“Thus my Lord, you are left to make the best of your bargain; for if you cannot intimidate you must submit. It is true that the works of Goldsmith will always be sought after; but with equal truth it may be observed that in this kingdom you will discover little zeal to promote the welfare of his needy relatives, hundreds of objects here having a superior claim to publick charity.” (_Litt. Ill._, VII, 1848, pp. 30-1.)
After Percy’s death in 1811 the major part of his voluminous correspondence with literary and other friends appears to have descended to his elder daughter Barbara, who had married in 1795 Mr. Samuel Isted, of Ecton, Northamptonshire. It probably consisted not so much of Percy’s own letters, which were doubtless retained in most cases by their recipients, as of his correspondents’ letters to him, with drafts of his replies to the more important of them. John Nichols, the antiquarian printer who managed the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, was a great friend and frequent correspondent of Percy, and the sixth volume (1831) of the well-known _Literary Illustrations_ contained a short memoir and portrait of Percy, with a selection of his letters partly derived from William Upcott, Assistant Librarian of the London Institution (p. viii of Introduction). The 856 pages of the next Volume VII of the _Illustrations_, which was not published till seventeen years later (1848), were practically entirely devoted to letters from and to Percy--mostly the latter. This correspondence, according to the “Advertisement” by J. B. Nichols, the editor, “was not in my possession at the completion of the sixth volume, but has been acquired since by public sale.”[3] Even this huge book did not contain all the Percy letters, for the eighth and final volume of the _Illustrations_, not published till 1858, was, so far as the letterpress (436 pages) is concerned, wholly taken up with the rest of the “Percy correspondence.” There are many references to Goldsmith and to the long-delayed “Memoir” of 1801 in these letters, but nothing of great importance, and I therefore have to fall back on the bundle of “Goldsmithiana” which has happily been preserved in the other branch of the Percy family--the Meades.