“I was never more delighted than by your last letter, expressing in so kind and affectionate a manner your approbation of my labours in arranging your manuscript library at Holkham, or, rather, of the time I have spent in a most pleasing and instructive employment.
“Of the various works which I have of late undertaken,
and which, to say the truth, have been rather too much for my latter years, I
have great reason to be thankful that I have been able to bring them so near to
a termination, that I have now some hope of seeing them all accomplished. The
catalogue of the Holkham MSS. being deposited in the shelves of the library,
and having received your kind and friendly approbation, I now consider as
complete. The edition of
Pope, a work of great labour, has now been finished for some years;
and although it has been much abused by those whom it justly censured, I have
received the approbation of all whose good opinion is worth having. My tracts
on prison discipline, particularly as far as regards America, you will be happy
to hear, have been attended with all the effect I could reasonably have
expected; the system of solitary confinement, without labour, for which prisons
were built at Philadelphia, and others were extending over the United States,
having been rejected, and the opinions of M. La
Fayette and myself having been referred to in express terms in
the report of
| LIFE OF WILLIAM ROSCOE. | 397 |
