509. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 8 April 1800

509. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 8 April 1800 ⁠* 

My dear Wynn

Your letter found me copying Thalaba. I shall send you the copy now making of this, as being less interlined, & of course more intelligible, than the first which is better written. [1]  – At Lisbon I shall resume my old habit of early rising. xx at least two thirds of Madoc were written between the hours of 5 & 9 in the morning. & it is my intention to win time in the same way for correcting it: you shall receive the first amended copy. – As soon as I can get a copy by the Three Graves [2]  I will transcribe it for you.

The circumstances attending my breathing the nitrous oxyd seems to imply that my lungs are some-how affected. I have not one symptom of pulmonary consumption – of this I am satisfied. But the gas now always affects my respiration – it becomes as you saw excessively quick & short. now this is not the case with any other person, nor has it long been the case with me.

We shall set out on Friday or Saturday. I will write from Falmouth. Grosvenor Dapple was here three days. he took the gas & it made him snort like a war horse –

God bless you.

yrs

Robert Southey.

Tuesday morning. April 8. 1800

Notes

* Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ Chester Circuit
MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished. BACK

[1] The first eight books of Thalaba the Destroyer (1801); now National Library of Wales, MS 1487A. BACK

[2] ‘The Three Graves. A Fragment of a Sexton’s Tale’ was begun by Wordsworth in 1797 and taken over by Coleridge in 1798. It was first published in The Friend, 6 (21 September 1809). BACK

Addressee

Wynn, Charles Watkin Williams (1775–1850)

People mentioned

Bedford, Grosvenor Charles (1773–1839) (mentioned 1 time)
The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, Part Two
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