683. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [c. 21 June 1802] ⁠* 

Dear Wynn

In reply to your first letter – the statement of M^rs James’s circumstances is this. her four sons were drowned during the Easter week in our channel. from one of these she received 30 £ a year, of which his death deprives her & she has nothing. the subscription is set on foot to purchase her an annuity to that amount. 160 guineas have been raised here – I collected twelve in London – you mention eight more. She is 62 & it is expected from the nature of the case that 14 per cent may be procured. [1] 

I have begun to transcribe the Cid [2]  for you, & that you may have it in a portable form, in the size of Thalaba. [3]  besides I thought, as it will be so long before it can be printed you would like to have the manuscript as a preservable volume & in this shape what with notes & margin it will reach a hundred pages.

Miss Anna Sewards criticism I had not heard of till from you. [4]  I suspect she resents upon me some remarks made by Coleridge on her sonnets. [5]  howbeit her vituperative poems was qualified with abundant praise. [6]  this sugar & gall is a queer mixture – so damned sweet – & so damned bitter. what this <may be> I am not over anxious to see. the publication [7]  itself prevented Tobin from collecting a third Anthology [8]  for which I might else have manufactured sundry Ballads – but that threatened to strip the newspapers – & mine it was not worth while that I should write unless certain “remuneration” as the Don in the play calls it, [9]  came from the Morning Post. [10]  New-River [11]  water is not to be had gratis – & shall not Helicon [12]  be marketed? – These good people little think that the Jacobine Poet does nothing but collate chronicles, read Seraphic History, & hunt the search in the dunghills of monastic biography.

You shall receive the diabolana in my next. [13]  I find a wide difference between the quiet of our situation here & the eternal interruptions in London from some of my thousand & one acquaintance. & yet there are some half-dozen whom I wish & want to be within reach. I have begun the tenth Kings reign [14]  – which by the by will be nearly as long in my book as the other nine – for it is where the glorious period of Portugal begins. Now & then I do a little to Madoc [15]  – or to Kehama [16]  – it is but little, but when I get to some interesting point I shall gallop over the ground. Amadis [17]  takes me two hours daily which would be drudgery if I did not like the book so well. you cannot conceive how vile the English version is, [18]  all the little traits of manners are dropt – the language every where vulgarized, & forge indecencies of thought & feeling as well as language introduced for which no hint is given in the Spanish. I wish you would bring the French copy [19]  of the first book with you on the next circuit. it would gratify me to see how much of this is Frenchmans work.

From Corry I have a sort of half information which makes me more anxious for the whole. Rickman has written a letter to me which has now been lying at Corrys a fortnight for his approbation. x he was to read frank & dispatch it. there it lies still – & by an after letter from R. I only learn that it allows me a free choice to continue with him or not about further connection with him. yet it seems R think I shall not have any further connection – because I had talked to him of fixing near London in case it was broken off, & he says he is glad pleased to think I shall settle in that neighbourhood. this puzzles me if the free choice be mine – who does not chuse a sinecure?

Where is Elmsley? I suppose in Scotland. do you know his direction?

God bless you –

yrs R S.