3765. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 18 December 1821
3765. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 18 December 1821*
Keswick Dec 18. 1821
My dear G.
I transmit this thro you, merely that you may have the satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, (whichever it may prove) of seeing what sort of stuff I have produced. [1] It is by no means as bad as I expected it to prove, from the dogged unwillingness with which I went to work. And when it has lain quietly for some time in my desk, it is not impossible but that with some tinkering, & some addition, it may be made a respectable poem of its kind. Thank Heaven it is off my hands for the present.
We are living in perpetual storms. Surely never was so strange a season. We have pansies, polyanthuses & primroses in blossom, – the thermometer is little below temperate, – & today we have thunder, lightning, hail & rain & wind in such gusts that I suppose Eolus [2] has got the colic.
God bless you
RS.
Notes
* Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqre/ Exchequer
Endorsement: Decr 18. 1821/ with Ode for Jany 1822
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett.
c. 26. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.
Note on MS: The letter contained an enclosure to William Shield, Southey’s ode for the New Year;
see Southey to William Shield, [18 December 1821], Letter 3766. BACK