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Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 169–170 [in part; verse not reproduced].
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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I have been for some time in expectation of hearing from you, but you probably have been waiting for a new direction, & many employments have kept me silent. It was not till the Thursday evening preceding quarter day that a house was found at all suitable for us, & you can hardly conceive in what perpetual occupation I have been since we took possession. pulling down & putting up; - upholsterer – carpenter – mason – painter – paperer in succession, till of a filthy old barn looking house we have made a clean & comfortable dwelling. It is at Westbury, a village two miles from Bristol, in the pleasantest part of this country. there is a tolerable garden behind the house, in which excepting some half dozen rose bushes, every thing is calculated for use. the view over the garden is very beautiful, a fertile & woody vale, bounded on each side by hills, & terminated by a range of hills ten miles distant. the most interesting parts of the country are near at hand, & ten minutes walk would convey me to one of the most beautiful glens I ever saw.
here I begin to feel myself at home, & am already enough
acquainted with the house to go about in the dark; this is the criterion I think
of intimacy with a dwelling place. to day my books are to arrive; two windows
that have been blocked up on account of the tax,
Do you remember my picking up <a> Portugueze sermon the day
we went to Wapping?
You are I believe in the habit of borrowing books from Cadell
& Davies
I have bespoke your books of Cottle. they will cost 5s each – apply the purchase money for me in your next little
subscription. – & let me have your plan for examining the poor as soon as it
is arranged. I will exert myself in promoting it here. I am inclined to send you
some lines which I wrote lately called The Complaints of the Poor.
–––––
Coleridge I hear is going
to Germany: a wilder or more ridiculous scheme was never undertaken than this –
to go with a wife & two infants merely to learn a language which may be
learnt by his own fireside!wagg shipping my
goods – or rather waggoning them, as they come by a returning-waggon here.
direct to Cottles. & let me soon
hear of you. <My Mother &
Edith are both greatly
recovered. Edith desires to be remembered.>