John Foster, [Stapleton, near Bristol], to Josiah Wade, Esq., Rownham Place, Clifton, [Bristol], undated (late 1830s).

My dear Sir,

   Here is a delectable task for your eyes, and trial for your patience—a trial which would have gone hard with that of Job.—I would see that old fellow thrashed, and indeed every other villanous bad penman.  It is a grievance which no man has a right to inflict on his correspondents.  I have nearly made out but not all the contents of the sheet.  There seems an obligation to send it to Mr Cottle, after you, and Mr Roberts have seen it, if indeed he will task himself to decypher it.  If you hand it to him, have the goodness to require his speedy return of it to you, to be sent by post to Mr C. Carleton Place, Bedminster.

   As to Dr Carey’s great botanical garden, one could almost be sorry that they, not having the same decided taste for such a thing, should be under the permanent charge of keeping it up, since they probably cannot turn its productions to any profitable account.  At the same time it really speaks well for Dr C. that his mind, so variously and intensely occupied, had yet taste enough to take an interest in the productions of oriental Nature.

   We had not previously heard of the decease of his widow.—She was no friend to the Marshman family.—one therefore the less regrets her removal, and the cessation of the claims she would have had on their hard-pressed friends.

                                 I remain, my dear Sir

                                             Yours very truly

                                                         J. F.

Text: Eng. MS. 376, fol. 692, John Rylands University Library of Manchester.  John Foster (1770-1843) was a Baptist minister at Downed, near Bristol (1800-1804) and Frome (1804-1806) before devoting himself to a successful career as a journalist and writer. Josiah Wade (1760/61-1842) was a longtime attendant at the Baptist meeting in the Pithay, Bristol, and a close friend of Joseph Cottle, John Foster, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The letter that Foster has received and is sharing with Cottle and the others concerns Carey’s horticultural garden at Serampore and some other recent events, including the death of Carey’s third wife.  The letter may have been written by Joshua Marshman, who frequently corresponded with Foster. The above letter was obviously written not long after the death of Carey’s third wife, Grace Hughes (1777?-1835).