4061. Robert Southey to Samuel Rogers, 21 September 1823
MS: University College, London, Special Collections, Sharpe Papers. ALS; 2p.
Previously published: P. W. Clayden (ed.), Rogers and His Contemporaries, 2 vols (London, 1889), I, p. 362.
Having been asked for a letter of introduction to you, I somewhat hastily promised it, presuming upon your kindness to excuse a liberty which at this moment I feel that I have no right to take. Mr Carne
came to me with a letter from Wordsworth, De Quincey having found him at Professor Wilson’s & taken him to Rydal. He has travelled in the East, has visited Lady Hester Stanhope,
xxx past ten days in captivity with the Arabs in the desert, & seen something of the horrors which are going on in Greece;
& as he likes better to tell his adventures than to set them forth in a book, his conversation is very interesting. It will remind you perhaps of poor Kemble, by making you ready to exclaim O my aches!
– but his stories are not the worse for the want of aspirates, – nor his pronunciation the better for being Ionic as well as Stafford or Lancashire.
Should you be in town during the winter, I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you, & receiving your forgiveness for this intrusion
Believe me my Dear Sir
Yours with sincere respect
Robert Southey.