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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), II, pp. 37–39 [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.
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We shall be very glad to see you my dear Grosvenor if you can come. there is a bed in the house & I am of necessity
an idle man – & can show you all things worth seeing – & get you a dose of the beatifying gas
I have written to Duppa, & asked him some questions about
Italy. Florence or Leghorn are certainly safe. & for the inconvenience of travelling I have the advantage of experience, & know
how best to obviate them. go I must. it is recommended – & tho my malady is not imaginaire, yet is imagination
the cure for it: employment prevents it – it is a disease of association & no way so likely to break the chain as by precipitating
myself into a scene where every thing is new.
Myself I have often thought of the Chancery lineyother way – I would
never stir a finger to increase it in a way to which self gratification was not the immediate motive instead of self-interest. it is
enough for all my wants, & just leaves motive enough not to be idle that I may have to spare for my relations. this Grosvenor I do
feel. practically I know my own wants, & can therefore speculate upon them securely.
Come to Bristol I pray & beseech you. winter as it is (& damned cold – in a parenthesis –) I can show you some
fine scenes, & some pleasant people. You shall see Davy, the young chemist –
the young every thing, the man least ostentatious of first talents that I have ever known, & you may experimentalize if you like –
& arrange my Anthology paperswhen you will come, & when you come get into a hackney coach & tell the man to drive to Kingsdown Parade – to Mrs Roulwrights lodging house – on a line with
the Mountague & not many doors from it.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury
I cannot remember with much pleasure your friend Mrs Smith
Carlisle I like much – very much – but not wholly. out of his profession he
has no depth, – he cannot swim & will yet get into deep waters. besides he is a man of no consistent views, & perhaps of no
consistent feelings. Grosvenor I go calmly to work with my connections – & over-appreciate nobody. all have their faults. for him I
feel neither much affection nor much esteem – but his company always gives me pleasure, & he certainly is not made of common clay.
Perhaps the closest friendships will be found among men of inferior intellect, for such can most compleatly accord with each other.
there is scarcely any man with whom the whole of my being comes in contact, & this with different people I exist another & yet
the same. with Combe for one instance – the school boy feelings revive – I have no
other associations in common with him – with some I am the moral & intellectual agent – with others I partake the daily &
hourly occurrences of life. you & I when we would see alike must put on younger spectacles, whatever is most important in society
appears to us under different points of view. the man in Xenophon blundered when he said he had two souls
y. 1. 1800.
X P.S. Damn the French! – that came heartily from the depths of a Jacobine-heart.