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 rce229 letterEEd.26.229 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.

Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. 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
229. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [c. 30 June 1797] Address: Grosvenor Charles Bedford/ New Palace Yard/ WestminsterStamped: RINGWOODPostmark: AJU/ 30/ 97Watermark: Crown and anchor with G R underneathEndorsements: 29 June 1797; Recd June 30. 1797MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23Unpublished. My dear Grosvenor

Will you be good enough to buy for me the two three following books at Whites — Fleet Street.Probably the London booksellers B. and J. White, who had a shop in Fleet Street. they are in his catalogue for 1796 — & probably still unsold as not being in general requisition.

No. 1930. St Louis & Oeuvres Poetiques de la Moyne.Pierre Le Moyne (1602–1672), author of the epic poem St Louis (1653) and Les Oeuvres Poetiques (1671). Southey owned a copy of the latter; see A. N. L. Munby (gen. ed.), Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons, vol. 9 Poets and Men of Letters, ed. Roy Park (London, 1974), p. 178. s7 — 6 9908. Il Conquisto di Granata, di Graziani.An unidentified edition of Girolamo Graziani (1604–1675), Il Conquisto di Granata (1650). s2 — 6 4325. Guerra de Granada contra los Moriscos. por D. Diego de Mendoza.Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503–1575), Guerra de Granada: Hecha por El Rey de España Don Felipe II, Nuestro Señor, Contra los Moriscos de Aguel Reyno, Sus Rebeldes ; Historia Escrita en Quatro Libros (1674). Southey owned a copy; see A. N. L. Munby (gen. ed.), Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons, vol. 9 Poets and Men of Letters, ed. Roy Park (London, 1974), p. 266. s10 — d6.

you or your brother have my direction — & if you will send them by the Poole Mail which goes from the Bell & Crown — Holborn — near Grays Inn — they will reach me safely. & you & your brother may write by the parcel. when the Member for Old Sarum takes his seat we shall a different mode of franking.

It is no small proof of self denial Grosvenor that I am now writing to you. I received yesterday Chapelains Pucelle from John May — & have as yet read only five books of the twelve. I will not make any remarks upon it. I shall draw out such an account of it as I have done of La Hermosura de AngelicaSouthey’s analysis of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1562–1635), La Hermosura de Angelica (1602) was published in Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (Bristol, 1797), pp. 131–66. & prefix to the next edition of my Joan of Arc, Southey’s analysis of Jean Chapelain (1595–1674), La Pucelle ou la France Délivrée (1656) was published in Joan of Arc, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Bristol, 1798), I, pp. 23–79. for which I shall now prepare without farther delay. I would not begin before I had read Chapelain. it was probable that many historical facts might be found in him which had escaped me, born 150 years after the publication of his book in a foreign country. this I do not find the case. but you shall see my Analysis & extracts & judge for yourself of the merits of Chapelain. he has no x notes. an inexcusable fault.

I called on the old Lady StrathmoreMary Eleanor Bowes (1749–1800; DNB), heiress, botanist and author of a five act play, The Siege of Jerusalem (1769). Her first husband was John Lyon (1737–1776), 9th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, her second the fortune-hunter Andrew Robinson Stoney (1747–1810). In 1789, her abusive marriage to Stoney ended in an acrimonious and scandalous divorce. Tuesday last. the old woman is not that learned lady she is imagined. she sets up for a good Spanish & Italian scholar, & has gained credit for it — I am told she speaks both languages fluently — but of the literature of either people she knows very little indeed — your boarding school picks up as much from her Italian Master. her house is finely situated & looks over a fine sweep of land & water richly intermingled.

I slept little in the Mail — tis too rough a cradle to be rocked in. my walk from Ringwood was 8 miles — a long way for one with stiff knees swoln feet & blistered heels. every thing here is very quiet — I am very happy — & want only time. if I could but study Law while I am asleep now — oh for some blessed Mail Coach way of travelling that blackguard road! — however I know something about it now — & perhaps ten years hence Grosvenor — we may throw some little light upon the Law. — you know how we will officiate in our robes at the sacrifice — & then burn them too.

Still foul weather — I love England daily less & less. Eutopia must have a better climate Grosvenor — & we must drink Claret from our own vineyards in our own orange gardens. but when! —

I thought to have written to Horace this morning but Biddlecombe has been with me thi delayed yours & left no time. I shall write to him tomorrow. tell him this & tell him likewise to write that his letter may come with the books.

Danvers has seen Kosciusko.The Polish patriot Thaddeus Kosciusko (1746–1817), who visited Bristol on 13 June 1797 on his way to America. He was greeted by local dignitaries and his departure from the port was a great public event. he called upon him — & Kosciusko appeared highly gratified with the visit — he was drawing & observed “you spend time & I endeavour to kill it!” Sam ReedSam Reed (dates unknown), a Bristol bookseller. went with Danvers. when they took leave of him he seemd affected & loth to part with them pressing them by the hand with no common earnestness. you know not how I envy them this.

God bless you Grosvenor.

Yrs affectionately Robert Southey.