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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 22. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 254–257 [in part].
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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Grosvenor! what should that necromancer deserve who would transpose our souls for half an hour, & make each the inhabitant of the others tenement? there are so many curious avenues in mine, & so many closets in yours of which you have never sent me the key.
here I am — in a huge & handsome mansion — not a finer room in the county of Cornwall than the one in which I write
— & yet have I been silent — & retird into the secret cell of my own heart. this day week Bedford! there is a something in the bare name that
is now mine, that wakens sentiments I know not to describe. never did man stand at the altar with such strange feelings as I
did. can you Grosvenor by any effort of imagination shadow out my
emotions — days before my departure — when I felt her tears trickle down my cheek? yet Edith did not shed a tear when I left her. she returned the pressure of my hand — & we parted in silence. — zounds what
have I do with supper!
Saturday.
I am writing for two reasons. one to escape church the other because to write to a dear friend is to me like escaping
from prison. Grosvenor — my xxx
<mind> is confined here. there is no point of similarity between my present companions & myself. but “if I have freedom in
&c”
this is a foul country. the tinners inhabit the most agreable part of it becaus for
they live underground. above it is most dreary — desolate. my Sans Culottes most dull & sullenly silent fellow. such effects has place!
I wonder what Mr Hoblynhe has seen my poems in the
B Critic — he mentiond that he had seen my poems in the B Critic.
my Joan of Arc must by this time be printed. the first of next month it comes out. to me it looks like something that has concerned me, but from which my mind is now compleatly disengaged. the sight of pen & ink reminds me of it. you will little like some parts of it, for me I am now satisfied with the poem — & care little for its success.
You suppd upon Godwin & oysters with Carlisle. have you then read Godwin & that with attention? give me your thoughts upon his book — for faulty & false as it is in many parts — there
is a mass of truth in it that must make every man think. Godwin as a man is very
contemptable. I am afraid that most public characters will[MS torn] ill endure examination in their private lives — to venture upon so
large a theatre, much vanity is necessary — & vanity is the bane of virtue. tis a foul Upas tree & no healing herb but withers
beneath its shade. — what then had I to do with publishing? this Grosvenor is a question to which I can give myself no self-satisfying solution. for my Joan of Arc then is an obvious reason.
here I stand acquitted of any thing like vanity or presumption. Grosvenor what motive created the F.?
they are gone to church. — the children in the next room are talking — a harpsichord not far distant annoys me
grievously. but then there are a large company of rooks — & their croak is always in unison with mine. What is going on in my
thorax? I have a most foul pain suddenly seizd me there. Grosvenor —
if a man could but make pills of philosophy for the mind! but there is only one pill kind of pill that
will cure mental disorders — & a man must be labouring under the worst before he can use that.
What says Wynn to politics. to this Bill & the measure taken
by the D. Bedford &c to oppose it.