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Pennsylvania State University Library; text is taken from M. Betham-Edwards, ‘Letters of Coleridge, Southey and Lamb to Matilda Betham’, Fraser’s Magazine, 18 (July 1878). Previously published: M. Betham-Edwards, ‘Letters of Coleridge, Southey and Lamb to Matilda Betham’, Fraser’s Magazine, 18 (July 1878), 82-83 [in part; dated 14 October].
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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I wrote you a Letter which has to travel into Wales on its way, & will not reach you much before this.
Why do you make any sort of apologies for what can stand in need of none? - You know me by this time well enough to
know that I am a plain speaker, & you ought to believe me when I say that we were very sorry to part with you, - & shall be
right heartily glad to see you again. If any apologies were needful they would be on our part, that we did not amuse you better &
show you more of the country. When next you come you we will hope for better weather, - & when my fortune improves I may
[MS torn] one day afford to keep a cart. As for my hesitation or slowness at professions, - do you <not>
know how I hate professors of fine feeling, & how I suspect all sentimentalists? xxx
Mary I dare say will write to you when she comes home from Netherhall. I dare not promise as much for Edith, - it is her incurable fault that she scarcely on any possible occasion can be induced to write to any person except
her sisters, - & me. The Cart’s tail might perhaps have remedied this some years ago, - & you know I could find employment for
a Cart in this way, as well as in jaunting about the Lakes. - I perfectly understand why she dislikes letter writing, and how
exceedingly foolish her dislike is, but it is something of what use is it, like a Physician, to understand the nature of
what you know you cannot cure?