Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
British Library, Add MS 30927. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), II, pp. 42–44.
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.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
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.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
I am obliged to you for the compliment which you pay me in your last letter, wherein speaking of your youngest daughter you tell me that every body says she is like me, – that you
thought so when she was born, but <that you> do not see the likeness now, & then you add “she is much improved in beauty
since then.” Sir if you had been writing to Capt McGaw with a face as broad as a broad frying
pan,you would not have given her xx xxxxx the philosophic Captain himself might have thought such a hint broader than either
frying pan or face.
Your writing to the Admiralty can be of no use, & when other application is making is, I should think, rather
likely to be detrimental than otherwise. That Herries will do what he can,
is certain, – because he volunteered his services both now & on the former occasion. As for Canning he is not likely to come into place at all without a total change of Ministry,
& would then most probably resume his former situation.xxx xxxx xxx
may perhaps be done by Croker, soon or late, – by one channel or other, I do
not doubt of getting the step. Meantime read, write, xx enjoy yourself, & leave those who have the watch to look
out.
You must read P. Martirexx refer to him for all the facts xxx in Muñoz
Harry can only mean that Miss Tyler is making a long stay at my Uncles when he says she has taken up her abode there. Tis a common mode of speaking. The thing itself cannot be. My Uncle I am sure would never make such an arrangment.
Thank Sarah for her cheese, which is very good.
You will have learnt the success of Coleridge’s
play.
Yours is the first general report xx concerning Rokeby
The rest of Nelsonxxxx to show him the MS. however he is returned before the proofs are arrived. The fifth sheet of Vol 2. is before me,
which comes down within a page or two, to the surrender of Malta. I am xxx in sight of land, being on the way from the W
Indies after the French fleet. My confidence about the book increases as it proceeds. Your Quarterlies
I am in the eleventh book of Roderickupon the opinion of the few shall become that of the many. The 5th & 10th
books, neither of which you have seen, are among the best things I have written. Perhaps my marketable reputation even now is high
enough for me xx to write verse with as much emolument as prose. I shall try the experiment as soon as my engagements upon
hand are cleared off.
Was ever infatuation equal to that of those persons who are xxxxxxx crying out that we should negotiate with
Buonaparte! with Buonaparte whose authority & xxxxxx life are neither of them worth a weeks purchase! The Catholic
question, I think, is knocked on the head. God be praised. No minister can force it, & its impossibility will reconcile me to
seeing the Wellesleys in administration. There is a great deficiency in the
revenues this year. The consolidated fund nearly a million & half short.
Love to Sarah. Edith acknowledges her debts & her sin, & will ere long show symptoms of amendment. All well, half past eight o clock & a frosty night.