My dear Grosvenor
Tom & I
expect to be in town together to breakfast on Tuesday
morning, at the Saracens head, Friday Street, Cheapside [1]
Side. I will call at the
Exchequer [2] as near one as I can.
before that time we shall have made our arrangements. Tom expects to
stay in London but a few days. if Burnett will
walk with me I shall eat my dinners [3] & walk off.
Burnett
arrives in town from Yarmouth at the same time with us. if he will not
ramble & you have a bed at Brixton I will buy a
Dutch Grammar & study Jacob Cats. [4] with my present
feelings – it is almost ten o clock & I am tired hand
& foot with walking & reviewing – I should look on
with more satisfaction to reading & translating Dutch
poetry than to wandering over the mountain sublimity of
Switzerland. I want books & quietness – the less fatigue
the better, & the less mental emotion. agitation is
become painful.
I shall bring Madoc with me. 12 books are
written out of 15. [5]
should I be your guest at Brixton it will be the second epic poem that I
shall finish there. [6] I wish to read it to you, if you
can bear the almost improvisatore tone of one to whose
manner of reading you are not accustomed.
Tom is recovered.
I am not – & this is my ill time. however I begin to
sleep well without opiates, & hope to be soon as drowsy
ever as ever at the hour
of owl-rising.
I want to be introduced to Pye – & for
the same reason fancy he would like to be introduced to me,
that we <may> talk about Alfred. [7] never did I go to London with
the prospect of seeing so many friends – yet never did I
leave home with more reluctance. exertion, fatigue,
alteration are hateful to me. my sensations are such that
like certain politicians I think all changes must be needs
for the worse.
Now I have no wish for the fortnights
vacancy but your library every morning & you every
evening. tomorrow I shall think again
of my knapsack & a ramble.
Good night.
yrs – huzza! as sleepily as ever
Robert Southey
Saturday night. 27 Apr.
99.
Notes
* Address: To/ Grosvenor Charles Bedford
Esqr/ Exchequer/ London/
Single
Postmarks: [partial] BR/ AP; B/AP/ 29/
99
Endorsement: 27 April. 1799
MS: Bodleian
Library, MS Eng. Lett. c.
23
Unpublished. BACK
[3] Southey was still – nominally – studying
law. He needed to dine at Gray’s Inn in order to fulfil
the terms of his legal studies. BACK
[4] The Dutch statesman and
poet, Jacob Cats (1577–1660). BACK
[5] Southey completed a fifteen-book version of
Madoc in 1797-1799; the poem was
heavily revised before its publication in 1805. BACK
[6] The first was Joan of Arc, the original
draft of which was completed at the Bedfords’ home in
Brixton in 1793. BACK
[7] The Poet Laureate Henry
James Pye (1745–1813; DNB), whose
Alfred, An Epic Poem in Six Books was
published in 1801. BACK
