What harm can a proposal do? If it be no
pain to you to reject it, it will be none to me to have it rejected. I
would have the work entitled "Bibliotheca Britannica", or an History of
British Literature, bibliographical, biographical, and critical. The two
"last" volumes I would have to be a chronological catalogue of all
noticeable or extant books; the others, be the number six or eight, to
consist entirely of separate treatises, each giving a critical
biblio-biographical history of some one subject. I will, with great
pleasure, join you in learning Welsh and Erse: and you, I, Turner, and
Owen, might dedicate ourselves for the first half year to a complete
history of all Welsh, Saxon, and Erse books that are not translations,
that are the native growth of Britain. If the Spanish neutrality
continues, I will go in October or November to Biscay, and throw light
on the Basque.
Let the next volume contain the history of "English" poetry and poets,
in which I would include all prose truly poetical. The first half of the
second volume should be dedicated to great single names, Chaucer and
Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and Taylor, Dryden and Pope; the poetry of
witty logic,--Swift, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne: I write "par hasard",
but I mean to say all great names as have either formed epochs in our
taste, or such, at least, as are representative; and the great object to
be in each instance to determine, first, the true merits and demerits of
the "books"; secondly, what of these belong to the age--what to the
author "quasi peculium".
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