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British Library, Add MS 30927. Not previously published.
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 worked stoutly at the Odes after you left me.th book of Roderick
Friday
55 lines.
Friday <Saturday> Bedford
came a letter from Bedford saying that on the Wednesday evening Pople had been with him to receive directions about the printing. Sunday there
comes another informing me that his father had had a paralytic stroke which left
little or no hope of recovery. Of course I lookd for nothing about my Odes in such a letter – there was however a postscript implying a
blunder which can only be explained by the state of his mind. I had desired him to correct the proofs because there was not time to
send them here, – he had sent me some criticisms upon the two first odes, & as my reply to the first of these critical letters
could not arrive before Monday “to enable him to correct the press; – he concluded that therefore the publication could not take
place.” – At another time I should have breathed for him one of those pious prayers which are sometimes heard from a Lieutenants mouth
when the ropes are not handled properly. As the matter stood I wrote to Longman
to hurry the publication if it were possible to get it out before the Raree-men left England;xxx vein of verse, that Jupiter seems to have rolled back
for me the past years.
Of the 21 book 300 lines are written, & there may be another hundred to write.
I must give you some improvements upon the Moscow-poemxxx insert
The harder names thus –
But this must be amended. I must find a third name in efsky, & then arrange them thus <this is done by the figures> – the
effs & the effskys. The offs & the offskeys. N.B. Kutousoff & Toutchautoff are
omitted for reasons which appear in the following lines, coming after ‘nobody can spell –
If the Prince Regent were to reward my merits as appropriately as he has done the Duke of Wellington he would create me Duke of Doggrel, Marquis of Nonsense, Earl Noisy, Viscount Helicon & Baron Parnassus. And then for an honourary augmentation of arms he should appoint my crest to be a head crowned with laurel <not with a cap & bells> & my supporters two jack-asses rampant & winged.
I shall be glad of the inscription which Sarah mentions – that about the
Taylor.