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National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 176–178.
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 about & about writing these many days, but my daily walk takes up so inconvenient a portion of my day that I find the rest short enough for its calls. you do not know the comfort of slipping eight miles thro the mire for the mere purpose of exercise with no other end or object & in all weathers. since my return I have been very unwell & still am indisposed enough to be very punctual in following advice.
The Lyrical Ballads are by Coleridge & Wordsworth.
I mentioned to Cottle what
Lewistrepidation stanza, it is better tho
not good, “And the choristers song that late was so strong,
Grew a quaver of consternation. They did not try Benvenuto
Cellinis’of in
which Martin Luther seemd to have confidence, for I find it
recorded in the Colloquia or Table Talk of that great
Reformer, (a book which by the by was translated in
consequence of a miracle).
Did you ever see the book? it shows him to be
either as great as a fanatic
or rogue as the Romish Saints whom he so execrates. however
there are some good things in it. among the rest an g[MS
torn] of certain strange children called Killcrops whom I
shall [MS torn] day balladize perhaps.s to him & moreover eats
as much as two threshers. Martin Luther saw one, a boy of
twelve years old, & so confident was the Old Reformer
that he was a Killcrop, that he wrote to the Prince of
Anhalt whose subject the boy was, to say that if he was
Prince in that country, he would have the Killcrop thrown
into the river. but as the Prince did not take the hint,
Martin Luther desired the ostensible parents to pray to God
to remove the Devil, & they did so, & so xx in two years the Killcrop
died.
Sundry other things doth Martin Luther relate concerning the Devil, pleasant to read & profitable to know that we <may> beware of his cunning.
He has a story of a Succubus like your origin
of the Mortimer.