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Cornell University Library. Previously published: Leslie N. Broughton (ed.), Some Letters of the Wordsworth Family, Now First Published with a Few Unpublished Letters of Coleridge, Southey and Others (Ithaca, NY, 1942), pp. 114–115; Joseph Cottle, Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey (London, 1847), pp. 209–210 [in part].
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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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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& has been used for the ampersand sign.
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Remember us to Gilbert.
On receiving your letter (Thursday last) I went to the Swan, found the box there & requested the Master to send it
as soon as possible. which he promised. that day & the next I vainly expected it, & on the Saturday Mr Peacock sent his man for it. what a vice is the want of punctuality, & what a curse
is expectation! the waggoner reminded me of this reflection, & this reflection reminded me of Rosser — & where are Charles Fox
I have finished Necker
Some Mr T Parks is no fowl-feeder. I read his book it was not above mediocrity; he seems very fond of poetry, &
even to a superstitious reverence for Thomsons old table & that xxxxx Miss Sewardsshowing <displaying> my sentiments, if that display can give
pain — & so I answered his note — & am going to send him the book. He writes sonnets to Miss Seward
When the Bodderation comes, Carlisle & I have resolved
instead of your a Revolutionary Tribunals to erect a Physiognomical
one; & as transportation is to be the punishment instead of guillotining — to put the whole navy in requisition to carry off all
ill-looking fellows — & then we may walk London Streets without being jostled. You are to be one of the Jury. & we must get
some good Limner to take down the evidence. Witnesses xx will be needless — the features of a mans face
will rise up in judgment against him. — & the very voice that pleads “not guilty” will sometimes be enough to convict the
raven-toned criminal.
I think of splitting my Lettersyour doing business
<with> Hazard;
T. Park wanted Coleridges Poemscoarse strength in a countenance. his spirits seem heavily depressed by
the death of the young man whom he had adopted.
this has a coarse strength too — better perhaps than a point.
By Mr Peacocks desire I am going to get some papers printed
with a list of my books, to hang up in the country Booksellers shops, as a cheap & permanent kind of advertisement. he wants some
vignettes to a second edition of the Poems & the book to be six shillings. Alas! how tedious it is to plan books upon paper. half
an hours conversation would say more than half a days writing. plague on Space. how I envy the Monster who dwells beyond it in the
Adamant River! but you are not yet initiated into the mysteries of the Butlerme
us to your sisters &c. — & remember me particularly to William Reid