743. Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle,
19 December 1802
*
Dear Cottle
Hearing from your sister [1] that you will be
here next week I write to beg you will bring with you
Smiths [2] copy of
Rowley [3]
xxxxxxx, which I left with
the other Chattertoniana. You will probably bring the
Chatterton [4] also for I suppose
it must be ready. I shall be obliged to you also for the
sheets of Amadis [5] that are printed. My eyes have been so
weak that I have lost a full month & was not sorry Mr Biggs travelled so slowly on his part.
now I trust they are recovered, & once more I am escaped
the curse of idleness.
I shall have something to shew you when we
meet. Amadis takes up too much of my time – I made my
agreement without the documents – stipulating to abridge
English – & have found it necessary to use black letter
Spanish instead. thus has the job altered from what any body
could have done, to what scarcely any one but myself can do.
I have history [6] to
shew you. some little Madoc [7] – & part of another romance, [8] building upon the base
of Hindoo belief. we are all tolerably well – Madam
Margaret grows bravely & sprawls so like a
frog that I verily think she could swim.
farewell –
God bless you
yrs affectionately
R Southey.
Sunday 19 Dec. 1802.
Notes
* Address: To/
Mr Cottle/ Crane Court/ Fleet
Street/ London/ Single
Postmark: B/ DEC 20/
1802
Watermark: crown with initials
KG
Endorsements: Decr 1802; 167
67
MS: Berg Collection, New
York Public Library
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Joseph Cottle had three
living sisters in 1800: Mary (c. 1772-1839), Ann (c.
1780-1855) and Sarah (d. 1834). BACK
[2] Possibly
Thomas Woodroffe Smith (c. 1747-1811), a wealthy Quaker
merchant, who lived at Stockwell Park, Surrey, near the
Bedfords. In 1789 he married, as his second wife, Anne
Reynolds (dates unknown) of Carshalton. BACK
[3] Probably
Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-1786; DNB),
Poems, Supposed to have been Written at
Bristol, by Thomas Rowley and Others, in the
Fifteenth Century (1777). BACK
[4] Southey and Joseph Cottle, The Works of Thomas
Chatterton (1803). BACK
[5] Southey’s translation of Amadis of Gaul
(1803). BACK
[6] Southey’s unfinished ‘History of Portugal’. BACK
[7] Southey had finished a fifteen-book
version of Madoc in 1797-1799. He was
revising it for publication, but it did not appear until
1805. BACK
[8]
The Curse of
Kehama (1810). BACK
