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MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 151–154.. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 323–325.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
If I do not answer a letter as soon as it is received – it is likely to remain long unanswered – & that is the history of my long silence. Just as the thing is fresh there is a disposition to talk in reply, – but if this be suffered to go off – the whole evaporates like the life of a glass of bottled ale – Besides be pleased always to take it for granted when you do not hear from us that all is going on well, & just as usual. Any calamity – any good fortune – if an earthquake were to shake down the house – or the sky were to fall – the tidings would reach you quite soon enough.
I have [three line deletion] it came into my head to say this because [three line deletion].
Should my little girl live, which God knows is of all dreams the one which I least venture to indulge – I mean that she shall be taught to draw – chiefly I hope by your Senhoraship – as soon as she can hold a pencil. & I mean to make it subservient to useful purposes. for instance I will have the whole history of a tree in a series of drawings. – the first appearance of the seed above ground – & so on thru all its stages – the various appearances of its foliage from the first bud to the fall – its flower – fruit &c – & thus thro all the English trees. – But I will talk of something else – for to lay up hopes is to lay up evil for oneself if they be frustrated.
My great bookpitched seven years ago.costume to beauty. Whoever should paint Queen Elizabeth
We have no sweet-scented violets in this country – nor any cowslips near Keswick. bring some seeds with you – & let us leave them as a legacy to Cumberland. there is a stone – or rock it
may be called some three & a half miles from hence. fretted by the weather in such regular lines that they appear like
cornices, & the whole looks like an architectural ruin. It is exquisitely overhung by little trees & I had remarked it
long before I discovered that Gilpin had remarked it before me.
I am correcting Joan of Arc for a new edition.
Get me I beseech you the Welsh Parsons book about the Fairies!