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National Art Library, London, MS Forster 48 D.32 MS 17. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 231–232.
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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We concluded our long journey with remarkable good fortune, having in the course of twelve weeks & nearly nine
hundred miles met with only two days of wet weather, & neither let, hindrance, accident or inconvenience of any kind. I was much
pleased with Ludlow Castle, the only ruin of the kind I ever yet saw which bears evident marks that it has formerly been the seat of
comfort. One of my walks was to the Boney Well near Richards Castle, it is one of the wonders of Guthries Grammar, & had
wonderfully impressed my imagination when a boy.
Crossing from Teddesley to Shrewsbury we past thro the iron country near
Wellington. There is something very striking in that sort of Hell above ground, – hills of scoria, an atmosphere of smoke, & huge
black piles, consisting chiefly of chimneys & furnaces, grouped together in what x the finest style of the damnable
picturesque. The things are too mean in themselves ever to be a ever to acquire a sublimity, to whatever
xxxx <magnitude> they may attain, but they have a hideousness which almost produces the same effect. They are more
hideous than horrid, – there should be an obscurity about horror, hid whatever is hideous is definite.
We saw a prodigious work of art of very different character, – the aqueduct over the Dee near Llangollen. It is
little <not> more than half <two thirds> the height of the aqueduct at Lisbon, but the effect is
far more dizzying. At Lisbon you walk between the covered gallery where the water runs, & a parapet wall breast high, so that you
feel your security. The iron rails of the Welsh bridge by giving sight of the depth immediately under your feet, make it an effort of
reason to imagine yourself safe, & the effect of looking across a narrow canal upon a precipice, from which as it
appears nothing but a two inch plank seems to seperate it, gave birth to the ‘toys of desperation’
I have written to Durham & hope it may prove to some effect. The Taylors must so frequently know persons who are in
want of farms & qualified to improve them, that it will be unlucky if this is not the case now.
I have been home a few days, but hardly long enough for me to have fairly settled to my regular employments. I have
however resumed Pelayo,xxx interest increases I
shall get on with more alacrity.