4 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts^ and Letters, 
upon Warton, Percy, and Pinkerton. From his manner in 
these controversies is drawn the conclusion that the same char¬ 
acteristics predominate in everything he wrote. But such an 
impression is largely mitigated, if not wholly expelled, by even 
a casual perusal of the published correspondence. While it 
is not my purpose to attempt to vindicate Kitson of the charges 
which have long stood against him, yet the bit of new evidence 
which is here presented^—intimate and personal in nature—• 
may aid in a fairer and more intelligent judgment. 
These eight letters of Kitson cover a wide range. 2) The 
first is the earliest yet discovered, and shows the hero-worship 
of youth; the last was written two years before his death, and 
exhibits the critical temper of mature years. In the books 
and manuscripts which he purchased and borrowed—a com¬ 
merce in which he was actively engaged all his life—^^they re¬ 
veal the field of his major interest as well as his special con¬ 
cern at a given time, and they give a hint of the wide range 
of his friendships as well as of the deep concern with which he 
viewed a possible rupture with a friend whom he had injured 
or by whom he thought he had been affronted. 
The first letter bears no address, but it was evidently writ¬ 
ten to John Cunningham (1729-1773), itinerant actor and 
small poet, who spent his dissolute life with strolling companies 
in the north of Britain and wrote occasional prologues, a 
farce or two, and some pastoral poems of slight merit. 
Cunningham, perhaps in company with Thomas Holcroft 
(1745-1809), the political reformer, and William Shield (1748- 
1829), the famous musical composer, met Kitson, then a young 
legal apprentice with literary aspirations, and immediately 
fell heir to his homage. They corresponded infrequently 
during the period of Cunningham’s voluntary retirement to 
the house of Slack, the printer at Newcastle, where he was 
waiting '^till my health either seems to return, or totally 
abandons me.” But three of these letters seem to have been 
preserved. Two of Cunningham’s, dated respectively June 
19, 1772 and July 23, 1773, are printed in Sir Harris Nicolas’s 
*With the exception of the second, the originals of these letters are in 
the Bodleian, British Museum, and University of Edinburg Libraries. The 
MS. of the second letter is in the collection of Mr. Marsden J. Perry, of 
Providence. 
