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. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), II, pp. 355–357.
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
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Williams
The Butler wore a chest of drawers, sometimes a bureau.
Recipe for the Readers of your Book if they cannot see its meaning. Euphrasy & rueZibethum Occidentale, dried & pulverized & blown into the eye, is a sovereign remedy for film, & the medicine
every man can make for himself.
Bedford I will break off all acquaintance with you if you do not publish the Butler.
You shall send it me in Letters & I will return my comments. It is not in my way to help you in your own, for your way is your own exclusively & pre-eminently. But now & then I can perhaps fling in a stroke of politics, & give a seasoning of out-of the way erudition which will make the learned stare.
Hints for the Butlers descent into Hell where he went to learn what was the best way of dressing soles. The
Devil received him in full dress – that is he had put his tail in a bag, & he entertained him with a concert in which every man
played upon his neighbours fistula. Scotchmans corner I believe you know – it is that part of Hell where there is all fire & no
brimstone.
The By the first January send me the first chapter – being the Mythology of the Butler – or else by the Lord I will for ever
more call you Sir when I speak to you & M r
Bedford when I speak of you, – & moreover will always pull off my hat when I meet you in the streets.
I wish I could see the European critique.xx really may be of some importance to me. – By certain phrases you seem to imply that I ought to have
profited by the reviewals of Thalaba,xxx of which
I never xxx <entertained> any thing other feeling than that of a very thorough contempt. If you had them to
refer to you would perceive that they imagine xxxx absurdities in the story which only existed in their misapprehension
<of it>, & that they object to the metre, not upon any principle, not for any defects real or supposed, but merely because it
is not what they had been used to. Saving in the Critical (which Wm Taylor
wrote) there was not a single remark <among them> which originated in thought, or could lead to anything. I perceive also that
the reviewals of Madoc have in a certain degree influenced you, which they will not do if you look at them when they are three months
old, or if you recollect that a review is the opinion of one man upon the work of another, – & that it is not very likely that any
man who reviews a poem of mine should know quite so much of the mechanism of poetry, or should have thought quite so much upon the
nature of poetry as I have done. The Monthlythe opposite to xx the poetry of Madoc <what I have set up against>. I told him Pope was a model for satire, –
that, he said, was a great concession – no, said I, if his stile be a model for satire how can it be for serious narration? & he
did not attempt to hold up his Homer
Don Manuel.perhaps to pass thro the reviews
under cover. Rickman particularly commends the foreign cast of remarks thro the
whole of the journey. thus do Doctors differ. I make blunders sometimes, but am cautious of overdoing it. Do you make more, & if
they do not suit my conception of the Spaniards character they can be omitted or modified.
That wretch Mackas <more> powerful in that peninsula than Charlemagne
Write me the first chapter of the Butler. Once begin – & the whole will be done in six weeks.