811. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [c. 23 July 1803] ⁠* 

My dear Wynn

You give me very great pleasure by saying you would gladly assist me in the legal department [1]  if you thought yourself equal to the task – for that ‘if’ will be no insurmountable obstacle (do you remember poor Bunbury & your theme upon Pride?)

Old law is no uninteresting study – it is too closely connected with the history of manners. I shall go thro the laws of Ina [2]  (if as I think, they have been printed) & make a compendium of them. it will be a good preliminary study to the Codigo Gothico [3]  which I have been so long expecting from Madrid – the Partidas, [4]  & the various codes that have sprung from the same Gothic root, the root of all that is valuable in European policy. to Hoel Dha [5]  I must do the same propter Madocum [6]  – & I rather expect some interesting result from a comparison of Celtic with Gothic jurisprudence. you know that, maugre Madoc, my prejudices are all Gothic, & that I bless the Romans first & the Saxons for redeeming the Britons from the original sin of carrotty hair – red freckled faces more broad than long, & brains of the same flat character.

Now as for being equal to the task – I should feel myself quite equal to stating out of Glanvil, [7]  Fleta [8]  &c what was the law in their time – but to know what has been lopt away & what is overgrown by young shoots, that is beyond me. but it certainly is in your power. Crede quod habeas et habes. [9]  if you will read them as a lawyer, I shall, in pure book gluttony, look thro them for whatever is not law– & if any thing should escape us, it will hardly pass thro Turners sieve who will go thro them in his plan of going on with the history of England.

I thought you would like the plan of the Bibliotheca. it has made me quite happy in the future tense, & given a present value to all stray reading. all the dormant capital of knowledge in my cerebrum & cerebellum is about to be made productive. & my old stall gleanings seem to be sprouting out like potatoe-rinds, into an uncalculated return.

What became of the library of the Chandos family? [10]  Warton [11]  had heard that it contained a copy of the Antiocheis of Joseph of Exeter [12]  – which poem – if that copy do not exist – is lost. I would give one of my ears to recover it.

——

Your sisters [13]  correct me well. I meant the song to the old recitative sort of tune – like the song of Gregory Gubbins in the Battle of Hexham [14] 

God bless you

RS.