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.
British Library, Add MS 30927. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 162–164 [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
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
Landor is gone to Spain! to fight as a private in the Spanish army, &
he has found two Englishmen to go with him. A noble fellow this is something like the days of old as we poets & romancers represent
them, something like the best part of chivalry, – old honours, old generosity, old heroism are reviving, – & the career of that
cursed monkey nation is stopt, I believe & fully trust, now & for ever. A man like Landor cannot long remain without command, – & of all things in this world I
should most rejoice to hear that King Joseph
It is vexatious that he did not get the second batch of Kehamath Section (a very long one – 358 lines) is finished,
& I am 50 lines on in the next, – in all 1933 – an increase of something more like 1000 since the poem has been resumed. I am about
the Enchantress who helps Arvalan to his travelling air-car, for which in my conscience I think I deserve a patent, the invention being
wholly my own. In the course of a week I hope to rib him in ice at the North Pole, & then I shall proceed to revolutionize the
Swerga.
The first proof of the Appendix with Freres translation
reached me last night, – it will fill about three sheets & a half.xx very well disposed to see such personages cashiered when they misbehave. Thomas Rees, a dissenting clergyman, brother to the Rees of [MS obscured]eeds in his stead,
Miss Sewards criticism has appeared in the Gentlemans Magazine,
___
Another Island came up on Saturday last which I shall visit the first fine day, probably with Jackson & Jonathan Ottley,
We have got the prettiest kitten you ever saw, – a dark tabby, & we have christened her by the heathenish name of Dido. You would be very much diverted to see her hunt Herbert all round the kitchen, playing with his little bare feet, which she just pricks at every pat, & the faster he moves back, the more she paws them, while he squealls & fights, & cries naughty Dido, & points to his feet & says hurt – hurt – naughty Dido, – presently he feeds her with poppin bits, which Dido plays with awhile, but soon returns to her old game. You have lost the amusing part of Herberts childhood, – just when he is trying to talk, & endeavouring to say every thing.
Jackson is making a bathing-house down there at the bottom of the orchard, –
which I suppose nobody will ever use. I have been in the water very seldom since you went, – but the last time I accomplished the great
job of fairly swimming on my back, – which is a step equal to that of getting ones first commission. We drank tea out a few nights ago
with the Wolseleys,
I boggle at your third section of Kehama, because that must be turned into rhyme. the two first are transcribed, – the
first with many alterations, & I have written (by this post) to Bedford,xx Imperial ones.said he <replied>, –
& such poetry that I should give the world to remember it. Well then, xx said she, I xx did luckily hear the
last lines, & I am sure I remember them exactly – they were –
This is one of Sharpes stories, it is true, – & an excellently good one it is. – I am not such a dreamer as Mickle, for what I can remember is worth remembering, – & one of the wildest scenes in Kehama will prove this.