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Huntington Library, RS 134. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 119–121.Dating note: year from JR’s endorsement
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.
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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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Parliament being so soon to assemble, – to the great benefit of franking, & spoiling of newspapers, I suppose that
the Emperor of the Franks may by this be arrived at Westminster, & that
letters may once more travel free as thought. – tho not quite so fast. George I I
believe is somewhere in the way of College Libraries, if you know where, direct to him the accompanying note, the purport of which is
to request that he (a most fit man) will hunt out a passage in an old Lyons, or Leyden, edition of Ptolemy,
Landor (Gebir) x or five weeks.
I will wrap up this in Coleridges Prospectus.wet prospectus wet from the pen to the printer, without consulting any body, or giving himself time for consideration,
& so a day was fixed for the first number appearance of the first number which was impossibly soon. Meantime a hundred
difficulties open upon him in the way of publication, & doubtless some very material change must be made in the plan. I advise half
a crown or five shilling numbers, irregularly whenever they are ready, – but no promised time, no promised quantity, no promised any
thing. The prospectus looks too much like what it pretends to be, talks confidently to the Public about what the public cares not a
curse for – & has about it a sort of unmanly humblefication, which is not sincere, which the very object of
the paper gives the lie to, which may provoke some people, & can conciliate nobody. Yet such as it is I shall augur best of those
persons who expected most from it, such a habit of thinking & such a train of thinking is manifested there.
Have you seen Wordsworths essays in the Courier upon the
Cintra Convention? the second appeared in to nights – that is Friday the 13 – they will be separately published.
When you see or communicate with Arrowsmithupon <about> the map,
I am hard at work transcribing, filling up skeleton chapters, & rewriting one from better materials than were originally before me. My book will be very unlike all other histories, – not, God knows, from any affectation of making it so, but from the very nature of its subject.
Remember me to Mrs R. – We hope her little one may be left to breathe Sussex air this summer, while she accompanies you thus far on the way to Scotland. It will not be easy perhaps to leave one, – but it will be more difficult by & by to leave two, – time therefore should not be lost.
y. 18.
I have seen to night what I never expected to see, – a book of mine advertised with a recommendation from the Anti Jacobin!!!