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.
Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. d.110 . Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 112–113 [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
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
You cannot think of me more frequently, nor more affectionately than I do of you. These recollections begin to have an
autumnal shade of feeling, & habitually joyous as my spirits are, I believe, that if we were now too meet, my first impulse would
be to burst into tears. I was not twenty when we parted, & one & twenty years have elapsed since that time. Of the men with
whom I lived at Oxford Wynn, Elmsley & yourself are all that are left. Seward is in heaven. Charles Collins is dead, Robert
Allen is dead, Burnett is dead. I have lost sight of all the rest: And
chance that throws strangers in my way by scores every summer, has never yet brought a single person whom I knew at College, except
Douglas, who having succeeded to his patrimony at Kelso, & settled there as a physician, brought a bride here for two days, some
three or four years ago.coul could have landed.
My family continues in number the same as when you heard from me last. I am my sons schoolmaster, & in the process am recovering my Greek, which I had begun to
forget at Balliol. How long I may continue to abide here is uncertain; the first term of my lease will expire in the spring of 1817, –
if I do not go remove then I must remain for another seven years, & I am far too sensible of the insecurity of life to
look beyond that time. Having many inducements to remove nearer London, & many to remain where I am, the trouble & enormous
expense of moving (for I have not less than 5000 books) will very probably turn the scale, – certainly they will weigh heavy in it. It
is not that I have any business in London as Poet Laureate; – that office imposes upon me no such necessity; – it only requires as a
matter of decorum that when I happen to be there I should sometimes attend a Levee, – especially on the birth-day.
Is it impossible for you to give me one whole Midsummer holydays, & to give the boys an additional week that you
may have a clear month to enjoy yourself among these Lakes & Mountains? You would bear away with you recollections which would
always give you pleasure, – for you have never seen any thing like this country, – the finest parts of Devonshire bear no resemblance
to it. The stages are Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester & Kendal, each an easy days journey for one who may not prefer
night-travelling. And a coach daily coach from Kendal arrives in Keswick at twelve
in the noon. – I who think expedition the best economy, have come from Bristol to this house always in 43 hours. Make me a visit –
& I will faithfully return it hereafter.
I have just been reading the Ludus Literarius of my friend Dr Bell,
– happy is the schoolmaster who profits by it, & reforms his school upon the Madras system.quite certain that his system removes 99 parts in 100 of the miseries both of the schoolboys
& the schoolmaster.
My chief literary employment at present is in finishing the History of Brazil, the last volume of which is about half
thro the press.
Thus Lightfoot my life passes, as uniformly & as laboriously as yours, there is one difference in your favour, –
you perhaps look on to an end of your labour, – which I never must do till my right hand forget its cunning. But I am very happy, &
I dare say so are you. The chearful man’s a King,
God bless you my dear Lightfoot. remember me kindly to your wife, & give my love to my God-father
God-daughter.