119. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 5 January 1795 ⁠* 

My dear Grosvenor. If I were not very well acquainted with your disposition I should apprehend by your long silence that you were offended with me. in one letter I spoke perhaps too warmly but you know my affections are warm — I was sorry at having so done & wrote to say so. the jolting of a rough cart over rugged roads is very apt to excite tumults in the intestinal canal — even so are the rubs of Fortune prone to create the gizzard-grumblings of temper.

Now if you are not angry with me (& on my soul I believe you & anger to be perfectly heterogeneous) you will write to me very shortly. if you are — why you must remain so for a fortnight — then it is probable I shall pass two days in London on my way to Cambridge — & as one of them will be purely to be with you if I do not remove all cause of complaint you have against Robert Southey — you shall punish him with your everlasting displeasure.

From Horace too I hear nothing. were I on the Allegany mountains or buried in the wilds of Caernarvonshire I could not have less intercourse with you. perhaps you are weaning me like a child!

& now Bedford I shall very shortly see George Strachey. if he be in London or at Trinity. two days in London. one with you, when I shall call on him. the other with some friends of Coleridge [1]  & correspondents of mine — admirable poets & pantisocrats.

how will Strachey receive me? is he alterd? will he be reservd & remember only our difference? or is there still the same goodness of heart in him as when we first met? I feel some little agitation at the thought. Strachey was the first person I ever met with who at all assimilated with my disposition. I was a physiognomist without knowing it — he was my Substance  [2]  — I loved him as a brother once. — perhaps he is infected with politesse — is polite to all & affectionate to none.

Coleridge is a man who has every thing of Bunbury but his vices. he is what Bunbury would have been had he given up that time to study which he consumed you know how lamentably. I will give you a little piece which I wrote & he corrected. twas occasioned by the funeral of a pauper without one person attending it!

I like this little poem, & there are few <of> mine of which I can say that.

Bedford I can sing eight songs. 1. the antique & exhilirating Bacchanalian Back & Sides go bare. 2. the Tragedy of the Minced Pye or the cruel Master Cook. 3. the comical jest of the 1/4 rushlight. 4. the bloody Gardiners Cruelty. [4]  5 — the godly hymn of the seven good joys of the Virgin Mary being a Xmas carol. 6 — the Tragedy of the Beaver Hat — or as newly amended the Brunswic bonnet, containing three apt morals. 7. the quaint jest of the three crows. 8 the life & death of Johnny Bulan. [5] 

now I shall outdo Horace! to him to your father & Mother & Harry remember me particularly. likewise to M^r Deacon.

farewell & believe always

your sincere & affectionate

Robert Southey.

Monday. Jan^y. 5^th. 1795.