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Pennsylvania State University Library. Previously published: Nicholas A. Joukovsky, ‘Southey on Landor: An Unpublished Letter’, The Wordsworth Circle, 7.1 (1976), 13–16.
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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I have delayed sending you the volume of Brazil,
Here is the passage of which I spoke relating to the practice <art> of making feathers grow of a
particular colour.
Indi colorem nativum psittaci sui mutare norunt in alium, quem ipsi optaverint. Operæ pretium est singulare artificium explanare. Plumas naturales radicitus evellunt. Locum unde avulsæ fuerunt plumæ, manu perfricant, donee rubescat, sanguisque inde scaturiat. Plumarum veterum poris, seu alveolis, succum ejus coloris quem volunt, instillant, imprimuntque. Si alis, si caudæ, flavum, si cæruleum, si purpureum colorem infuderint, pennæ flavæ, cæruleæ, purpureie sensim subnascentur. Id apud Brasilios, Quaranios, et (teste P. J. Sanchez Labrador) apud Mbayas barbaros usu receptum. Sed, ut idem observavit, vere, vel autumno ineunte id præsturi ab Indes. Colorem viridem in flavum facillime mutari: plumis flavis si evellantur, non nisi flavas succrescere. Hæc illius sunt et monita, et experimenta.
Dobrizhoffer de xxxxx Abiponibus. T1. 357.
The tendency to the yellow is perhaps the most curious part of this statement. I am always slow to
disbelieve a story, in cases where the relator has no apparent motive either for deceiving himself or the reader, & where his
general good sense exempts him from the suspicion of over credulity. To more many objections which may be made to this
asserted fact occur to me, & probably many others will occur to you; – all I shall say is that the authority is trust worthy in the
highest degree, – & whether the thing be true or false, & if true whether of any value, you will judge for yourself.
You have, I hope, written to Montgomery. I am reviewing his
last publication,higher is m more do I feel & admire his powers. What faults he has are
those of the age, his merits are altogether his own. There is but one poet whom he resembles, & that poet is Klopstock.xxxx am yet well acquainted with this writers odes –
there is the same reach of mind as in Montgomery, the same stretch & the
same direction, but not the same pith.
Did I tell you that Landor had written a tragedy upon Count
Julian?
If this do not make you rank Landor in the first
xx rank of living poets I am much deceived.
Remember me & my household to all friends at Mrs Danceys.