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British Library, Add MS 30927. Previously published: Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 401–404.
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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As people may bekla’agen
occasion compelling me to replenish the ink stand more often than is agreable. – You do well in castling your boys – & if you christen the next Bernard, it may serve as a reason (for want of a better) why he should
represent a neighbouring town in parliament hereafter.
I shall come to you as soon as I am a free man; that is to say as soon as this Quarters work is performed, on the
performance of which my next half-yearly payments depend. There will be two long articles, both well timed. The first upon Buonapartes
expedition to Egypt.xx impressive circumstances in it: – none more so than the fact mentioned by a French writer that when Buonaparte
travelled across the desert xxx xx to Suez the nights being as piercingly cold as the days were intolerably hot &
nothing else which was combustable to be found, xx xx a fire was made to warm him & his staff of the bones & dry
bodies with which the way across the desert is strewn!
The other article is upon a catchpenny, or rather catchshilling Life of Lord Wellington which I have only begun, & for which I am to be paid the
ridiculous price of 100£.
It is mournful to perceive the imbecillity & cowardice of Ministers at this time. There is a peace party in the
Cabinet! including I suspect Lord Liverpool: whom it is said Ld Castlereagh
I shall print my Inscriptions
If we had a more decided spirit in the Cabinet I should entirely agree with you, that war is better now than some years later. The last work was left most wickedly incomplete & what has now occurred is a memorable lesson that no policy can be sound in which the principles of justice are for a moment set aside: Buonaparte & the Marshals to the Gallows – the rest of the army to Siberia & Cayenne: there should be nothing short of this. And if Paris be burnt in the conflict, I for one shall acknowledge the hand of righteous Retribution.
The voice of the country is for war: the better part feel that we have in honour & in self-preservation & in
duty no other course: the farmers have an eye to their corn, & the landholders to their rents; & the merchants also to their
direct interests, which require that France should not rival them in xxx manufactures. But Buonaparte has many friends &
they are like himself, active in mischief.
I have found out another opus for you when you have compleated the West Indies.