Thomas Steavens (c.1718–1759). Grand Tour Letters Eighteenth...

Thomas Steavens (c.1718–1759). Grand Tour Letters Eighteenth century manuscript miscellany of political prose, financial notes, satire and verse. A group of separate manuscript papers, principally mid-eighteenth century, including corrected drafts, prose accounts, short memoranda and copies of poems. Several are in Thomas Steavens' hand; most are unsigned and most likley contemporary copies. The verse includes "Admiral Byng's Letter Versified to Mr Cleveland"; "Ode Written in a Fit of the Gout"; "The Origin of the Phrase Old Cats: A Fable"; "A New Ballad to the Tune of a Cobler there was & he liv'd in a Hall"; "Woman a Riddle"; and "Grandeur, an Ode," dated 1744 and said to have been written beneath a fig tree in Kent. Another sheet carries "An Irregular Ode, Writ at Wickham," attributed in its heading to George Lyttelton and dated 1746, together with an imitation of Horace attributed to Charles Jasper Selwyn. Further untitled and unsigned verses include poems beginning "As from Italia's fragrant shore," "Old Jove resolv'd once in a Rage," "While by victorious William led," and "Where Isis in Meanders rolls." The leading piece is a substantial, untitled account defending Captain Fortunatus Wright's conduct at Leghorn. It describes Tuscan restrictions on British and French shipping, Wright's engagement with a French xebec, his subsequent arrest and the arguments advanced on his behalf. Two further untitled prose accounts discuss the Venetian Republic's dispute with Rome over the Patriarchate of Aquileia, combining diplomatic news with pointed observations on papal authority. The first also contains a personal passage on a prospective marriage. Related short papers record Austrian and Hungarian revenues, taxation and a debt charged on Silesia. Another titled prose piece, "The Last Dying Speech & Confession of Wm Hutchinson," is a mock confession that turns the supposed theft of Horace's fountain of Blandusia into a satire on critics, commentators and translators.

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