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Keswick Museum and Art Gallery, KESMG 1996.5.56. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 284–287.
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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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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Your prize question seems oddly worded for in the common acceptation of civilization Hindostan is a highly civilized country. Who proposes the question? & to whom is it proposed? if to men of only your standing, it will be your own fault if you do not win it. – Send me the official language of the question – the more I think of it the less intelligible does it appear. if it means how are the Hindoos to be brought to the standard of European civilization, that is, how are they to be converted, I can furnish you with some valuable facts on such a subject, & shall probably in the necessary course of my reading meet with more. The Hindoos can never advance till the system of Casts be destroyed, & that system can only be destroyed by introducing a new religion – in other words by converting them. You should first describe the system & its consequences, then show that the common opinion of the unconvertability of this people is ill founded, because they have heretofore been converted in great numbers, & lastly enquire what is the best method of attempting it. the more of anecdote you can introduce the better, & I can supply some of exceeding importance which it is not likely any of your competition should have met with.
I do beseech you mend your xx uglyography! As a proof how rascally a hand you xxxx <write>
every proper name in the Ballad which you transcribed for the Irisia, Alfonso – Alsinger for Alangner. You use but three characters – one for all those letters
that are of the middle size, another for <all> the tall ones, & the third for all that have tails to them. Whenever you print
a book you will find this unpardonable carelessness considerably expensive. the printers must compose by guess & you will be
obliged to pay for the time spent in correcting their mistakes, perhaps even to doubling the expense <cost>. I believe
no man who ever wrote to any good purpose with a bad hand. the trouble of understanding your own MSS. will seriously impede you if ever
they should multiply – & moreover NB. Mr H. H. H. H. H. I have weak eyes & it better behoves you to mend
them than to make them worse.
Frost spoils potatoes by making them sweet. is there then a formation of sugar? if this have not been investigated it
may be worth while to make some experiments, – to see what quantity of sugar can be obtained from equal quantities of the same root in
its sound state, & when frost-bitten. the modus operandi might involve some important discovery, & it is not impossible but
some useful practical utility might arise from it. perhaps as in malt the sweetness is produced by destroying the life – the
germinating power of the root. It should be tried also upon the more saccharine roots.
I write from Lloyds where we have been some days. the parcel
arrived – I was made pay 5/– 2 carriage – & know not how to detect the imposition, whether at Penrith or Carlisle. – Kenyon
Here I have read Lady Wortleys letterscorrespondence <papers>.s it is quite as worthless as Mrs
Barebalds prefatory prittle-prattle, in other words as bad as bad can be. I pray you look at what that presbytari
presbyterian in petticoats has the modesty to say of Sidneys Arcadia,thats instead
of one which, & asserting a plump lie into the bargain. She calls my Amadis elegant,
We left Johnr Worganr Miller if I had but an
honest chronicler.
I was accurate about the Galatea.Galatea, was a fifth-rate 32-gun frigate, which on 14 August 1804, had made an unsuccessful attempt to cut out the French
privateer General Ernouf (formerly the British sloop of war Lilly) lying at the Saintes
near Guadeloupe. Of the 90 men sent on the mission, 65 were killed or wounded, and Southey suspected that Tom was among the
dead.
As soon as you tell me more about this prize question I will write to you upon the subject, give you all my materials
to think upon, & direct you to the books which may most instruct you. you have no right to calculate that the best essay will win – but you may be sure the most amusing will. It will lead you to old travels, which
are very delightful & very instructive. I am thoroughly acquainted with the subject, not only as my history has led me to it, but
also from the quantity which I have read for the sake of Kehama.