3911. Robert Southey to [John Murray], 1 November [1822]

Endorsement: [deletion and correction in another hand] <1 Nov> July 1822/ Robert Southey
MS: National Library of Scotland, MS 42552. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), II, pp. 238–239.

My dear Sir

The mistake concerning the two sheets which I now return, may very possibly have been this, that when they were sent me a second time, I supposed them to be clean sheets, & laid them aside accordingly.

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Three such sheets, I have with their correspondent proofs; – please to send me the others which have been struck off, that I may have them at hand to refer to.

Herewith you have a farther portion of copy. I am steadily proceeding with it, & shall go on without interruption till it is compleated.

When do you publish the first vol. of the Peninsular War?

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I ha Let me know, because I have some letters to write with it. I am working at those papers from Mr B. Frere which you sent me, & have worked two or three hours every day since they arrived. As soon as I have got thro them we may go to press with the second volume. They bring me down most satisfactorily to the time when the papers which I obtained from another quarter commence. Some time ago I requested you to procure a “History of the War in Catalonia,” & also “Anecdotes of Chiefs employed in the Catalonian War”, by Francisco de Olivarez, both in Spanish – printed at Seville.

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You may easily have overlooked this in the multiplicity of your concerns, – but you will see how necessary it is that I should have them, – the author being himself a Catalan, & having served actively in that province.

Your last number has some very good papers, the second is that which pleases me best.

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The 7^th is an important one,

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& has very little of that tone respecting America which has given so much offence. I very much regret that that tone was ever taken. It gives great pain to those Americans who are friendly to England, – alienates some of them, & produces nothing but mischief, without the possibility of its doing any good. I am at this time reading a new American work (D^r Dwights Travels in New England & New York)

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from which I could make an exceedingly interesting paper, were it not for that the spirit in which I should write would form such a total contrast to that of these unlucky articles which have preceded it:

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The work is in four octavo volumes containing as much as so many English quartos There are not many readers who would go thro it with as much patience & pleasure as I am doing. But it contains a compleat view of society in that country, & a great number of curious facts, – & the facts as well as the opinions of the author all come in aid of those principles & institutions, – which, God knows, stand in need at this time of all the aid that can be found for them.

I am grieved to hear of Giffords state. When he hints to me said to me that he feared he should soon become unable to conduct the Review, & knew not where to look for a successor, John Coleridge occurred to me as a person in whom all the main requisites were to be found, – acquirements, talents, discretion, sound judgement, & a character upon which the most entire reliance may be placed. – Your interests, & those of the country, could not be in safer hands, – & both are seriously concerned in the decision.

farewell my dear Sir & believe me
yours faithfully
Robert Southey.

Keswick. Nov. 1.

I am desired to request that you will send a copy of Dobrizhoffer

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to Lady Beaumont (Grosvenor Square) – with from the Translator. The Translator herself will be in London shortly.

I have not had N^o 53.

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Notes

1. Proofs of Southey’s Book of the Church (1824).[back]

2. The first volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

3. Southey had read John Mitford’s ‘On Spanish Literature, with some Account of Francisco de Olivarez’, New Monthly Magazine, 10 (October 1818), 221–223. This had mentioned Olivarez’s Account of the War in Catalonia (1815) in four volumes, published at Seville, 1815; Anecdotes of Chiefs Employed in the Catalan War (1816); and Memoirs of the Spanish Monarchy to the Abdication of Charles 4 & the Usurpation of Joseph Bonaparte (1816). However, none of these works seem to exist. Southey had already asked Murray to try and acquire them; see Southey to John Murray: 10 July 1820, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3509; 27 February 1821, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3641; 11 June 1821, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3693; and 27 July 1822, Letter 3877.[back]

4. Francis Palgrave’s review of the first volume of Lewis Cottingham (1787–1847), Plans, Elevations, Sections, Details and Views of the Magnificent Chapel of King Henry VII at Westminster Abbey Church, with a History of its Foundation &c (1822–1829), Quarterly Review, 27 (July 1822), 308–336, published 23 October 1822.[back]

5. Major George Procter (1795–1842), Adjutant and Superintendent of Studies at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, reviewed a number of books on the war of 1812 in Quarterly Review, 27 (July 1822), 405–449, published 23 October 1822.[back]

6. Timothy Dwight (1752–1817), Travels in New-England and New-York (1821–1822), no. 881 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library, reviewed by Southey in Quarterly Review, 30 (October 1823), 1–40, published 17 April 1824.[back]

7. Croker and Sir John Barrow (1764–1848; DNB), two of the Quarterly Review’s most regular and important contributors, were both hostile to America; see, for instance, Barrow’s article, Quarterly Review, 21 (January 1819), 124–167.[back]

8. Sara Coleridge, An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay (1822), a translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer (1717–1791), Historia de Abiponibus Equistri, Bellicosaque Paraquariae Natione (1784), no. 844 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.[back]

9. Quarterly Review, 27 (April 1822), published 4 July 1822.[back]

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3911. Robert Southey to [John Murray], 1 November [1822]

3911. Robert Southey to [John Murray], 1 November [1822]

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer