Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
Many are the reasons, & as weighty as they are manifold which have prevented me from answering your letter. it may
suffice to mention one – that within the last five weeks I have walked between 4 & 500 miles. I am in search of Relph, & have
been disappointed in finding him where he ought to have been found, but now point by point to your letter.
Certainly I never saw the Topographica Britannica,
Millers specimen I myself looked out at Hills, from some satire
published separately & bound up with other miscellanies.
And for Sheffields Epitaph – do you suppose that I wanted to give it as he wrote it? or as the Dean thought proper to
correct it? The words omitted are precisely those which mark the Dukes sentiment & character of mind.adveneror not full enough, as applied to Christ. Great clamours were raised against this epitaph, many asserting
that it proved the Duke a sceptic; and as great a trifle as it may seem, his grace’s orthodoxy became the subject of a controversy:
it was, however, defended in form by Dr. Fiddes, in “A Letter to a Freethinker,” 1721’.
Send me the names of the 80 because it is very likely that I may be shortly at Edinburgh, & there I would look for them.
Perhaps I may get Relph to day – at least there is now a person seeking it for me in Keswick. As soon as it comes I
shall transcribe the extract, & you may correct the press from it confidently, because as the it will be in the Cumbrian
dialect I shall take especial care to be accurate. Add any thing you like to his biography, his religion was of too ascetic a cast
certainly – but he was a good & an interesting man – The book is come – I fell to & have transcribed without a minutes delay
<a full> xxx sheet xxx xxxxxx Add to the account that the character as well as the imagery of the Cumbrian
pastorals were from real life – there was hardly a person in the village who could not point out those who had sate for his Cursty
& Peggy.
Mr Bedford – look at p236. & tell me whether the name on the top is an error – or the whole
page out of place? – what a beautiful extract is that from the Countess of Winchelsea!
–––
Little did you think when you spoke so freely of the Colonel in your letter that the Colonel himself was to frank it! – I never had the pleasure of receiving his superscription before.
Government have thought proper to appropriate all the Spanish prizes taken before a certain day to indemnify the
merchants whose property has been confiscated in Spain. I am trying to make a noise about this in the Courier, – because by this
xxxx unprecedented measure my brother Tom loses 2000£, a tax a little
too hard upon an individual.Amelia,
of which Thomas Southey was a lieutenant, had captured the Spanish brig Isabella and the ship Conception, both laden with wine and brandy, and the ship Commerce, laden with cotton. It was
customary for naval officers to be allotted a share of the value of ships and cargo captured in armed conflict, but this award of
prize money was contested because it was claimed that the ships were captured before war was officially declared. Southey took up
his brother’s cause to have his share reinstated. It was presumably Southey’s influence that caused
Did you ever discover the cause of the Butlers prolapsus?colon, had only given him a comma, & that
stop was not long enough.
I want to frank up the Relphian sheet. x how is this to be done? for Wynn is God knows where & so is Rickman & the Emperor of the Franks.
I have a world of business to do, – & my time day after day is taken up by some dropper in or other, – for every
body seems to come to Keswick. my review-shelf is so full that I groan in spirit at the
prospect of so much labour. The life of Leo is among themxx truly pure & all his feelings xxx
instinctively right. his chapters on the Reformation are therefore the finest that I have yet seen on that subject. The literary
chapters are rather curious & useful than interesting. mere critical characters in general language lay little hold on the memory.
analysis & specimens are wanting – & for these there was not room.
As for seeing me in London – if I come it will be your fault, & I shall be sorry for it, neither liking the trouble
nor the expence of the journey nor the fatigue of seeing my thousand & one acquaintances. Neither in fact can I without great – a
really serious inconvenience, spare the time – for my sixth journey with Elmsley
will leave me little time enough for all that I have to do. My removal seems adjourned sine die,