The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 1: 1791-1797 A Romantic Circles Electronic Edition Southey, Robert, 1774-1843 Lynda Pratt Romantic Circles General Editor, Neil Fraistat General Editor, Steven E. Jones General Editor, Carl Stahmer Technical Editor Laura Mandell 2009-03-15 rce15 letterEEd.26.15 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD March 15, 2009

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:>

Romantic Circles c/o Professor Neil Fraistat Department of English University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 fraistat@umd.edu

By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions: These texts and images may not be used for any commercial purpose without prior written permission from Romantic Circles. These texts and images may not be re-distributed in any forms other than their current ones.

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.

Houghton Library, bMS Eng 265.1 (33) . Not previously published.

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.

All quotation marks and apostrophes have been changed: " for “," for ”, ' for ‘, and ' for ’.

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.

 NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on 2009-02-26 Architecture Artifacts Bibliography Collection Criticism Letters Drama Life Writing Politics Folklore Ephemera Fiction History Leisure Manuscript Reference Works Humor Education Music nonfiction Paratext Perodical Philosphy Photograph Citation Family Life Poetry Religion Review Visual Art Translation Travel Book History Law Southey Letters: Biographies Southey Letters: Places Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan corrections from proofing Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan TEI Encoding
15. Robert Southey to Thomas Davis Lamb, [c. 18 June 1792] Address: Mr Davis Lamb/ Mrs Cloughs/ Deans Yard/ Westminster Stamped: BATH Postmark: EJU/ 18/ 92 MS: Houghton Library, bMS Eng 265.1 (33) Unpublished. My dear friend

I am selfish enough to be sorry at your preference of travelling to Oxford — & whilst I commend your choice must lament it — to see the manners of different countries is certainly of the utmost utility & what no university can teach — Homer may tell us of the method to cut up an ox three thousand years ago, or give a specimen of Penelopes politesses when she calls her maid bitch — or Ulysses decency when he threatens to leave Thersites in the situation of the man who cut off his hairsIncidents in Homer’s Odyssey, Book 12, lines 352–374; Book 19, line 90; and Iliad, Book 2, lines 211–271. — but Homer can give no information either of men or manners as they are now — knowledge of the world is unattainable from books you have made a judicious choice — your ranking me with your correspondents I take very kindly — as we shall not as I once hoped meet at Oxford it will be some recompense to hear often from you & as you are not (like a certain Monarch who shall be nameless) sparing of time when you write, I shall acquire that information from your letters which in all human probability I never shall from my own experience & observation.

The bloody proceedingA disturbance at Westminster School (see also Letter 18). Copies of the Morning Post from June 1792 have not survived. I have seen no account of in the papers — the Morning Post had a very scurrilous paragraph respecting the general behaviour of the fellows which was answered the following day. one strange circumstance you have neglected to explain — I suppose Combe was there but you do not mentioned his being wounded — now how could Combes nose possibly escape? this I own astonished me for Combes nose is much more conspicuous than Joe CollinsUnidentified, possibly a contemporary at Westminster School. barge. — how much more so than poor Barnes probosis! all that surprizes me besides this of Combe is that the fellow did not murder PurcelUnidentified, possibly an Usher at Westminster School. — for undoubtedly a little killing would have done him good — but instead of that you amused yourselves with dishing the windows & he with dishing the fundamental part of the assailants — had young Wynn been there the shot would not have penetrated that much-enduring place.

I left my deal box full of books — among which were the history of Turkey with those rum figuresProbably Charles Thompson (fl. 1750), Travels through Turkey (1754); the ‘rum figures’ included a sketch of an ‘Egyptian Mummy’. — & Agnes de Cource Agnes de Courci, A Domestic Tale (1789), a reworking of Samuel Richardson (c. 1689–1761; DNB), Clarissa (1748–1749) by Anna Maria Bennett (d. 1808; DNB). — but in all human probability they are gone the way of all paper!

I heard some days ago from your grandfather,Either William Davis (dates unknown) or Thomas Lamb (d. 1804), both ex-Mayors of Rye and important political figures in the town. he sent me an edition of my song with alterations & improvements — your mother he says is recovered of the measles & the children expected to droop daily — this you know later tidings of probably — I sent half a dozen odes to Mountsfield — they were to sent by the bolt in Tun coach & on the direction was wrote to be forwarded by the Rye coach from the bolt in Tun Fleet Street with the day of the month will you mention in your next if you have heard of their arrival — for though is no name to the letter it would not be agreabell to lose them on the road.

I have now two commissions to beg you will execute but both are very soon done — the first is to thump Collins well for never answering my last & if you join his Majesty with you in the execution of it so much the better — the other is to see Scaliger alias Old Donkey alias Mr Grosvenor Bedford [MS torn] request he will write & inclose the portrait of Peter the Ph[MS torn] all his “head of charms”The quotation is unidentified; it might refer to a schoolboy in-joke. as I before desired in a sublime [MS torn] Beau NastyUnidentified; possibly a nickname for a contemporary at Westminster School. wrote to me some time ago — he is with his uncle [MS torn] at Stowe & requested to know when Bedford was to stand in the pillory remember me to Adderley & to Strachey — if he has not forgot me who used to tell him freely of his faults I shall be glad to hear once more from him but as George is as changeable as the wind this I do not expect though I could wish it — I have no other message but a licking to BoswellJames Boswell (1778–1822; DNB), son of Samuel Johnson’s biographer; educated at Westminster School and Brasenose, Oxford (BA 1801, MA 1806). In later life, he was an editor of Shakespeare. & another if agreable by way of remembrance to CrammerUnidentified; probably a fellow pupil at Westminster School. respects to the King.

yours sincerely Robert Southey