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 rce213 letterEEd.26.213 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.

British Library, Add MS 30,927. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 309–311 [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.

 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
213. Robert Southey to Thomas Southey [brother], 28 April 1797 Address: For/ Mr Thomas Southey/ Phœbe Frigate/ Plymouth/ SinglePostmarks: Penny Post/ Pd Id/ NewingnCause; AP/ 29/ 97MS: British Library, Add MS 30,927Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 309–311 [in part]. Friday April 28th. 1797. My dear Thomas

I have been regretting that you were not at Portsmouth in the great insurrection,The naval mutinies at Nore and Spithead of April–June 1797. that I might have had a full true & particular account of that extraordinary business; a business at which every body is astonished, for how such a body of such people could so have concerted & carried into execution a well organized mutiny is incomprehensible. where its effects will end too — is difficult to guess; for as all authority depends upon the opinion the governed entertain of the power of the governors, when they discover that the power is in their own hands, the very foundation of gov xx subordination, & consequently of authority must be shaken.

As I have no business in London (except indeed to dine at Grays Inn once at the latter end of June) till November, we intend spending the summer & autumn somewhere by the sea. where is not yet determined, but most probably somewhere in Hampshire & this you will learn from my Mother. we go about the middle of May — & it will shorten your journey to see us. London is a place for which I entertain a most hearty hatred, & Edith likes it as little as myself — & as for the sea — I like it very much when on shore.

I had a letter from Lisbon yesterday. my Uncles family has been very unfortunate. his poor old woman is dead, & so is his dog Linda. his mare who was lame he had given away to be turned into the woods — she has not been seen lately — & he thinks the wolves have eat her. twas an account that made me melancholy — I had been long enough an inhabitant of his house to become attached to every thing connected with it — & poor old UrsulaA servant in Herbert Hill’s household at Lisbon. was an excellent woman. he will never find her equal: — & I shall never think of Lisbon again without some feelings of regret. my letter was from my friend Thomas, now an inmate of my Uncles. I have learnt from other quarters that my Uncle is made Chaplain to our troops there.

My acquaintance here are more than are convenient — & I meet with invitations unpleasant to refuse & still more unpleasant to accept. this is another motive to me to wish for a country residence as long as possible. I find the distances in this foul city very inconvenient — tis a mornings work to call upon a distant friend — & I return from it thoroughly fatigued. We are going to dine on Wednesday next with Mary Wollstonecraft, of all the literary characters the one I most admire. my curiosity is fully satisfied, & the greater part of these people after that wish is satisfied leave no other remaining. this is not the case with her — she is a first rate woman — sensible of her own worth, but altogether without arrogance or affectation.

I have two reasons for preferring a residence near the sea. I love to pickle myself in that grand brine tub — & I wish to catch its morning evening & mid day appearances for poetry, with the effect of every change of weather. fancy will do much — but the Poet ought to be an accurate observer of nature — & I [MS torn] shall watch the clouds & the rising & setting sun & [MS torn] the sea birds with no inattentive eye. I have remedied one of my deficiencies too since a boy — & learnt to swim enough to like the exercise. this I began at Oxford & practised a good deal in the summer of 1795 at Baptist Mills.The River Frome ran through Baptist-Mills, an area on the edge of eighteenth-century Bristol. my last dip was in the Atlantic Ocean at the foot of the Arrabida MountainSee Southey’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (Bristol, 1797), pp. 470–472. — a glorious spot. I have no idea of sublimity exceeding it. I would wish my destiny fixed to settle ultimately in England. a fickle climate — & a system of increasing oppression pleads strongly against it to one who loves liberty & warm weather — & as for patriotism — the days are past when an Englishman could be proud of his country. that country is the best to live in where government will least molest us — but in your advanced states civilization leads to taxes & requisitions & militia bills xx world without end, Amen! — have you ever met with Mary Wollstonecrafts letters from Sweden & Norway?Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796). she has made me in love with a cold climate & frost & snow, with a Northern moonlight. — Now I am turned Lawyer I shall have no more books to send you — except indeed second editions when they are called for — & then my alterations will be enough as perhaps to give one, interested in the Author, some pleasure in the comparison. God bless you. Ediths love. we shall be here till the middle of May — after that time my Mother will tell you where we are if I should have no opportunity.

Grosvenor Bedford desires to be remembered to you

yrs affectionately Robert SoutheyRobert Southey: Written at the top of fol. 1 r.