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MS untraced; text is taken from Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850). Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 5–7.
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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Many happy new years to you, and may those which are to come
prove more favourable to you in worldly concerns than those which are past! I
have been somewhat unwell this Christmas; first with a cold, then with a sudden
and unaccountable sickness, which, however, has not returned, and I now hope I
have been physicked into tolerable order. The young ones are going on well:
little Isabel thrives, your god-daughter is
old enough to figure at a Christmas dance, and Herbert will very soon be perfect
in the regular Greek verb. A Testament is to come for him in my next parcel, and
we shall begin upon it as soon as it arrives. No child ever promised better,
morally and intellectually. He is very quick of comprehension, retentive,
observant, diligent, and as fond of a book and as impatient of idleness as I am.
Would that I were as well satisfied with his bodily health; but in spite of
activity and bodily hilarity, he is pale and puny: just that kind of child of
whom old women would say that he is too clever to live. Old women’s notions are
not often so well founded as this; and having this apprehension before my eyes,
the uncertainty of human happiness never comes home to my heart so deeply as
when I look at him. God’s will be done! I must sow the seed as carefully as if I
were sure that the harvest would ripen. My two others are the most perfect
contrast you ever saw. Bertha,
whom I call Queen Henry the Eighth, from her likeness to King Bluebeard,
I shall have two interesting chapters in this volume for 1811,
upon Sicily and S. America.indigesta moles of Mr. Walpole’s papers.