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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 134–135.
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.
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Your two letters, or rather letter & a half give me enough to answer, enough to think upon, & enough to be sorry for. for translating — I will let no opportunity slip of assisting you; that an opportunity may offer is possible, tho not to be expected as among probabilities, & moreover if you had finished one job you assuredly would never undertake another. Who Grosvenor but a hack horse would run a race with a London printer? needs must go when the Devil drives, dispatch is the condition, & it requires the whole days labour. I should certainly be very glad to get such a months employment as Neckers
Pro lege
You talk of being tantalized with scenes of matrimonial happiness. now Grosvenor tho I replied not to this when you mentioned it in conversation, I heard it & remembered it & reflected upon it with considerable pain. you alledged it as a reason for not coming down. that such feelings will arise I have very often experienced but have always repressed them. Go Grosvenor & study Epictetusx unless you get the better of them they will you make you miserable — & you will deserve to be so.
Last year Charles Danvers was visiting his dearest friend at harvest time. this friend was David Jardine, ple interesting toil & merriment. Three months since David Jardine dropt in his own fields & died instantly. this is the heaviest affliction Danvers has ever endured, & yet his whole life has been but a series <series> of disappointments. But I am now showing you his conduct. he means to go to the first harvest home, that he may subdue the feelings that agonize him whenever he sees a field of corn or a reaper.
My good French Captain goes by the first cartel. this you will be glad of — God bless him wherever he goes. I have a letter from him this morning — he & I are now mutually obliged to each other & I have an acquaintance in Nantes or Brest if I should ever want one.
It is now tea time & I am going to meet a very pleasant & seditious man
as how I stuck in a bog. these things give some interest to a walk morning walk, & an after-dinner account of it, but the in a letter are as flat as the paper they are written on.
I am as happy as the day is long here, & have only one uncomfortable reflection. — that I must go back to town. heigh ho Grosvenor
xxx I have a most cordial hatred for London, it deprives me of half the enjoyments of life xx will perhaps shorten life itself. the little white house — by the by we had a noble thunder storm last night & I determined on having a conductor to it. the cat has eat all your stag horned beetles — I have a strange history of the death of one for Carlisle — & also of a single combat between a large Cock-Roach & a small beetle, to the great glory of the little black prince