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Columbia University Library, Jeanne d’Arc Ms. Coll, J6 So823. ALS; 2p. (c). . Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 262–264.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt
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I had not leisure to reply to your former letter when it arrived; – a
full reply to it, indeed, would require xxxx a dissertation rather than a
letter. The Influence of the Holy Spirit is believed by all Christians, except the
Ultra-Socinians, – the more pious Socinians would admit it, tho under a different
name.
It is always my custom to have a work long in my thoughts before it
is taken actually in hand: & to collect materials & let the plan digest while
my main occupation is upon some other subject – which has undergone the same slow but
necessary process. At present I am printing the History of the Peninsular War,I did not acquire till is acquired gradually; & can hardly be
learnt otherwise than by experience.
So Buonaparte is now as dead as Caesar & Alexander!will is an event which will give birth to many poems, but I know no one
so likely as yourself to touch the right strings.
I do not remember whether I told you that Thomas Wilkinson, who is a collector
of autographs,