4143. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 28 February 1824
Address: [in another hand, with deletion and readdress in a second hand] London Second March 1824/ <Culshot Castle>/ Miss Bowles/ Buckland/ <Southton> Lymington/ Hants/ Fm/ Rickman
Postmark: FREE/ 2 MR 2/ 1824
MS: British Library, Add MS 47889. ALS; 3p.
Previously published: Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 54–55.
I told you that before you received my letter I should have returned to my old habit of writing verses before breakfast, – (at which time nine tenths at least of Thalaba, Madoc, Kehama & Roderick
were written.) I began on Thursday, & in three mornings have produced – what you see.
Five & twenty years ago I should have written three times as much in one. Without inquiring whether what is lost in measure is xxx gained in weight, there is satisfaction enough in knowing that even at this rate a long poem may be compleated in twelvemonths. And that if I hold on – (as I will do xxx <provided> you bear your part,) – & you keep pace with me, half that time will compleat our purpose, & we may publish at the close of the year.
I have not patience to proceed farther with the first canto before I send you what is already written. You have here a beginning, which when I receive a copy of the book “from the author” I shall gravely pronounce to be a very good imitation of my own manner: – & honestly add that it is quite as good as I could produce myself. The fragments shall be forwarded to you, as I proceed, – written all in the same form, for convenience of arrangement. Now – dear Caroline, go you to work with the same mind & the same will, & we shall build something than the more durable if not more beautiful than the best castle that either of us has ever erected – great architect as we both have been in that line.
God bless you,
RS.
It is needless to say that the sample which you receive now needs polishing in some places. You will feel, as I do, when it fails to satisfy the ear, or to express the thought felicitously.
