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Huntington Library, RS 118. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 20–22 [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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Duppa’s father was a man of some property, who was resident either in or near
Leominster, in Herefordshire; his family is I believe very distantly connected with my own, I having heard Bishop Duppa claimed as
kinsman on my mother’s side, – a relationship of which I am not very proud, holding the said Bishop to have had a hand in the
manufactory of the Eikon Basilike.
I have known him since the Installation at Oxford, in 1793, where he was introduced to me by his relation & my
nearest & dearest friend, Edmund Seward. Of his Education I can tell you
little, – it was in this country & I suspect not very good. He learnt the art of engraving from Heath
He knows the Arts well, & loves them disinterestedly; – they have been his pursuit rather than his profession.
Whatever is connected with them he has studied seriously, – anatomy in particular & I believe he has a good knowledge of
xxxxx other branches of science.
Medriociter we must rank his classical knowledge.he xx he would, like another good friend of ours, write better. Now I know nothing more, & all this amounts to very
little; – of his soundness, & his knowledge of what odd things there are in the world which make him so pleasant a companion, you
know as much as myself. – Elmsley told me long since of a marriage engagement
pending, between him & Miss Page,xxx him, he being of authority at Lambeth?
I have received lately several works of the ex-Jesuits, concerning South America. This body of men seem to have been
useful to the last, & to have employed their old age, cruelly as they had been treated, in leaving all their knowledge to
posterity. Among them is a famous catalogue of all existing languages, by Hervas, originally published by him in Italian in 1784, but
now greatly enlarged & extended in Spanish, his native language tongue.
I have collected the titles of many other works relating to S America, which I will send for to Italy whenever I can find out how to do it.
I wish this may be true about Portugal & Brazil, – but doubt it.
Thank Mrs R. for her good wishes, I have about four days work
only to finish the body of the Cid.