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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 22. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 228–230 [in part].
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.
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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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My dear Grosvenor. If I were not very well acquainted with your disposition I should apprehend by your long silence that you were offended with me. in one letter I spoke perhaps too warmly but you know my affections are warm — I was sorry at having so done & wrote to say so. the jolting of a rough cart over rugged roads is very apt to excite tumults in the intestinal canal — even so are the rubs of Fortune prone to create the gizzard-grumblings of temper.
Now if you are not angry with me (& on my soul I believe you & anger to be perfectly heterogeneous) you will write to me very shortly. if you are — why you must remain so for a fortnight — then it is probable I shall pass two days in London on my way to Cambridge — & as one of them will be purely to be with you if I do not remove all cause of complaint you have against Robert Southey — you shall punish him with your everlasting displeasure.
From Horace too I hear nothing. were I on the Allegany mountains or buried in the wilds of Caernarvonshire I could not have less intercourse with you. perhaps you are weaning me like a child!
& now Bedford I shall very shortly see George Strachey. if he be in London or at Trinity. two days in London. one with
you, when I shall call on him. the other with some friends of Coleridge
how will Strachey receive me? is he alterd? will he be reservd
& remember only our difference? or is there still the same goodness of heart in him as when we first met? I feel some little
agitation at the thought. Strachey was the first person I ever met with who at
all assimilated with my disposition. I was a physiognomist without knowing it — he was my Substance
Coleridge is a man who has every thing of Bunbury but his vices. he is what Bunbury would have been had he given up that time to study which he consumed you know how lamentably. I will give you a little piece which I wrote & he corrected. twas occasioned by the funeral of a pauper without one person attending it!
I like this little poem, & there are few <of> mine of which I can say that.
Bedford I can sing eight songs. 1. the antique & exhilirating
Bacchanalian Back & Sides go bare. 2. the Tragedy of the Minced Pye or the cruel Master Cook. 3. the comical jest of the 1/4
rushlight. 4. the bloody Gardiners Cruelty.
now I shall outdo Horace! to him to your father & Mother & Harry remember me particularly. likewise to Mr Deacon.
farewell & believe always
y. 5th. 1795.