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. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 165–166.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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Well Grosvenor – & how is it? am I to congratulate or to console? there is fortunately so much to be said on either alternative, that were a man to write a declamation he might toss up to determine on which side he should declaim. however Grosvenor God prosper you in this & every other wish of your heart.
You have expected to hear from me before this - I have visited
little – walked little – in fact have scarcely done anything but talk to B
George Burnett – now laid up in
the lying in chair with a venerable sciatica – & written letters – aye
Grosvenor but they were to my wife, & so you will not complain. I bathed
once, but it gave for some seconds such acute pain all round my loins or veins
that I feel half discouraged from incurring the risk of such another morsus
diaboli.
Time however has past tolerably well here – & if there had
not <been> a magnetic point fixed elsewhere perpetually attracting my
wishes, I should have said very happily, in the first place I have no law books
here. God be praised there is not one in Burnetts library, in the next I had two days conversation with William Taylor, a man whose whole
character & conduct has very much interested me. I go to visit him on
Wednesday & remain till the Tuesday following – so directez vous to me at
Mr Taylors. Surrey Street. Norwich.
This morning I have been clearing off my epistolary debts – tis now half past twelve – we dine at half past one – & I have previously to pulchrify. –
these occupations however would not however have made me halt in
my letter till Monday morning, had not two flaming young Ladiesbom
attacking his heart thro his palate bombards him during his confinement with
blamonge (you may spell the word better if you can.) She has desired him to
preach upon this text – it is not good for man to be alone.
I am now in almost momently expectation of the vehicle in which I
leave Yarmouth. I could write you a
good traveller like letter & describe to you the particularities of the
place, as how the cows have no horns (by the by a great improvement –) & of
the Yarmouth arch-architecture, which
consists in forming it of two whale jaw bones; the triumphal arch of a Greenland
trader. & I could write you a descriptive letter, for however unpromising
to the first view of a flat country may be,
it has yet its peculiar & characteristic beauties. I am not disposed to
repeat what I have said elsewhere – & what is but uninteresting in prose. As
for the society here, it was a remark of Mary Wollstonecraft that the
inhabitants of a sea port were less cultivated than the inland dwellers, &
as like most of that Womans remarks it was a
wise & a true one.
Grosvenor God bless you, write to me & believe here as every where & now as always