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Huntington Library, RS 222. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 64–65 [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.
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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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Your letter operated well. Like a good boy I began my task immediately after its arrival, & have now compleated one
part, & begun the second of a poem which is to consist of three. Can you give me a better title than Carmen
Maritale?the
It is a poets egotism, making the best of the laurel, & passing to the present subject by professing <at first> an unfitness
for it. the second part will be a vision wherein allegorical personages give good advice, – & the concluding part a justification
of the serious strain which has been chosen, – something about the King,x a wish that it may be
long before the Princess be called upon to exercise the duties of which she has been here reminded. The whole from 3 to 400 lines, – on
which when they are compleated I will request you to bestow half an hours reading with a pencil in your hand.
The ground ice you have explained so clearly that I am half ashamed of not having thought upon the thing before I asked
a question about it.
In George Gascoignes poem there are many things about the Dutch, showing that the English despised them & despaired of their cause, – just as in our days happened to the Spaniards –
I dearly love a piece of historical poetry like this, which shows how men felt & thought, when history only tells us how they acted.
I open the newspaper every day in fear of seeing that the preliminaries are signed. Austria seems to be me
to be playing false.
Remember me to Mrs R – & your sister.