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Huntington Library, RS 109. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 448–449.Dating note: Dating from JR’s endorsement; note by E. L. Griggs inserted with MS says JR’s letter of 27 April is a reply to this. Also in this letter RS says he is enclosing a letter for Lightfoot (‘an old fellow collegian of mine, who now keeps a school & is contented with very little’) and this letter is dated 24 April 1807 (see Letter 1310).
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.
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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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What you have heard of Coleridge is true, he is about to
seperate from his wife, & as he chuses to do every thing in a way different
from the rest of the world, is first going with her to visit his relations where however she has long since been introduced. The
seperation is a good thing, – his habits are so murderous of all domestic comfort that I am only surprized xx xxxxx
Mrs C. is not rejoiced at being rid of him. He besots himself with opium, or with
spirits, till his eyes look like a Turks who is half reduced to idiotcy by the practise – he calls up the servants at all hours of the
night to prepare food for him, – he does in short every all things just at the time when it at all times except
the proper time, – does nothing which he ought to do, & every thing which he ought not. His present scheme is to live with Wordsworth – it is from his idolatry of that family that this has begun, –
they have always humoured him in all his follies, – listened to his complaints of his
wife, – & when he has complained of the itch, helped him to scratch, instead of covering him with brimstone ointment,
& shutting him up by himself. Wordsworth & his sister who pride themselves upon having no selfishness, are of all human beings
whom I have ever known the most intensely selfish. The one thing to which W.
would sacrifice all others is his own reputation, concerning which his anxiety is perfectly childish – like a woman of her beauty:
& so he can get Coleridge to talk his own writings over with him,
& critise them & (without amending them) teach him how to do it, – to be in fact the very rain & air & sunshine of his
intellect, he thinks C. is very well employed & this arrangement a
very good one. I myself, as I have told Coleridge, think it highly fit
that the seperation should take place, but by no means so that it should ever have been xxxxxx necessary.
There were but four books in that catalogue you sent me which I wanted – all the others of any value were already in my
possession. Another Catalogue has made me suspect that I have inserted a lie among the Omniana in the Athenaeum (I know not whether you
see this my Scrap & Omnium) – but there is a tale there of a certain Father Domenick Ottoman,& I found it in a history of Isuf
Bassa,
Remember me to Mrs R. In the month of June I hope you will pay your respects to old Skiddaw.
It is fit that the inclosed should be franked – Tis to an old
fellow collegian of mine, who now keeps a school & is contented with very little. I scruple to make him pay postage.