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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 25. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 354–355 [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.
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
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I expected the termination which your letter communicates.xxxxx have <be> prayed for
than thus to fall asleep in ripe old age?
If I were to look round the world & ask myself what man there is in it whom I should miss the most if he were
removed, – you would be the man. Excepting Wynn you are the oldest friend I
have, & with no one has by my communication been so uninterruptedly frequent. For many very many years there has never
occurred a day in which some circumstance or other has not brought you to my mind. Brixton is
perhaps the most important scene of my literary life, – x whenever I arrive at that sort of canonization which Poets as well
as Saints must die before they can attain, y the summer house there (if it be standing) will be given as a vignette to one
of the chapters of my life Memoirs – With the recollections of that time,xxxxx him or valued him more. The only mistake
which Nature made was in not making him a Prince. But his elements were happily mixt, & when a tale touched him there was a look in
his eye which I shall never forget.
A momentary recollection has just brought an April smile