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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. 205–208.
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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There is an “
There are some questions which your brother can answer for me. Are there any of the native race near the Rio? If
any, in what state of freedom, servitude, or slavery, and of what tribes? What does he conceive the proportions to be in the city
of the mixed race and of the negroes to those of European blood? Is the Portuguese language in any degree mingled there with the
Brazilians? for in many parts of Spanish America a mixed language has been found, and in some the native tongue predominates. At
Asçuncion, for instance, many of the Creole women speak nothing but Guarani. This is a curious process going on in the world. Just
as the Latin grew out of the Greek, and our southern tongues out of the wreck of the Latin, just so are there new languages
rapidly forming from the amalgamation of European, negro, and American dialects. The talkee talkee of the
slaves in the sugar islands, as it is called, will prevail at Surinam, and become the language of Guiana. They have a printed
Bible in it already.
The “Register”
I look daily to see “Kehama”
We are going on well. Your god-daughter, Edith May, is grown a great girl, and even Herbert is almost too big for a play-fellow. Bertha is the live doll of the family at present; the infant is as yet only a woman’s plaything, not old enough to be kissed, and too tender to be handled by any but female hands. I hope to see you very early in the spring, and it is our present intention that Edith should accompany me. Remember us to Mrs. May, and believe me