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<title type="main">The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 1: 1791-1797 </title>
<title type="subordinate">A Romantic Circles Electronic Edition</title>
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<name>Southey, Robert, 1774-1843</name>
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<editor>Lynda Pratt</editor>
<sponsor>Romantic Circles</sponsor>
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<resp>General Editor, </resp>
<name>Neil Fraistat</name>
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<resp>General Editor, </resp>
<name>Steven E. Jones</name>
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<resp>General Editor, </resp>
<name>Carl Stahmer</name>
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<resp>Technical Editor</resp>
<name>Laura Mandell</name>
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<date>2009-03-15</date>
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<idno type="nines">rce14</idno>
<idno type="edition">letterEEd.26.14</idno>
<publisher>Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland</publisher>
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<date when="2009-02-20">March 15, 2009</date>
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<p>MS untraced; text is taken from Warter .  Previously  published: John Wood Warter, Selections From the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 8–10. Warter, I, p. [1] n. * implies that his text was taken not from the original MS but from a set of ‘copies’ of Southey’s letters to Lamb that ‘came into my possession amongst the MSS. of the late Mrs. Southey [ie. Caroline Bowles]’. Although many of the inherited MSS are now in the British Library, these papers are not included. Dating note: The letter is dated from internal references to warm weather and to pheasant, partridge and hare being out of season, which places it before 1 September. Southey’s mention of ‘three brace of fine odes’ tallies with a reference in a letter to Thomas Davis Lamb [c. 18 June 1792] (see Letter 15), in which Southey asks if the odes he has sent to the Lamb family have arrived yet.</p>
<p>These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<div n="14" type="letter">
<head>14. Robert Southey to <ref target="people.html#LambThomasPhillipps">Thomas Phillipps Lamb</ref>
<date when="1792-06-15">[c. mid June 1792]</date>
<note place="foot" resp="editors" type="headnote">MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Warter<lb/> Previously published: John Wood Warter, <title level="m">Selections From the Letters of Robert Southey</title>, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 8–10. Warter, I, p. [1] n. * implies that his text was taken not from the original MS but from a set of ‘copies’ of Southey’s letters to Lamb that ‘came into my possession amongst the MSS. of the late Mrs. Southey [ie. Caroline Bowles]’. Although many of the inherited MSS are now in the British Library, these papers are not included. <lb/>Dating note: The letter is dated from internal references to warm weather and to pheasant, partridge and hare being out of season, which places it before 1 September. Southey’s mention of ‘three brace of fine odes’ tallies with a reference in a letter to Thomas Davis Lamb [c. 18 June 1792] (see Letter 15), in which Southey asks if the odes he has sent to the Lamb family have arrived yet.</note>
</head>
<lb/>
<opener>
<dateline rend="right">
<address>
<placeName>Bristol,</placeName>
</address>
<date when="1792">1792.</date>
</dateline>
</opener>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">Over hills, towns, and valleys, go, letter, and fly</l>
<l rend="indent2">To my <ref target="people.html#LambThomasPhillipps">good host and friend</ref> at the old town of <ref target="places.html#MountsfieldRye">Rye</ref>,</l>
<l rend="indent2">Where some noble fat sheep, to one acre nineteen,</l>
<l rend="indent2">In vain looking round for more pasture are seen;</l>
<l rend="indent2">Where with Squirrel, two fine Guinea horses are tied,</l>
<l rend="indent2">And corruption is rattling in Frisky’s inside:</l>
<l rend="indent2">There stop, for your journey must there find an end,</l>
<l rend="indent2">And give my best thanks to my very best friend.</l>
</lg>
<lb/>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">Pheasant, partridge, and hare are all now out of season,</l>
<l rend="indent2">And you know, my dear sir, I could never write reason.</l>
<l rend="indent2">But reason, like brandy, will soften in time,</l>
<l rend="indent2">And so, stead of reason, I send you some rhyme.</l>
<l rend="indent2">Three brace of fine odes on your worship attend,</l>
<l rend="indent2">For you cannot want game, and I cannot send —</l>
<l rend="indent2">Besides, the warm weather, and very long roads;</l>
<l rend="indent2">And game would not keep half so well as my odes.</l>
</lg>
<lb/>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">I own I am vain; but permit me to say</l>
<l rend="indent2">I ride Pegasus better by half than the Gray.</l>
<l rend="indent2">No matter to me if I get up behind,</l>
<l rend="indent2">On we go, wild and lawless, and rough as the wind,</l>
<l rend="indent2">Till reason and friendship in vain would restrain,</l>
<l rend="indent2">When madness and vanity loosen the rein.</l>
<l rend="indent2">Over rods, wigs, and doctors like furies we ride,<note n="1" place="foot" resp="editors">A reference to Southey’s continued anger at his expulsion from Westminster School in 1792 for authorship of an essay, published in fifth edition of <title level="j">The Flagellant</title> (29 March 1792), which claimed flogging was an invention of the devil and parodied the Athanasian creed.</note>
</l>
<l rend="indent2">For needs he must go whom the Devil will guide;</l>
<l rend="indent2">Till anathemas meeting, we fall at the end,</l>
<l rend="indent2">I pull in pretty sharply, and slowly descend.</l>
<l rend="indent2">The horrible mischief and uproar I find,</l>
<l rend="indent2">And repentance and reason come lagging behind.</l>
</lg>
<lb/>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">May all Doctor Slops<note n="2" place="foot" resp="editors">Doctor Slop, a character in Laurence Sterne (1713–1768; <title level="m">DNB</title>), <title level="m">The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman</title> (1759–1767).</note> curse the rude critic goad</l>
<l rend="indent2">Who shall dare to find fault with my wonderful ode!</l>
<l rend="indent2">Come tooth-ache and gout, come combine all your pains</l>
<l rend="indent2">In his head, stomach, feet, body, bowels, and brains.</l>
<l rend="indent2">May horrors rheumatic the criminal seize,</l>
<l rend="indent2">In his head, in his feet, in his hams, in his knees, — </l>
<l rend="indent2">Of breakfast, or supper, or dinner partaking,</l>
<l rend="indent2">Or walking or riding, or sleeping or waking!</l>
<l rend="indent2">May the scab seize his sheep, and the murrain his kine,</l>
<l rend="indent2">And all his old hock turn to bitter bark wine</l>
<l rend="indent2">Unfriended, unpitied, let him howl, rage, and moan,</l>
<l rend="indent2">Till like Obadiah<note n="3" place="foot" resp="editors">In Laurence Sterne, <title level="m">The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman</title> (1759–1767), Obadiah is the servant of Tristram’s father, Walter Shandy.</note> repentance atone.</l>
</lg>
<lb/>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">Sure dulness may fence them like armour of steel,</l>
<l rend="indent2">For Smedley<note n="4" place="foot" resp="editors">Jonathan Smedley (1670/71–1729; <title level="m">DNB</title>), Irish whig clergyman, satirised by Alexander Pope (1688–1744; <title level="m">DNB</title>) in <title level="m">The Dunciad</title> (1743), Book 2.</note> the sharp shafts of Pope could not feel.</l>
<l rend="indent2">In vain all his shafts might the angry bard hurl,</l>
<l rend="indent2">While sense shielded Bentley,<note n="5" place="foot" resp="editors">Richard Bentley (1662–1742; <title level="m">DNB</title>), philologist and classical scholar, attacked in Alexander Pope, <title level="m">The Dunciad</title> (1743).</note> and impudence Curl.<note n="6" place="foot" resp="editors">Edmund Curll (d. 1747; <title level="m">DNB</title>), bookseller and butt of Alexander Pope’s satire in <title level="m">The Dunciad</title> (1743).</note>
</l>
</lg>
<lb/>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">To reason and mercy, let critics attend,</l>
<l rend="indent2">But never find fault if they cannot amend.</l>
<l rend="indent2">You complain of the bells at Portslade, dingdong spot,</l>
<l rend="indent2">But talk of amending! who’ll listen to that?</l>
</lg>
<lb/>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">Full plenty of compliments I send to you,</l>
<l rend="indent2">And I hope you will give them, sir, where they are due.</l>
<l rend="indent2">May I beg you will write on receipt, and pray tell</l>
<l rend="indent2">If the sheep and the corporal<note n="7" place="foot" resp="editors">In Laurence Sterne, <title level="m">The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman</title> (1759–1767), Corporal Trim is the manservant of Tristram’s Uncle Toby.</note> both are quite well,</l>
<l rend="indent2">If Mr. Matthews prevailed on his lady to call,</l>
<l rend="indent2">And if poor Obadiah got well of his fall.</l>
</lg>
<lb/>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">Some account, too, pray send if hostilities stop,</l>
<l rend="indent2">Or if Widow Wadman<note n="8" place="foot" resp="editors">In Laurence Sterne, <title level="m">The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman</title> (1759–1767), Widow Wadman is the object of Uncle Toby’s affections.</note> has won Doctor Slop.</l>
<l rend="indent2">And I beg my best wishes and hopes you’ll express</l>
<l rend="indent2">To commend the King Harold to care of Queen Bess.</l>
</lg>
<lb/>
<lg type="stanza">
<l rend="indent2">I heard lately from <ref target="people.html#LambThomasDavis">Tom</ref>; he was then very well.</l>
<l rend="indent2">And so, my dear sir, I will bid you farewell.</l>
</lg>
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