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MS untraced; text is taken from John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856). Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 50–52.
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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Your letter has given me very great pleasure. There are few things of which I am more earnestly desirous than that
Henry’s ‘Remains’
Had it not been for my wish to see this preface, I should have replied immediately to your letter, relating to what
you say of unknown persons soliciting a correspondence with you. Upon this subject you speak with thorough good sense.
Letter-writing is a favourite amusement with the young; as men grow older they find less leisure for it, and as they cease to want
employment for idle hours, their inclination for it ceases also. Your correspondents will drop off, not from disappointment at the
letters which they receive, but from this natural cause. Those who were nearly and dearly intimate with Henry, will probably continue to keep up an intercourse with you, as doubtless you
will wish to do with them; to all others, whether they were slightly acquainted with him, or not acquainted at all, you may either
plead the fair excuse of want of time, or exchange a few letters at longer and longer intervals, till they let the example of
stopping short. And this is perhaps the most advisable way; for the interest which these unknown persons feel towards one who had
been a good brother to Henry certainly seems to imply some goodness in themselves,
and it may be that you may find among them some pleasant acquaintance, or even serviceable friend, for yourself or your brother
and sisters. Now though this is such prudent advice that a Scotchman might have given it, do not suppose that I am related to the
family of Mr. Worldly Wiseman,
As for what I have done in editing these ‘Remains’, I cannot express to you the satisfaction it gives me that I obeyed the impulse of my own heart in undertaking that office. Even his own family cannot feel more. One of the MS. volumes I will with great pleasure accept, and place among the choicest treasures of my collection, – and I will not scruple at choosing a large one. Let it, if you please, be that which contains the sonnet addressed to myself, which is among his earliest pieces.
The review will do little harm. The ‘Monthly’ must needs be sore,
I shall see you very shortly. If there be any part of the prefatory account which you would wish altered, it may now be done for the second edition.