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MS untraced; Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850). Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 156–158.
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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The thought of writing to you, – or, rather, the thought that I had not written, – has very often risen in my
conscience heavily. Joanna Southcote has been the cause. Her books, with
Sharp’s dirty treasure,have done a thing than I will
do it, that I really have deferred writing for the sake of saying these books were actually gone.
For the last three weeks I have suffered from a blinding and excoriating catarrh; always with me a very obstinate
disease, and more violent than I have ever seen it in any person except one of my own family. Diseases are the worst things a man can
inherit, and I am never likely to inherit anything else. That father’s brother of
mine in Somersetshire – whom I would so gladly sell at half price received me as cordially as was in his nature last April,
and gave me 251., – an act of great generosity in a man of 1200l. a year, and remarkable as
being all I ever have had, or ever shall have, from him, for he has now turned his
sister out of doors, and desired never to see any of the family again. Duppa, my breeches’ pockets will never be so full as to
make me stick in Heaven’s gate. Three lines of that fellows pen will cut me off from more than all the pens I shall ever wear to the
stump will gain for me, and yet I hope many is the goose egg yet unlaid which is to produce quills for my service.
The Lakers are coming in shoals, and some of them find their way here. Among others, I have had the satisfaction of
seeing Joanna Baillie:
A month ago you might, perhaps, have been gratified by knowing what were my thoughts of the state of Spain; now, I
suppose, everybody thinks alike. But I have always said that, if the deliverance of Europe were to take place in our days, there was no
country in which it was so likely to begin as Spain; and this opinion, whenever I expressed it, was received with wonder, if not with
incredulity. But there is a spirit of patriotism, a glowing and proud remembrance of the past, a generous shame for the present, and a
living hope for the future, both in the Spaniards and Portuguese, which convinced me that the heart of the country was sound, and that
those nations are likely to rise in the scale, perhaps, Duppa, when we are sunk. Not that England will sink yet, but there is more
public virtue in Spain than in any other country under Heaven. I have no fears nor doubts concerning that country; the spirit of
liberty is not to be extinguished: nothing but that spirit could possibly check the progress of Bonaparte; this will check, and, it is
my firm conviction, eventually destroy him. William Bryan