Kingsdown.
Feby 23.
1800.
My dear Wynn
I did not design writing till you should have
reachd Gloucester – but for an unpleasant cause. my income
scroll [1] was given in at Westbury– & as
in moving about I have paid no installment the whole are now
due there. this is a heavier demand than I can answer. with
the Morning Post [2]
I have done – & have drawn too lately upon the
Review [3] for the sake of
supplying one
of my brothers – to be able to apply there. the
booksellers offer about a school-book [4] I, as I told you, rejected –
& am by no means willing to retract my refusal: I think
it better to apply to you. allow me in justification – for I
ought to justify myself – to add that tho illness has
increased my expences & lessened my means – still but
for this debt – which certainly was not contracted by my own
act or will – I should not have felt embarrasment.
God bless you.
yrs affectionately
R. Southey.
When is the proper season to write to Strachey?
Notes
* Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr/ 5. Stone Buildings/ Lincolns Inn/
London
Postmarks: BRISTOL/ FEB 24 1800; FREE/ FEB 25
1800; B/ FEB 25/1800
Endorsement: Feb 23 1800
MS: National Library of Wales, MS
4811D
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Presumably, Southey’s return for the new income
tax. BACK
[2] Southey had stopped writing poetry regularly for the
Morning Post in December 1799. BACK
[3]
Critical Review, for which Southey
had been reviewing books. BACK
[4] For Richard Phillips’s
(1767–1840; DNB) offer; see Robert
Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 20 February
1800, Letter 492. BACK
