348. Robert Southey to George Dyer, 18 September [1798] ⁠* 

Tuesday. Sep. 18.

My dear Sir

I am very sorry that your Letter should have remained so long unacknowledged. the fact is I have been visiting in Herefordshire & Worcestershire, & amid company, journeying & some employments that follow me every where, I recollected not my unanswered letters at home.

Your proposals are hanging in Cottles shop. [1]  it is unlucky that most of my friends here are yours also; however I mentioned your proposed volumes to some of them who might not perhaps have otherwise known your intention. We will do what we can, if not what we wish. your list has some 8 or 10 names – & it will be some advantage to have a country bookseller in Cottle who will feel a friendly interest in assisting the work.

I am sorry, in considering only my own gratif<ic>ation that your essays are to be delayed. [2]  whenever you take the subject of metre into consideration I shall beg you to weigh the merits of some regular blank stanzas in which I think I have been succesful, & which you perhaps may have seen in the Morning Post without suspecting their author. four lines seem to me the best length for a lyric stanza. I have disposed them thus differently in different odes. you know the Ode to evening [3]  is consist of 10.10.6.6. 10.6.6.10. —. 8.6.6.10. —. 8.8.10.6. — 6.6.10.6. — 6.10.10.6. — 8.6.10.6. —.

In such metres neither the lines or stanzas must run into each other, & the regular harmony must be as perceptible to the ear as to the eye. I have yet other arrangements to try. these odes [4]  (for you see I am again ode-writing) form part of a very extensive work in which I have made some progress. [5]  & will not appear in the volume with the Vision, now going to press. [6] 

If my figure-schemes are not sufficiently comprehensible, tell me so, & I will send a specimen of each. you would perhaps find them useful in your essay on metre, for tho as yet unique, I think they will not always be so

Have you seen a volume of Lyrical Ballads &c? no authors name – but by Coleridge & Wordsworth. [7] 

Allen has written to me from Portugal. he requests me to call on you, & express his sincere thankfulness & attachment. on he also wants some account, which you probably can give me for him, of the expence of taking graduating as M.B. at Cambridge [8]  – as he is of sufficient standing to take that degree there; could get a transfer from Oxford, & would then have the chance of a higher situation with x 25 Shillings a day, in the army.

You perhaps know that Coleridge & Wordsworth are going, or gone, to Germany. [9] 

Edith is much better, she desires to be remembered to you.

I did not see your friend Miss Greenly [10]  in Herefordshire. you have I suppose seen my asinine honours in the Anti Jacobine Magazine. [11] 

God bless you.

yrs very truly

Robert Southey

I hope to see you in November, when I shall be for some few days in town.