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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. 142–143.
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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It is a huge while since I have written to you. I have been an immensity of way since — even to the middle of Warwickshire, the quares why & the propter becauses of which, must be learnt hereafter. the result is that Charles Lloyd is with us at Burton. whose poetry if you have not seen you ought to see, & if you do not like you ought to be — in my scale of crimes & punishments I have not affixed the quantum due to so grievous an enormity.
My Mother is here — in a state
of melioration. eke also my brother Tom, who would request to be remembered to you & Miles,
Wynn says you are to send me my
meat & drink — i-e- Coke upon Lyttleton.
Your birth day is coming on. I shall assumes the old Poetical privilege & give you some good advice in some good blank verse, God willing.
for the lodgings. my mother will not live with me. she will however so often visit me as to make a second bedroom necessary wherever we lodge. I should add that I cannot furnish my own bed room, it were useless to add why — therefore we must be in furnished lodgings — therefore you see we cannot be with you — which I regret — & should still more so, if you did not seem already induced by circumstances to find town lodgings more burthensome than convenient.
As for the Law I will give you my advice fairly in few words —
give it up. you never will make any thing of it. you want resolution, &
you do not want support. a half-hearted man can never succeed in any-thing.
whatever we would do well, we must do with all our hearts & with all our
strength. the study of law you would also find irksome. you would xxx have little time & less inclination,
& no compulsive necessity to make you swallow the dose patiently. give
it up at once. shew Wynn this. I
know he wishes you to persevere — but you may convince him that you have no
perseverance.
God bless you Grosvenor. I expect my large paper copies daily — & shall ship off a cargo consigned to you.
Remember me to Horace. I will write to him soon — & ought to have done so before.
Remember me to Carlisle. does he know that crabs have the power of throwing off their claws when so broken as to be unmendable?