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. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 10–13 [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.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
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It is somewhat late to speak of Christmas & the New Year, – nevertheless I will wish you as many as you may be
capable of enjoying, & the more the better. Winter is passing on mildly with us, & if <it were not for> our miry soil
& bad ways did not I should not wish for pleasanter weather than January has brought with it. Ailments rather than
inclination have led me of late to take regular exercise, which I was wont to think I could do without as well as a Turk: so I take two
or three of the children with me, & giving them leave to call upon me for their daily walk, their eagerness overcomes my
propensities to the chair & the desk. We now go before breakfast, for the sake of getting the first sunshine on the mountains, –
which when the snow is on them is more glorious than at any other season. Yesterday I think I heard the Wild Swan; & this morning
had the finest sight of wild fowl I ever beheld. There was a cloud of them above the lake, xxxxxxx at such a height that
frequently they became invisible; then twinkled into sight again, sometimes spreading like smoke when <as> it ascends,
then contracting as if performing some military evolution, once they formed a perfect bow; & thus wheeling & changing &
rising & falling they continued to sport as long as I could watch them. They were probably wild ducks.
Your godson is determined to be a Poet he says; & I was not a little amused
by his telling me this morning when we came near a hollow tree which has caught his eye lately, & made him ask me sundry questions
about it, – that the first poem which he should make should be about that hollow tree, – I have made some progress in rhyming the Greek
accidents for him, – an easier thing than you would perhaps suppose it to be, Xxxxxxxxx it tickles his humour, & lays
hold of his memory.
This last year has been full of unexpected events, – such indeed as mock all human foresight. The present will bring
with it business of importance at home whatever may happen abroad. I do not think we sent Lord Walpole to the right place,great xxxxx best thing which could possibly be done
would be for Russia to reestablish Poland, – not piece-meal as France has done, – but fairly restoring her own ill-gained portion, –
& claiming the rest for a King of her own appointment – Prince Czartorinskyxxx more willingly when there was no danger of their aggrandizing
Austria by their success.
I was pleased to find in Gascoignes poems that the English Officers spoke of the Dutch then, just as they speak of the
Spaniards now: – & represented Haarlem as a single & insulated proof of patriotism – as Zaragoza has been instanced: there are
the same complaints of them as cold & half-hostile allies, & the same distrust of the issue.xxxx xxxxx deceived, – in their expectations from the Cortes.it is in his life prolonged tho it
should be prolonged to the length of Aurengzebe’s
If Gifford prints what I have written, & lets it pass
unmutilated, you will see in the next Quarterly some remarks upon the moral & political state of the populace, & the
xxx alarming manner in which Jacobinism disappearing from the educated classes has sunk into the mob; – a danger far more
extensive & momentous than is generally admitted.xx a sort of cowardly prudence may
occasion some suppressions, which I should be sorry for. Windhamxx fact that the
favourite song among the people in this little town just now (as I have happened to learn) is upon Parker the Mutineer, it purports to
have been written by his wife, & is in metre & diction just what such a woman would write.Sandwich. Ann Parker had witnessed the execution from a small boat and
later retrieved her husband’s corpse, which she put on public display in Rochester and then London. Magistrates, in fear of public
disorder, intervened and Parker was buried in the vault of St Mary Matefelon, Whitechapel. His widow was still living in 1840,
reportedly blind and impoverished.
What part do you take in the E. Indian question?
Coleridge’s tragedy which Sheridan & Kemble rejected 15 years ago
will come out in about a fortnight at Drury Lane.