No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Thomas Morell and his Letter about Handel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Abstract
The manuscript of Thomas Morell's letter about his collaboration in oratorio writing with Handel, a key document in Handel studies, is in Cambridge University Library, its presence there previously unknown to Handel scholars. Its addressee can be identified as John Nichols, who used its information in his biographical publications, and its date can be narrowed to 1776–81. The letter is printed accurately for the first time, along with the fullest account to date of Morell's character, circumstances, career, abilities and interests, and a reassessment of the position of his letter in our knowledge of Handel.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2002
References
I gratefully acknowledge the help provided by: Bristol Reference Library (Jane Bradley); British Library [BL] Rare Books (Susan Reed); Buckinghamshire Record Office; Cambridge University Library [CUL] Manuscripts, Rare Books and Map Departments; Chiswick Church archive; Chiswick Library Local Studies Collection (Carolyn Hammond); The College of Arms (Rouge Dragon Pursuivant); Essex Record Office; Eton College (Penny Hatfield, archivist); Family Record Centre, London; Hampshire Record Office (Rosemary Dunhill); Hertfordshire Record Office; King's College, Cambridge, Modern Archives (Rosalind Moad, archivist; Peter Jones, librarian); Library of the Society of Antiquaries (Bernard Nurse, librarian); Lincolnshire Archives [LAO] (Mike Rogers); London Metropolitan Archives; Oxford University Archives (Simon Bailey); Public Record Office; Richmond, Surrey, Local Studies Library (Jane Baxter); Royal Army Chaplains' Department (Major (retd) Margaret Easey); Surrey History Centre [SHC]; Yale University Library, Osborn Collection (Stephen Parks); the generosity of the Music and Letters Trust, which gave me a much-appreciated research award; and the advice, comment and information given by T. V. Buttrey, Anthony Hicks, Les Robarts and Mike Smith.Google Scholar
1 Published in The Manuscripts of J. Eliot Hodgkin, F.S.A., of Richmond, Surrey, Historical Manuscripts Commission 15th Report, Appendix, pt ii (London, 1897), 91–3; printed with some omissions by Otto Erich Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography (London, 1955), 851–3. Full citations of works by Morell are given in Appendix 1.Google Scholar
2 Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1812–15; repr. New York, 1966), an enlarged revision of Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, Printer, FSA and Many of his Learned Friends (London, 1782).Google Scholar
3 Henderson, Arnold C., on Morell's Chaucer edition, in William L. Alderson and Arnold C. Henderson, Chaucer and Augustan Scholarship, University of California English Studies, 35 (Berkeley, 1970), chapter 6; Stephen Parks, on Morell's MS poems: ‘The Osborn Collection: A 4th Biennial Report’, Yale University Library Gazette, 50 (1975–6), 182; Ronald Paulson, on Morell's work for Hogarth: William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, ed. Ronald Paulson (New Haven, CT, and London, 1997).Google Scholar
4 The article arises from the commission to write the entry on Morell for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter new DNB).Google Scholar
5 Recent studies of individual librettos by Morell include: Kenneth Nott, ‘“Heroick Vertue”: Handel and Morell's “Jephtha” in the Light of Eighteenth-Century Biblical Commentary and Other Sources’, Music and Letters, 77 (1996), 194–208; Dorothea Schröder, ‘Händels Oratorium Theodora und der Methodismus’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, 6 (1996), 101–14; Leslie Robarts, ‘Rendering Virtue Amiable: A Study of Some Formal and Intellectual Aspects of Thomas Morell's Libretto and George Frideric Handel's Music for Theodora, 1749–50’ (M.Phil. dissertation, Open University, 1997); Ruth Smith, ‘The Meaning of the Libretto of Handel's Judas Maccabaeus’, Music and Letters, 79 (1998), 50–71.Google Scholar
6 Eton parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials, Buckinghamshire Local Studies Library, County Hall, Aylesbury. Eleanor's relationship to the Eton family of shoemakers (‘cord-wainers’ in the registers) is deduced from given names: Nathaniel and Anne, names given to two of her children, are found as first names in the shoemaking Tipping family.Google Scholar
7 Eton parish registers. Morell's few bequests included one to his nephew, Thomas Morell Jones, who could be the son of Anne, his sister who survived infancy. Morell's will: PCC prob. 11/1114 (microfilm: Family Record Centre, London).Google Scholar
8 Information kindly supplied by the College of Arms. The arms in the portrait and bookplate are marital: Morell's arms, on the left, are impaled with those of his wife's father, on the right. Morell's and his father-in-law's bookplates are in the bookplate collection of the College of Arms (respectively Box 18, F21495, and Box 2, F1461).Google Scholar
9 Thomas Morell, The Epistles of Lucius Annaeus Seneca; with large annotations (London, 1786), note 1 to Epistle 77. Conceivably there is an association between Morell's great-grandmother, Windsor Forest and the buck's head of Morell's arms.Google Scholar
10 Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, The Eton College Register 1698–1752 (London, 1927), 241–2. Nathaniel went to St John's College, Oxford (ibid., 242), after which nothing is known of him, though there may be a reference to him in a letter from Morell to the politician and antiquary James West, BL Add. MS 34728, endorsed 18 July 1771.Google Scholar
11 Eton parish register of burials, 13 January 1739. By now the spelling is ‘Morell’. In 1766 there were 13 boarding-houses for 450 oppidans, ten of them kept by women (Henry Churchill Maxwell-Lyte, A History of Eton College (London, 1911), 318).Google Scholar
12 Reported in Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, ix, 789.Google Scholar
13 Preface to Edward Littleton, Sermons upon Practical Subjects (London, 1749), p. ii.Google Scholar
14 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, iv, 599.Google Scholar
15 Austen-Leigh, Eton College Register, 241.Google Scholar
16 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, iv, 600.Google Scholar
17 The portrait, reproduced above as Figure 1, was reprinted widely, e.g. Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: Graphic Works (3rd edn, 1989), plate 239, catalogue p. 195.Google Scholar
18 Morell's reference to ‘Broughton of Caius’: Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, iv, 600–1.Google Scholar
19 Elisabeth Leedham-Green, A Concise History of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1996), 246; I am grateful to Peter Jones, librarian, King's College, for this information and reference.Google Scholar
20 Bishop's register, LAO, REG 38, p. 103.Google Scholar
21 CUL Add. MS 4251.979. Kelvedon is a small town on the (Roman) road from London to Colchester, with a handsome mainly twelfth- to fourteenth-century flint church. There is no surviving record of Morell's tenure; those parish registers of the period that remain are all signed by the vicar.Google Scholar
22 Osborn Collection, Yale University Library, Osborn Shelves c.395 [hereafter Yale MS], pp. 19–20, 28–31; Parks, ‘The Osborn Collection’. This MS collection of 65 of Morell's occasional poems is a major autobiographical source. Morell wrote it out for his wife towards the end of his life: one entry is dated 1779 (p. 6). Some of its contents are also in BL Add. MS 5832, and some of the political poems appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, see Smith, Ruth, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge, 1995), 195–9.Google Scholar
23 The account of Morell's tenure at Kew which follows is largely derived from the excellent study by George E. Cassidy, The Chapel of St Anne, Kew Green, 1710–1769, Richmond Historical Society Paper 2 (Richmond, 1985), checked against the sources in Surrey History Centre.Google Scholar
24 Cassidy, The Chapel of St Anne, 29–30, and SHC 3030/95. Morell was still taking the vestry meeting minutes in December 1746; the minutes of the next two meetings at which Morell was present (April and July 1747) were taken by the new curate, Daniel Bellamy; thereafter Morell disappears from the vestry records (SHC 3030/24).Google Scholar
25 Cassidy, The Chapel of St Anne, 30–1, corrected from SHC 3030/95.Google Scholar
26 A squib on Bellamy's prose version of the Book of Job and a comic versification of Bellamy's fulsome dedication of his sermons to Comer: Yale MS, pp. 75–9. If Morell's ‘Epigram’ about ‘the Vicar’, dated 1731, Yale MS, p. 36, was broadcast through the parish, it is unsurprising that Comer spared him little sympathy.Google Scholar
27 Yale MS, p. 84. The commentary appeared posthumously: Notes and Annotations on Locke on the Human Understanding, Written by order of the Queen (London, 1794); Smith, Handel's Oratorios, 198 and note. Morell preached at Kew on the occasion of the queen's death (see Appendix 1).Google Scholar
28 On the library in ‘Merlin's Cave’, and the appointment of Duck as librarian and his wife – whom Morell blamed for Duck's ambition – as ‘Necessary Woman’, see Gentleman's Magazine, 5 (1735), 331, 498, and Rose Mary Davis, Stephen Duck, the Thresher-Poet, University of Maine Studies, 2nd series, 8 (Orono, ME, 1926), 68–79.Google Scholar
29 ‘To Stephen Duck: Occasion'd by his Poem on Friendship’.Google Scholar
30 The Curatical Battle for Q. Chappel: Address to the Reverend Parsons, D–k and M–l (London, 1746); copies at Richmond Local Studies Collection and Huntington Library, CA; reprinted in Davis, Stephen Duck, 101–3. I am grateful to Merlin Channon for drawing this gem to my attention.Google Scholar
31 Yale MS, pp. 65–73. Joseph Spence was Oxford professor of poetry and regius professor of history.Google Scholar
32 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 656.Google Scholar
33 Yale MS, pp. 81–4; BL Add. MS 5832, ff. 159v–160.Google Scholar
34 Yale MS, pp. 84–6.Google Scholar
35 For Morell's effort to attach himself to leaders of the Patriot opposition see Smith, Handel's Oratorios, 195–8, and Yale MS, pp. 22–7, 135–9. Dedications are shown in Appendix 1.Google Scholar
36 I am grateful to Simon Bailey (Oxford University Archives) for the following information: ‘the Register of Congregation records that Morrell was incorporated MA on 6 July 1733 (NEP/Supra/Reg Bhh, p135); no further details are given. Seven other Cambridge MAs were incorporated on that day and a further thirty-five on 9 July. The regulations concerning incorporation were those included in the 1636 Statutes of the University … These certainly suggest that all candidates for incorporation would have to attend in person; I am not aware of any procedure by which this requirement could be avoided at that time.‘ For the musical entertainments during the Oxford Act and local comments, see Deutsch, Handel, 318–29.Google Scholar
37 Kew parish registers 1714–83 [fiche], SHC. For the Barker family and The Grove (later Grove House, demolished 1928), see Draper, Warwick, Chiswick (London, 1923; repr. with additions 1973), 142–5.Google Scholar
38 Yale MS, pp. 57, 6.Google Scholar
39 Henry Barker's will is dated 2 July 1745 (codicil 6 August 1745), PCC prob. 11/744, and provides for his wife Mary and two sons and seven daughters, making the same provision for his other married daughter as for Anne (microfilm: Family Record Centre, London). He died at Grove House on 31 August 1745 (Gentleman's Magazine, 15, p. 502).Google Scholar
40 His letter in the Daily Gazetteer, 353, Friday 13 August 1736, is signed from Chiswick.Google Scholar
41 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, ix, 789, i, 656. For comparison with Hogarth's Chiswick house see Uglow, Jennifer, Hogarth: A Life and a World (London, 1997), 484, illustration 485. Morell's home was towards the west side of the Turnham Green area, probably in what is now Chiswick High Road (information from Carolyn Hammond), but cannot be pinpointed, since properties are identified in the rate books only by name of ratepayer.Google Scholar
42 John Taylor, Records of My Life (London, 1832), i, 334–5. Taylor's grandfather is mentioned in conjunction with Morell and Handel by John Baker, The Diary of John Baker, ed. Philip C. Yorke (London, 1931), 114. Billow: ‘Convey me to some peaceful Shore, / Where no tumultuous Billows roar’, Cleopatra at the end of Alexander Balus (1748), Morell's second libretto for Handel.Google Scholar
43 Thomson: Yale MS, pp. 63–4, BL Add. MS 5832, f. 128v, and James Thomson (1700–1748): Letters and Documents, ed. Alan D. McKillop (Lawrence, KS, 1958), 135–6. Garrick: poem in Yale MS, p. 126 ('Dear Davy'), and dedication to him of translation of Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (1773), as ‘indisputably the first actor in this (perhaps in any) age'; Garrick's efforts netted a subscription from Boswell, see letters between them, Garrick to Boswell, 14 September 1773 (The Letters of David Garrick, ed. David M. Little and George M. Kahrl with Phoebe de K. Wilson (London, 1963), ii, 897–9), Boswell to Garrick, 11 April 1774 (John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vii (1848), 367). Hogarth: as he leapt to defend the Hogarths' marriage from the slurs cast on it by Steevens, Morell stated that he ‘was intimate with him’ and ‘very happy in his acquaintance’ from the time of Hogarth's move to Chiswick, 1749 (John Nichols and George Steevens, The Genuine Works of William Hogarth, Illustrated with Biographical Anecdotes, a Chronological Catalogue, and Commentary (London, 1808–17), i, 127n); on Morell and The Analysis of Beauty see the edition of The Analysis by Paulson: Morell did some subediting and pointed Hogarth at Xenophon's account in his Memorabilia of Socrates' disquisition on fitness, which he translated for Hogarth, BL Add. MS 27992, ff. 33–35b; Paulson has identified Morell as one of Hogarth's aides in two pictorial satires on Hogarth by Paul Sandby: Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: His Art, Life and Times (New Haven, CT, 1971), ii, plates 237, 239; Uglow, Hogarth, 487, describes Morell as Hogarth's closest friend at Chiswick; see also, on his subediting, ibid., 524–5. Morell's request to be interred next to Hogarth: Mark Noble, ‘The Lives of the Fellows of the Society of Antiquarians in London, 1818’ (lives of fellows elected 1717–66), photocopy of MS (now in USA), Library of Society of Antiquaries, i, 225. Morell is interred in Chiswick churchyard but the exact location of his grave is unknown (transcript of record of burials, Chiswick Library Local Studies Collection). Morell and Hogarth had a mutual friend in John Rich (Nichols and Steevens, Genuine Works, i, 242, and Yale MS, p. 140, ‘A Pastoral on the Birthday of J. Rich esq. set by Mr Vincent').Google Scholar
44 On this versification see further Smith, Handel's Oratorios, 198.Google Scholar
45 CUL Add. MS 4251.979.Google Scholar
46 Cassidy, The Chapel of St Anne, 30; SHC 3030/95.Google Scholar
47 King's College archives: BUK/9 Comp 1 A a 9 (King's acquisition of the living); Ledger Book, ix (1723–54), f. 124v (presentation of Morell); Ledger Book, xi (1771–84), f. 246v (presentation of his successor, Pell Akehurst).Google Scholar
48 Andrew Dury and John Andrews, A Topographical Map of Hartford-shire from an Actual Survey: in which is express'd all the Roads, Lanes, Churches, Noblemen and Gentlemen's Seats, and Everything Remarkable in the County: together, with the Division of the Parishes (London, 1766).Google Scholar
49 John Ecton, Liber Valorum et Decimarum being an Account of such Ecclesiastical Benefices in England and Wales as now stand charged with, or lately were discharged from the Payment of First Fruits and Tenths (London, 1728, 1742, 1754, 1763, 1786).Google Scholar
50 Hertfordshire Record Office, Buckland parish registers 1662–1807 (D/P25/1/1; microfilm 8); Buckland parish registers 1754–1820 (D/P25/1/5; microfilm 8).Google Scholar
51 Gilbert Burnet, History of his Own Times, in Morell's commonplace book, BL Add. MS 28846, f. 63v.Google Scholar
52 The estate was acquired on the death of a creditor, Sir Thomas Brograve: A History of Hertfordshire, Victoria History of the Counties of England, iii (London, 1912; repr. 1971), 314, and iv (London, 1914; repr. 1971), 44–5. The Fremans' house was replaced in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar
53 So far as I am aware the connection between the two men was previously unidentified. Freman, a faithful subscriber to Handel's published works, is usually, and surely correctly, identified with the owner of the organ referred to in Handel's letter specifying an organ for Jennens (Deutsch, Handel, 675–6) and now in the Holywell Music Room, Oxford.Google Scholar
54 Thomas Harwood, Alumni Etonenses (Birmingham, 1797), 302–4; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 651.Google Scholar
55 Cobbett, Richard S., Memorials of Twickenham: Parochial and Topographical (London, 1872), 125–6 (I owe this reference to Jane Baxter). Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 655.Google Scholar
56 Society of Antiquaries Minute Books, iii.Google Scholar
57 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, ix, 789.Google Scholar
58 Society of Antiquaries Minute Books, x, 518–20: 23 April 1768. Council Book, i (11 May 1754 – 14 June 1774, unpaginated), 28 February 1769 (subsequent quotations from council minutes are all from this volume). Archaeologia, 3 (1775), 332–6, and 5 (1779), 182–7. Publications committee: minutes for 1770. An example of one of Morell's foreign letters is BL Add. MS 34712, f. 250 (to J. C. Schleeger, 1769); council minutes show him in correspondence with (among others) institutions in Mannheim, Strasbourg and St Petersburg.Google Scholar
59 Council minutes 6 May 1772.Google Scholar
60 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 652; The Wisdom and Goodness of God in the Vegetable Creation: A Short Account of a Lecture appointed by Mr Thomas Fairchild of Hoxton, Gardener, to be preached in Shore-ditch Church, on every Whitsun Tuesday, for ever, on the Subject of the Wonderful Works of God in the Creation; or, on the Certainty of the Resurrection of the Dead proved by the Certain Changes of the Animal and Vegetable Creation: with a Memoir of the Founder, and some Notices of the Ancient Gardens and Gardeners of Hoxton (London, 1856), pp. 3–9. Copy in British Library.Google Scholar
61 Army Lists 1776–82, s.v. ‘Garrisons’: Portsmouth Garrison. His predecessor, Henry Robinson, and his successor, Robert Herbert, were on the same pay. Nichols's remark that Morell did not let his literary interests interfere with his conscientiousness as a minister may be ratified in the fact that his Portsmouth chaplaincy fits chronologically between his work on his initial and revised editions of Ainsworth's Dictionary.Google Scholar
62 III, chapter 11; published 1814, but set in a slightly earlier period.Google Scholar
63 2nd edn, 1837, pp. 22–3. Firebombed in 1941, the chapel is now a roofless war memorial (Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd, The Buildings of England: Hampshire (Harmondsworth, 1967): ‘noble simplicity‘).Google Scholar
64 Henry Press Wright, The Story of the ‘Domus Dei’ of Portsmouth, commonly called the Royal Garrison Church (London, 1873), 26, with drawings of the site c.1730 (facing p. 26) and 1756 (facing p. 34), and map of the site in 1744 (preceding endnotes).Google Scholar
65 Wright, Domus Dei, facing p. 36.Google Scholar
66 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 651–2. This account mentions Morell's Greek Thesaurus as a well-known textbook, so the visit took place after 1762.Google Scholar
67 BL Add. MS 34728, f. 203. Dr Thomas Ashton (Eton and King's) became a fellow of Eton in 1745, Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, iii, 88–90.Google Scholar
68 These specified that none but fellows of King's were entitled to fill the first five of any seven vacancies in the fellowship of Eton. An Extract from the Case of the Obligation of the Electors of Eton College to Supply all Vacancies in that Society with Those who Are or Have Been Fellows of King's College, Cambridge, so long as Persons Properly Qualified Are to be Had within that Description (London, 1771); A Letter to the Rev. Dr. M[orell] on the Question of Electing Aliens into the Vacant Places in Eton College (London, 1771); A Second Letter to Dr. M (London, 1771): all reprinted as The Election of Aliens into the Vacancies in Eton College an Unwarranted Practice. To which are now added, Two Letters to the Rev. Dr. Morell; in which the Cavils of a Writer in the General Evening Post, and Others, are Considered and Refuted (London, 1771). See also The Letters of the Late [Thomas] Lord Lyttelton (doubtfully attributed) (London, 1780; 2nd edn, 1785), ii, 29–31, Letter 36: ‘he merits a less restrained position than he possesses; and I agree with you in not forgiving Doctor B– for a breach of justice in opposing his election to a fellowship at Eton. Such a promotion would have been a suitable reward for his labours, and have afforded him that ample independence, and learned retreat, which would have left his closing life without a wish.‘Google Scholar
69 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 658.Google Scholar
70 Epistles of … Seneca, p. viii n; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 655.Google Scholar
71 Preface to Littleton, Sermons upon Practical Subjects, p. ii.Google Scholar
72 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 655.Google Scholar
73 Epistles of … Seneca, note to Epistle 101.Google Scholar
74 On Morell's political verse see Smith, Handel's Oratorios, 195–9.Google Scholar
75 Yale MS, p. 71.Google Scholar
76 Yale MS, p. 65.Google Scholar
77 Poems on Divine Subjects (1732; 2nd edn, 1736).Google Scholar
78 BL Burney MS 522, ff. 3–6.Google Scholar
79 BL Burney MS 523.Google Scholar
80 BL 3006 t 6, BL 1219 m 3.Google Scholar
81 ‘A Chronological Table. Alphabetically Digested. by T.M. 1734‘, BL Add. MS 28846, f. 84r.Google Scholar
82 On verse paraphrase (itself a respected branch of religious verse), on the religious sublime and on Morell's canon of religious poets, see Smith, Handel's Oratorios, 108–26.Google Scholar
83 BL Add. MS 28846, f. 63r.Google Scholar
84 Sacred Annals, or Life of Christ, as recorded by the Four Evangelists (London, 1776), preface.Google Scholar
85 James Boswell, Private Papers, ed. Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle, viii (n.p., 1930), 89. The report that Morell argued against Methodism is corroborated by Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 654: ‘He also had, at one time, a Newspaper controversy with the Methodists, in which he was frequently known to display great quickness’, punningly deriving their name from the Greek for ‘to deceive’. These contemporary testimonies call into question the claim that Morell was showing sympathy with Methodism in his libretto of Theodora (Schröder, ‘Händels Oratorium Theodora‘).Google Scholar
86 BL Add. MS 28846, ff. 63v, 34r.Google Scholar
87 Maxwell-Lyte, History, 282.Google Scholar
88 Epistles of … Seneca, note to Epistle 11.Google Scholar
89 A Sermon … Sons of the Clergy, 20.Google Scholar
90 Ibid., 10.Google Scholar
91 Harwood, Alumni Etonenses, 304; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 655; Letters of Lord Lyttelton, ii, 29–30.Google Scholar
92 BL Add. MS 28846, ff. 6r–8v.Google Scholar
93 Plutarchi Chaeronei Moralia Opuscula, multis mendarum milibus expurgata (Basileae, per Hier. Frobenium et Nic. Episcopium, MDXLII); Richard Hooper, ‘Dr. Thomas Morell's Copy of H. Stephens’ edit. of Aeschylus, 1557, with MSS Notes’, Notes and Queries, 1st series, 5/139 (26 June 1852), 604–5 (Hooper states, Notes and Queries, 1st series, 6/153 (2 October 1852), 322, that he intends to present the volume to Cambridge University Library, but he appears not to have done so); A Catalogue of a Very Large and Fine Collection of Valuable Books, in All Arts, Sciences and Languages; among which is contained the Library of the Late Thomas Morell, DD, Rector of Buckland, in Hertfordshire, and FSSR and A. Editor of Ainsworths Dictionary, Hederi Lexicon Graecum, &c. With several other Libraries and Parcels of Books, lately purchased; which will be sold very reasonable, the lowest prices marked in the catalogue, by Leigh and Sotheby, booksellers, at their house, in York-Street, Covent Garden Beginning January 1, 1785 (London, 1785); publisher's preface, Notes and Annotations on Locke, iv. In a letter in King's College Modern Archives MS Coll.34.11 Morell reports himself as about to haunt a book sale.Google Scholar
94 Exempla Moralia … for the Use of Youth (Eton, 1762).Google Scholar
95 Peter Quarrie, ‘Christ Church Collection Books’, The History of the University of Oxford, v: The Eighteenth Century, ed. L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell (Oxford, 1986), 493–512 (p. 496).Google Scholar
96 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 653; Richard Porson, ed., Euripides, Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae, Medaea (2nd edn, London, 1824), pp. iii–iv, xi–xii: ‘King corrected many places in the text, but with little judgement, and from his emendations the reader was usually none the wiser … He moved v. 416 to follow v. 414, and deleted v. 417. This error was allowed by Thomas Morell, who reissued King's edition; Morell also (to give you an understanding of the man's reliability and judiciousness) omitted the description of the Manuscripts, which King had provided; and at v. 578 he provided [a new text of the Greek] as audacious as it was tacit. When I annotated this passage [i.e. in Porson's first edition of the plays] I had only Morell's edition to hand; therefore I unjustly blamed King, who in other respects is certainly blameable. The benevolent Reader will condone and correct my mistake’; v. 728: ‘ODYREI, the reading of the Aldine edition and all the manuscripts, does not fit the metre. It was changed to odynei by King (i.e. Morell), jettisoning all meaning. It should at least have been odynai. But Musgrave rightly printed …‘. I am grateful to Prof. T. V. Buttrey for drawing Porson's comments to my attention and for providing this translation of them from the Latin.Google Scholar
97 ‘The Printer to the Reader’, Thesaurus Graecae Poeseōs, 1–4.Google Scholar
98 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, v, 251–2; preface by J[oseph] P[ote] to Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Compendarius, ed. Morell (1783), p. xiv.Google Scholar
99 Ibid.Google Scholar
100 The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer in the Original… and as they are turn'd into Modern Language by Mr Dryden, Mr Pope, and Other Eminent Hands. Other uncompleted projects are a concordance to Nicander (BL Burney MS 401); the subscription edition of Spenser mentioned by Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, i, 653; and the translation of Seneca's Epistles, finished too late to benefit him: the MS (BL Add. 10604) shows that the first full draft was completed in 1754, but the enormous work was published posthumously.Google Scholar
101 Derek Brewer, ed., Geoffrey Chaucer: The Critical Heritage (London, 1978; repr. 1995), i, 1385–1837, 37.Google Scholar
102 Henderson, ‘Morell's Edition’, chapter 6 of Chaucer and Augustan Scholarship, 141–61, and Appendix, ‘The Morell–Entick Controversy’, ibid., 165–88.Google Scholar
103 BL Add. MS 34728. The looming competitor in the British Museum is unidentified.Google Scholar
104 In his commentary to Seneca's epistles he quotes As You Like It, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Macbeth and Henry VIII(with one misattribution). For Grandison see ibid., notes to Epistles 45, 85. On his canon of religious poets and his response to them see Smith, Handel's Oratorios, 111–12.Google Scholar
105 Monthly Review, 1777/1, p. 449. The letter, Bristol Reference Library MS B11457 [S], 14 May [1777], clearly refers to Monthly Review, 1777/1, pp. 256–65 (the ‘Rowley’ poems were discussed over several issues of the Review).Google Scholar
106 King's College Modern Archives MS Coll.34.11, to Robert Cory Sumner.Google Scholar
107 King, Richard G., ‘John Christopher Smith's Pasticcio Oratorios’, Music and Letters, 72 (1998), 190–218 (pp. 203–10) (with illustrations).Google Scholar
108 Horace Walpole, Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis, xxviii (New Haven, CT, and London, 1955), 55, Mason to Walpole, 1 December 1772; for modern estimates see e.g. Julian Herbage, ‘The Oratorios’, Handel: A Symposium, ed. Gerald Abraham (London, 1954), 66–131 (p. 113); Winton Dean, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London, 1959), 463–4; Jonathan Keates, Handel: The Man and his Music (London, 1985), 274.Google Scholar
109 Literary Anecdotes, i, 655.Google Scholar
110 Seneca, Epistle 2. The ‘reason’ in the last paragraph is a first-person version of Seneca's ‘men who cultivate close acquaintance with no one author, but survey them all hastily and rapidly’.Google Scholar
111 Note to line 233 of the Greek text; introduction to English translation.Google Scholar
112 Notes and Annotations on Locke, MS list in Morell's hand of ‘Books Quoted’ facing title page.Google Scholar
113 Epistles of … Seneca, notes to Epistles 7, 30, 77.Google Scholar
114 ‘Arz-ney Kunst bringet gunst! die Wissenschaft besteht / Erfahrung machet gross, Geschickligkeit erhöht / Herr Händeln bleibt diss Lob, von allen zu gewandt / So Raht und that gespürt, durch Händels treue Hand.‘ Engraving of Handel's father by J. Sandart after Benjamin von Block: see Simon, Jacob, Handel: A Celebration of his Life and Times (London, 1985), 52. Presumably Morell had seen a copy in Handel's possession.Google Scholar
115 See above, note 1.Google Scholar
116 Literary Anecdotes, ii, 192. Previously used by Nichols in the predecessor to his Literary Anecdotes, his Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, 429, quoting less precisely, possibly because Morell was still alive.Google Scholar
117 A Select Collection of Poems: with Notes, Biographical and Historical, vii (1781), 346.Google Scholar
118 Literary Anecdotes, i, 656, iv, 599–603.Google Scholar
119 ‘Concert of Antient Vocal and Instrumental Music established AD 1776. With a Catalogue of the several pieces performed since its institution’, MS (bound), n.d. [c.1792], BL Kings 318, s.v. ‘serenatas, oratorios, operas &c’. This certainly means whole works: performances of individual vocal items are listed under ‘songs’ and can be collated with surviving programmes. On the Concert of Antient Music and the Tottenham Street Rooms see Weber, William, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1992), Simon McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge, 1993, with map), and Robert Elkin, The Old Concert Rooms of London (London, 1955).Google Scholar
120 Identified by Anthony Hicks and Richard King: see King, ‘John Christopher Smith's Pasticcio Oratorios’, 197, 203–11.Google Scholar
121 Dean, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios, 581.Google Scholar
122 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, ix, 789. Either Nichols garbled Cole, or Cole was ignorant of the facts: it was the prince who died before Morell (1751), while Denoyer died after (1788, according to Philip Highfill, Kalman Burnim and Edward Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and other Stage Personnel in London 1660–1800, iv (Carbondale, IL, 1975), 332–4).Google Scholar
123 See e.g. in addition to the letter in King's College Modern Archives (note 106 above) the playful metrical exercises, Yale MS, pp. 122–5; and his edition of Prometheus Bound contains a 20-page essay on that notoriously difficult topic, Aeschylus' metre.Google Scholar
124 Jennens to Edward Holdsworth, 21 February 1744/5, cited Smith, Handel's Oratorios, 28; for the ‘Dunning Letters’ see ibid., 26.Google Scholar
125 On which see Smith, ‘The Meaning of the Libretto’.Google Scholar
126 Diary, 114.Google Scholar
127 Yale MS, p. 52.Google Scholar
128 Boswell, Private Papers, xv (n.p., 1932), 171 (Sunday 16 March 1783). ‘STP’ was the standard abbreviation of the Latin for Professor of Sacred Theology (= DD); Morell had it included on the title pages of many of his publications, along with his membership of the Royal and Antiquarian societies.Google Scholar