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Victoria and Albert Museum, National Art Library Manuscripts, MS Forster 48 D.32 MS 1. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 142–144.
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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I have sent you all that is written of the Curse of Kehama.of <in> a wilder strain. Tell me if your ear is offended with the rhymes when they occur, or if it misses them when
they fail. – I wish it had never been begun, because I like it too well to throw it behind the fire, & not well enough to compleat
it without the ‘go-on’ of some one whose approbation is worth having.
My history as an author is not very honourable to the age in which we live. By giving up my whole time to worthless
work in reviews magazines & newspapers I could thrive; – by giving up half my time to them I contrive to live. In the time thus
employed every year I could certainly produce such a poem as Thalaba,
The will & the power to produce any thing great are not often found together. I wish you would write in English,
because it is a better language than Latin, – & because the disuse of English as a living, & literary language would be the
greatest evil that could befall mankind. It would cost you little labour to write perspicuously, & thus get rid of your only fault.
If you will not write English, – write Latin, & in God’s name get overcome that superstition about Robert Smith.might have has been should overlay you like a night mare.
Literary fame is the only fame of which a wise man ought to be ambitious, because it is the only lasting & living
fame. Bonaparte will be forgotten before his term in purgatory is half over, – or but just remembered as <like>
Nimrodxxx
Your 2 £ has been paid to the subscription for the Grasmere orphans
Farewell. I wish you had purchased Lowes-water instead of Llantony