T[homas]. S[teffe]. Crisp, Bristol, to Charles Godwin, Esq., 30 April 1847.

My dear Sir

              I thank you sincerely for your kind present to our Library which I have receiv’d this morning.  I also feel oblig’d by your remarks in reference to our Library.  I think them quite friendly and I will endeavour to profit by them.  It is perhaps difficult to steer the middle course between incivility and that kind of attention which seems due to a respectable visitor while it may perhaps be somewhat dangerous.

         We have not been without some proof that the kind of pilferring to which you refer is practis’d, tho’ happily we have scarcely suffer’d at all.

         Begging you to receive my grateful acknowledgments I am Dear Sir

                                 yours with true esteem

                                             T. S. Crisp

Ch.s Godwin, Esq.

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. ?? (annotated version); also ENG. MS. 861, fol. 17, Thomas Raffles Collection, John Rylands University Library of Manchester.