the project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers' (Hannah Barker, Sophie Coulombeau, David Denison, Tino Oudesluijs, Cassandra Ulph, Christine Wallis & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, 2019-2023).
All quotation marks are retained in the text and are represented by appropriate Unicode characters. Words split across two lines may have a hyphen on the first, the second or both fragments (reco-|ver, imperfect|-ly, satisfacti-|-on); or a double hyphen (pur=|port, dan|=ger, qua=|=litys); or none (respect|ing). Any point in abbreviations with superscripted letter(s) is placed last, regardless of relative left-right orientation in the original. Thus, Mrs. or Mrs may occur, but M.rs or Mr.s do not.
Acknowledgements: XML version: Research Assistant funding in 2018/19 provided by the Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester.
Research assistant: Chenming Gao, undergraduate student, University of Manchester
Transliterator: Emma Alonso-Ramonet, dissertation student, University of Vigo (submitted April 2019)
Cataloguer: Lisa Crawley, Archivist, The John Rylands Library
Cataloguer: John Hodgson, Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Research Institute and Library
Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors
Revision date: 24 December 2021