Monday. Midsummer day.
1799
My dear Wynn
I seize a leisure minute & a disfurnished
<room> room or what
the Dutch would call an ungemeubeleerde kamer, [1] to write to you. we are in
all the bustle of quitting house, I go the latter end of the
week to Burton to see
the place which has been taken for us there &
superintend the necessary alterations. it will not I suppose
be quite a palace, for the rent is to be 8 guineas. but I
expect to make it thoroughly comfortable.
I had neglected to write so long that the
very recollection has half kept me silent. since my return
my health has continued better. My poems (the first volume)
are again going to Press. [2] you were to point
out alterations in the Hymn to the Penates. I think of
removing the two odes on New Years Day & December,
because they will make a part of the Kalendar [3] hereafter, & in their place
inserting the Retrospect cut down to half its present
length. I wish Donica could be mended − it is a very fine
story & I have made a very indifferent ballad of it.
Mary too does not half please me. there is an Irish word in
the last stanza which has annoyed me when ever I have
remembered it − engages the eye. [4] − Of the
other Poems the best need no correction, & the worst
deserve none.
think of the Penates will you & propose
your corrections − in the mean time receive this as an
apology, & a promise of a longer & leisure
letter.
God bless you.
yrs truly.
R Southey.
Notes
* Address: To/ CWW Wynn Esqr/ 5 Stone Buildings/ Lincolns Inn/
London
Postmarks: BRISTOL JUN 25 99; FREE JU 26 99;
B/ JU 26/ 99
Endorsement: June 25/ 99
MS:
National Library of Wales, MS 4811D
Previously
published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections
from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols
(London, 1856), I, p. 73. BACK
[1] The Dutch translates as
‘unfurnished room’. BACK
[2] A third edition of Southey’s 1797
collection Poems. The poems mentioned in
the rest of the paragraph had all appeared in the first
and second editions, both published in 1797. The third
edition appeared later in 1799. BACK
[3] Southey’s planned – but
unexecuted – project for a series of poems based on the
calendar. BACK
[4] Southey did not carry
out any of these proposed changes to the third edition
of his Poems (1797). BACK
