3914. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 3 November 1822
Endorsement: RS to JR 3 Nov/ 1822
MS: Huntington Library, RS 426. ALS; 2p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 343–344.
My mornings for the last three weeks have been pretty closely employed upon Frere’s papers which will occupy a fortnight yet before I shall have got thro them.
They gave me all the information of which I was in want for that stage of the war in which my materials were most defective.
Poor Giffords life is so precarious at this time, & the probability of his being unable to conduct the QR. even if he recovers, so great, that the question of succession becomes one of some interest to me. I wish John Coleridge to be the Editor, being a man who unites in himself all the requisites, & with whom I could act cordially. Unless I am very much mistaken, the character of the Journal would be raised, & its influence greatly increased, by the firm & consistent language which it would hold under his management, & the utter exclusion of such splenetic effusions as often disgrace it now.
“The Liberal,” is quite what it ought to be.
If I hated Lord Byron as deeply as he does me, I could not wish it to be worse. It cannot, I think, reach a third number, even if it proceeds to a second, & escapes prosecution. They must be thorough-paced Whigs indeed for whom it is not too bad, – & moreover his Lordship & Leigh Hunt will quarrel ere long & break up the infernal firm.
We are going on well thank God. Since my brother left me I have settled regularly to my winter occupations, & as regularly taken the daily exercise which he prescribed. A summers mountaineering has been of the greatest benefit to me, & I hope to keep in the same good condition, till you see me early in the spring.
Remember us most kindly to Mrs R.
God bless you
RS.
