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Bodleian Library, Eng. Lett. c. 24. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 80–83 [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.
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
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Whether Grosvenor you will ascribe it to the cut of my nose, I cannot tell, nor whether it be a proof of the
natural wickedness of the heart, but so it is that I am less disposed to be very much obliged to the Treasury for giving me 200 a
year, than I am to swear at the Taxes for having the impudence to take 56 of it back again. And if it were a pull Devil pull
Bakerr Bedford of the Exchequer it is out of all conscience. Ten in the hundred has always in all
Christian states been thought damnable usury, & to say that a man took ten in the hundred was the same as saying that he would
go to the Devil – but this is three eight & twenty in the hundred; – for which may three <eight>
& twenty hundred Devils, _______
O Grosvenor Grosvenor if old John Southey had let a part of his
property devolve upon me, instead of giving it to a clown because his father used to ear-wig him, – I should have curst the tax
gatherer then, but I should have had no occasion to growl at the want of punctuality in the Exchequer, which you tell me I shall
have now.
——
I am a little surprized to find you speak so contemptuously of modem poetry, – because it shows how very little you
must have read, or how little you can have considered the subject. The improvement during the present reign has been to the full
as great in poetry as it has in the experimental sciences, or in the art of raising money by taxation. What can you have been
thinking of when you wrote that sentence? had you forgotten Burnswriters names which tho inferior to them are above those of any former period except the age of Shakespere,
& not to mention Wordsworth & another poet who has written two very
pretty poems in my opinion, called Thalaba & Madoc.a <another> Cervantesof a
xxx in a way as original as the Spaniard – But you will not be persuaded, – tho I would risk any thing which I possess
that in the space of ten weeks you might produce a book which would make more noise than any thing which has appeared in our day,
get you a first rate reputation immediately, & bring you greater profits in one year than I have been able to earn in
twelve.
————
I am as busy in my household arrangements as you can be. Will you some day send what books of mine are in your possession to Rickman to be by him shipped off with the rest of the family by sea. My tent is pitched at last, & I am thankful that my lot has fallen in so goodly a land.
Politics are very amusing, & go to the tune of Tantara-rara.veto upon the initiation of laws & he has won it. – & the people will very soon be taught that the
Constitution is every thing or nothing just as he & his ministers please. I had got into good humour with the late ministry
because of the Limited Service Bill – the Abolishment of the Slave Trade & their wise conduct with regard to the
continent.for what <why> the memory of Pitt,
Do you see Longmans or Dr Aikins Næum? some people hearing it called the Naeum confounded the article with the word &
called it a Thenæum, & then the same mistake taking place again, it got to be called the Athenæum,r Bedford I take to be a specimen of simply playing the fool. – there are however in
this Næum certain of my lucubrations, very edifying if they fall in your way.
I finish poor Henry Whites papers tomorrow.r Bedford how your back & shoulders will tingle! how you will
perspire! how will bite your nails & gnash your teeth! how you will curse the
reviewers, & the printers, & the poor poets, with now & then a xxxxx remembrance of me & of yourself.
why man there never was so bad a book in the world before. If I were to take any twenty pages & enumerate all the faults in
them – do you remember Duppa when he came from the Installation at Oxford – all
piping hot? – even to that degree of heat would this bare enumeration excite you, & your shirt would be as wet as if you had
tumbled into a bath. I tell you my opinion as a friend, just to prepare you for what is to come – & am actually laughing at
the conceit of how you will look when you take up the first review!