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.
Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 22. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 272–273 [in part].
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.
Thanks be to God I am in England!
Bedford you may conceive the luxury of that ejaculation if you know the miseries of a sea-voyage. even the xxxxx stone who loves nothing & the merchant whose trade-tainted heart loves nothing but wealth, would echo it. judge you with what delight Robert Southey leapt on terra firma.
to night I go to Southampton. tomorrow will past pains become pleasant.
Now Grosvenor is Happiness a Sojourner on Earth? or must Man be cat & ninetaild by Care till he shields himself in a shroud? — my future destiny will not decide the problem. for I find a thousand pleasures & a thousands pains than <of which> nine tenths of the world know nothing of.
to your long letter I shall elaborately reply in verse. you need not read it if you think I am “urging you to a precipice.
Come to Bristol. be with me there as long as you can. I almost add — advise me there — but your advice will come too late.
I am sorry you could ask if you did wrong in showing Wynn my letter. I have not a thought secret from him. even you know not her good sense yet
Come to Bristol. I do not promise you men worthy your friendship for Charles Danvers will not be there. yet you will love Cottle & his oddities & his excellent heart. & you will find a Sister in one who already loves you because you are my friend.
my passage was very good. & I must be the best tempered fellow in Great Britain for the devil a drop of gall is there in my bile-bag.
I intend a hymn to the Dii Penates.
write to me directly & direct to Cottles. I have as yet “where to chuse — my place of rest.”
Lord Somerville
remember me to all friends — & “to all your good family.”
symptoms of cleanliness. our Cook said — I belie[MS torn] God does not take much care of me — for I have not had nor time to wash myself these three days.
symptoms of hunger. I swallowed food of his dressing.
th. 1796
we landed last night at eleven o clock. left Lisbon on Thursday 5th. & were becalmed South of the rock till breakfast time on Saturday so that our passage was remarkably good