Add MS 46841

CANNING PAPERS

Letters and papers of George Canning. Viz.:-

(1) Twenty-seven letters (autograph and, f. 68, signed) on political and personal matters to Edward Bootle-Wilbraham formerly Wilbraham- Bootle (1st Baron Skelmersdale 1828), a note by whom is included at f. 1; 1792-1827. Eleven of the letters, 1792-1822 (ff. 2-26b, 31-32, 34-41b, 44-51), have been printed, with omissions not always indicated in the printed text and with minor errors of transcription, in J. Bagot, George Canning and his friends, 2 vols., 1909. ff. 1-69b.

(2) 'The Pilot that weathered the Storm': autograph draft of the second version of Canning's poem on William Pitt the younger, 'as altered for the Pitt dinner in 1808... At the Foreign Office on the Morning of that Day' [28 May] 1808 (so note at f. 70 in Bootle-Wilbraham's hand; similar notes are endorsed at ff. 7lb, 72b). Imperfect; the top of the first leaf has been torn off, and a line and a half consequently lost have had to be supplied in Bootle-Wilbraham's hand (f. 71b). See The Times, 30 May 1808, and also J. Bagot, op. cit., i, pp. 190-196, 419-421, where the text is printed. An autograph draft of the first version of the poem, originally written to be sung at the Pitt birthday dinner on 28 May 1802, and first printed, in a version differing in the last two lines, in The Times, 29 May 1802, is enclosed (f. 114) in a letter from Canning to J. H. Frere, 26 Apr. 1802 (Add. MS. 38833, ff. 109-115b; see G. Festing, John Hookham Frere and his Friends, 1899, pp. 75-79). Followed (ff. 70-73b) by an excised leaf from a printed work containing texts of the 1808 version (f. 73b) and (on the recto) a poem on the same subject, 'The Independent Man', by Richard Scrafton Sharpe. Paper; ff. 73. Folio. 1792-1827. Owned, circ. 1909 (see J. Bagot, op. cit., i, p. 421), by Edward George Bootle-Wilbraham, 2nd Earl of Lathom. Presented by the latter's daughter, Lady Barbara Ann Seymour.