3765. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 18 December 1821

3765. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 18 December 1821

Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqre/ Exchequer
Endorsement: Decr 18. 1821/ with Ode for Jany 1822
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 26. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.
Note on MS: The letter contained an enclosure to William Shield, Southey’s ode for
the New Year; see Southey to William Shield, [18 December 1821], Letter 3766.

Keswick Dec 18. 1821
My dear G.

I transmit this thro you, merely that you may have the satisfaction, or dissatisfaction,
(whichever it may prove) of seeing what sort of stuff I have produced.


(1)

Southey’s New Year’s Ode for 1822, as Poet Laureate: ‘Ireland’, published in Sir Thomas
More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 2 vols (London, 1829),
I, pp. [295]–302.

It is by no means as bad as I expected it to prove, from the dogged unwillingness
with which I went to work. And when it has lain quietly for some time in my desk,
it is not impossible but that with some tinkering, & some addition, it may be made
a respectable poem of its kind. Thank Heaven it is off my hands for the present.

We are living in perpetual storms. Surely never was so strange a season. We have pansies,
polyanthuses & primroses in blossom, – the thermometer is little below temperate,
– & today we have thunder, lightning, hail & rain & wind in such gusts that I suppose
Eolus


(2)

Aeolus was the ruler of the winds in Greek mythology.

has got the colic.

God bless you
RS.
Notes
1.. Southey’s New Year’s Ode for 1822, as Poet Laureate: ‘Ireland’, published in Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 2 vols (London, 1829), I, pp. [295]–302.[back]
2.. Aeolus was the ruler of the winds in Greek mythology.[back]
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