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British Library, Add MS 30927. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 229–230 [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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& has been used for the ampersand sign.
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I wish when Harry comes to Keswick you could contrive to send those gaiters of mine by him, which were left behind us at
St Helens, inasmuch as the pantaloons to which they belong are destined for this winters wear, & without
those gaiters I know not how my poor hormangorgs are to be kept warm. – This for a beginning as being matter of business. I will now
tell you as matter of hepistolary communication that it would rejoice you to see how I am getting on my with my Dutch. I
have attacked the two folios of Peter Kolbe,Xx
Pelayo
We have had two good Lakers. Mr Lowe of Ludlow,xxxx merchant at Middelburg in Walcherin. – Stuart sent him here, – he gave me a lesson in Dutch as to the pronunciation.
Wakefield, a son of Priscilla Wakefield was the other.
Poor Grahame! you give me the first news of his death. I fear
straitened circumstances & disappointed hopes may have brought on this catastrophe. His understanding was not equal to his genius,
& it required the sunshine of a brighter fortune than ever fell to his lot to counteract a natural melancholy, the constitutional
mental disease of men whose feelings are stronger than their intellect. At Teddesley I read
his poem on the Abolition of the Slave Trade,about a few rare
passages may be culled which the best of us might have been proud to have written. It was but the other day that I was talking with
Gooch about the living poets, little thinking that one to whom I assigned so
honourable a place among them, was no longer of the number.
Gooch is very probably drinking tea with you at this time. One of or
two books of yours were overlookd I perceive when that parcel was tied up, – some other opportunity will offer of conveying them. I
have been busy upon the taking part in the controversy about Bell &
the Dragon, as you will see in the Quarterly where I have fibbed the Edinburgh (as the Fancy say) most completely, showing it as little mercy as it deserves at my hands.
It will require as much interest to get a ship, as it did to get made Commander. I have no correspondence with Croker, – & if the thing can be done it must be thro the same channel as before, – Herries & Bedford, – upon the latter of whom by the bye you should have called that he might have shaken hands with you upon your promotion, – for it originated with him, & without him would not have been obtained.
Today I resumed the long-suspended Life of Nelson
We shall see Harry of course before he leaves the North. I was most disappointed that Gooch could not stay with me longer. When we shall see you God knows – all I can say is here is room for you all whenever you can come – Ediths love with mine to Sarah & the young one. All well