3916. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 12 November 1822
Endorsement: R Southey to JR/ 22
MS: Saxon Childers Papers #03384, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.
Thank you most heartily for what you say of Bertha. Upon due consideration we think that both the pleasure & the advantage of her visit will be increased by delaying it. She is but in her fourteenth year, & will be better able a little while hence to afford & enjoy this sort of holy day. – For myself I shall very gladly take up my quarters, during part of my stay, in Palace Yard. The Dii Penates
of that house ought to know me well, for I frequented it three & thirty years ago,
ate plum cake & drank sack
there regularly on Lord Mayors day,
– & began in the library there, those studies of manners & mythology, which led to Thalaba & Madoc & Kehama.
My pleasantest school boy recollections are connected with that house.
You will receive my first volume
early next month: & not very long after it the view of our church history
which I am now proceeding with. I believe no person feels the want of a Collection of our early historians more than I do at this time. Large portions to my purpose are in the Acta Sanctorum.
– I shall make an interesting, & I hope a useful book.
Dr Wordsworth is well-placed. There could hardly be a fitter man for that station.
John Coleridge I think will be as fit for the Editorship,
which I believe he will have. There will be more difficulty with Barrow
than any other contributor. His articles are almost always ill tem ill natured & unjust. I do not remember that he has ever in any one instance allowed a traveller his due merit. And yet he must be managed, as a person whom it will not do to offend.
I have written to Murray in strong reprehension of the articles respecting America.
And he has desired me to slide as well as I can into a different strain.
A great deal of mischief has been done. It is something however to stop it for the future. And luckily while I alter the language of the QR at home, I can go very far toward affecting a correspondent change at Boston, – where I have good communications.
God bless you
RS.