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.
. Previously published: Charles Ramos, The Letters of Robert Southey to John May: 1797–1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), pp. 88-89 [dated 12 December 1803]. Dating note: Dated from internal evidence; letter was begun on 7 December and continued on Thursday 8 December 1803.
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 have directed Longman & Rees to send to Tavistock Street (No 4 I think) a copy of Amadis
My articles in the Annual Reviewrs Guthrie. The Life of Lord Walpole. The
Tesoro Español – Ketts Lectures (I forget the exact title of that shallow book) & the Periodical Accounts of the Baptist Mission.
There are sundry smaller articles or less interesting which I cannot call to mind – among them Poetry by the author of Gebir – a French
book on the origin of printing – Memoirs of Le Kain &c.
In this years batch I have found it necessary to chastise ignorance & knavery with a very heavy hand. you will I
think find some good & most just ridicule & some honest indignation in the next volume. I am now upon the history of the
Methodists – & of the Methodist Mission.count score. on the creditor side of my account with Heaven.
––––
Thursday night.
Thus far had I written yesterday immediately on receiving yours. this evening there arrives a letter inclosing a draft
on me for five pounds thirteen drawn by my brother Edward – the letter by the
hand writing comes from some low tradesman – it is dated Exeter & says that Edward informed the writer I was duly advised & requests it may be accepted & returned by return of post. it had been
directed to Bristol. I am very much disturbd & distressed by this circumstance. For what he can have incurred the expence God
knows. & for a boy of fifteen to be taking up money in my name is a thing which must not be permitted. You know as much of his
situation as I do, & if he be at Mr Barhamsjust <of> fifteen. – & I have said to Edward that he ought to know as I would always exert myself to the utmost to serve him & assist him in any worthy
pursuit, so he ought to be sure that I would never become an accomplice in any immoral action by giving my after sanction. this lesson
will teach him that I can act decidedly.
Could I with propriety have detained the draft I should have awaited your advice. as that could not be I think what has
been done is on the whole best – painful as it is. He can have no excuse for what he has done, having without my knowledge &
against my known opinion quitted the situation in which I had placed him.Suffisante.will <can> only frighten him – the
man must take back whatever he has entrusted him with – & deserves some loss for having accepted a draft from a boy. – I thought to
have ended the letter very differently but thus it is I am plagued & thus it will continue to be. It was my Uncles & Mothers fate
before me.