The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 2: 1798-1803 A Romantic Circles Electronic Edition Southey, Robert, 1774-1843 Lynda Pratt Romantic Circles General Editor, Neil Fraistat General Editor, Steven E. Jones Technical Editor Laura Mandell 2011-08-15 rce357 letterEEd.26.348 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Previously published: A Catalogue of the Collection of Autographs Formed by Ferdinand Julius Dreer, 2 vols (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1890–1893), II, p. 126.

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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 NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on 2009-02-26 Architecture Artifacts Bibliography Collection Criticism Letters Drama Life Writing Politics Folklore Ephemera Fiction History Leisure Manuscript Reference Works Humor Education Music nonfiction Paratext Perodical Philosphy Photograph Citation Family Life Poetry Religion Review Visual Art Translation Travel Book History Law Southey Letters: Biographies Southey Letters: Places Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming after latest corrections Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan corrections from proofing Averill Buchanan Part II added
348. Robert Southey to George Dyer, 18 September [1798] Address: To/ George Dyer/ 6. Cliffords Inn/ Fleet Street. / London/ SingleStamped: BRISTOLPostmark: B/ SE/ 20/ 98MS: The Historical Society of PennsylvaniaPreviously published: A Catalogue of the Collection of Autographs Formed by Ferdinand Julius Dreer, 2 vols (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1890–1893), II, p. 126. Tuesday. Sep. 18. My dear Sir

I am very sorry that your Letter should have remained so long unacknowledged. the fact is I have been visiting in Herefordshire & Worcestershire, & amid company, journeying & some employments that follow me every where, I recollected not my unanswered letters at home.

Your proposals are hanging in Cottles shop.George Dyer was at this time seeking to publish a three-volume edition of his ‘Poetical Works’, if he could gather enough subscribers. He was not successful. it is unlucky that most of my friends here are yours also; however I mentioned your proposed volumes to some of them who might not perhaps have otherwise known your intention. We will do what we can, if not what we wish. your list has some 8 or 10 names – & it will be some advantage to have a country bookseller in Cottle who will feel a friendly interest in assisting the work.

I am sorry, in considering only my own gratif<ic>ation that your essays are to be delayed.Dyer’s proposed ‘Poetical Works’ would have included ‘Critical Essays, on different Branches of Poetry and Criticism, illustrated from ancient and modern Authors’. whenever you take the subject of metre into consideration I shall beg you to weigh the merits of some regular blank stanzas in which I think I have been succesful, & which you perhaps may have seen in the Morning Post without suspecting their author. four lines seem to me the best length for a lyric stanza. I have disposed them thus differently in different odes. you know the Ode to eveningWilliam Collins (1721–1759; DNB), ‘Ode to Evening’ (1746). is consist of 10.10.6.6. 10.6.6.10. —. 8.6.6.10. —. 8.8.10.6. — 6.6.10.6. — 6.10.10.6. — 8.6.10.6. —.

In such metres neither the lines or stanzas must run into each other, & the regular harmony must be as perceptible to the ear as to the eye. I have yet other arrangements to try. these odesSouthey’s recent contributions to the Morning Post included ‘Ode. The Delivery of Holland’, 18 July 1798’; ‘Ode. The Spanish Armada’, 26 July 1798; ‘Ode. The Martins’, 7 August 1798; and ‘Ode: The Death of Wallace’, 7 September 1798. (for you see I am again ode-writing) form part of a very extensive work in which I have made some progress.The ‘Kalendar’, a sequence modelled on Ovid’s (43 BC–AD 17) Fasti, was never completed. & will not appear in the volume with the Vision, now going to press. Poems (1799), which included the ‘Vision of the Maid of Orleans’.

If my figure-schemes are not sufficiently comprehensible, tell me so, & I will send a specimen of each. you would perhaps find them useful in your essay on metre, for tho as yet unique, I think they will not always be so

Have you seen a volume of Lyrical Ballads &c? no authors name – but by Coleridge & Wordsworth. Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798).

Allen has written to me from Portugal. he requests me to call on you, & express his sincere thankfulness & attachment. on he also wants some account, which you probably can give me for him, of the expence of taking graduating as M.B. at CambridgeGeorge Dyer had studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking his BA in 1778, so he might be expected to have some knowledge of the costs of graduating from the university. – as he is of sufficient standing to take that degree there; could get a transfer from Oxford, & would then have the chance of a higher situation with x 25 Shillings a day, in the army.

You perhaps know that Coleridge & Wordsworth are going, or gone, to Germany.Wordsworth and Coleridge left for Germany on 16 September 1798. Wordsworth returned in late April 1799 and Coleridge in July 1799.

Edith is much better, she desires to be remembered to you.

I did not see your friend Miss GreenlyPossibly Elizabeth Greenly (1771–1839), daughter and heiress of William Greenly of Titley Court in Herefordshire. In 1811 she married Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin (1759–1839, DNB). in Herefordshire. you have I suppose seen my asinine honours in the Anti Jacobine Magazine.Southey had been caricatured as an ass in James Gillray (1757–1815; DNB), ‘The New Morality’, Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, 1 (1798), between 114 and 115.

God bless you. yrs very truly Robert Southey

I hope to see you in November, when I shall be for some few days in town.