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British Library, Add MS 47890. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), II, pp. 19–22.
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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& has been used for the ampersand sign.
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It is most unusually long since I have heard from you, & I have been in hopes of hearing that your enquiries
concerning the Military Male Asylum
We have had the most unsettled winter I ever remember, – the weather never steady for three days xxxxxx, yet
thank God we have never had so healthy a house for so long a time together. Mr
Edmundson has never made his appearance except as a visitor since we returned from the south, – & we never before were
half so long without standing in need of his assistance. Tom has been
xxxx here for two or three weeks, while his family are at his father-in-laws
I am a good deal interested with a young homo who has found his way to Keswick,
& is lodging at Mr Dares,xxx truths of such infinite utility to mankind it was his bounden duty to disseminate them: so he printed
a little brochure of six pages which he called the Necessity of Atheism,took <observd> the prescription as regularly as if it had been to take three table spoonfuls of julip, no effect
followed, he gave up the course.fr the University. His father then turned him out of doors. The story does not end here. Among the persons whom he
had been anxious to convert was x one of his sisters, a girl of great genius by his account, who was then at school.xxx compleatly
miserable at the prospect of returning. To relieve her distress Shelly
proposed a journey to Scotland, – off they set (she 17) & were married, & here they are now with a sister of hers,xx xx be a very good thing for him, & unless I am very much
deceived he will ripen if he lives into a very valuable man. His father may deprive him of about 6000 a year, but as much more is
entailed upon him, – this is at present a source of some discomfort to him, as he disapproves of entail, primogeniture &c – . To
tell you all the odd things about him would fill a larger sheet than I have allowed myself for the whole letter. I hope he will
continue here till you make us your visit in the summer.
Our crate of crockery from Mrs Rings
I do not know what profit Coleridge has derived from his
lectures, – expect that it has been much less than it would have been if the public had had any reliance upon him, – many persons
having declined subscribing because they expected that he would never go thro the course. But the accounts which have reached me of the
matter & manner of his discourses are as favourable as they could be. I wrote to John Morgan to have them taken down in short-hand:to xx the task & meant when the course was
ended to surprise C. by presenting him with a fair transcript.rs Foot