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National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 304-306.
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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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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I agree completely with what you say of the intermingling description & narrative. if in Thalabait you. the same
defect fault is in Trissinonot neither immediately nor soon perceived by the author who must long associate with words the feeling that first indited
them. These I shall weed out as I can – but the trick of swelling out unimportant narration by swelling xxxxx
by language is xxxxxxx abominable. all that can be done with these connecting parts is to make
them as perspicuous & as concise as possible. the story of Aswad
But surely that Scotch Reviewthat <the> reckoning it among the inconsistencies
of the poem that a magician is ‘knockd down’ by a sand shower of his own raising when the lines expressly say that the pillar of sand
was driven by the Breath of God?author preachers thereof reviewed his
sermons in the British Critic.
I shall be very glad to see you here on the circuit & show you all I have & talk with you about it. you are
right in saying that an author is in danger of being deceived as to the perspicuity of his work. if the Cidprelim part of the præliminaries
The booksellers have blabbed my name as the translator of Amadispounds when the book is done. fifty when the edition is sold. & half the profit of all
future editions. I wrote very angrily to them with a proper resentment. they did not design to act meanly. but the thing has vexed me,
for I was very desirous to have remained silent.
This goes with a chance direction – for I have quite lost sight of you. Coleridge is with me – on his way abroad – for he is in wretched health. his
letters to Fox