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 rce431 letterEEd.26.422 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. Not previously published.

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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422. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 13 July 1799 Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr/ ShrewsburyPostmark: BRISTOL/ JUL 15 99Endorsement: July 13/ 99MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4811DUnpublished.

Saturday July 13. 99.

My dear Wynn

I received yours this morning – & write hastily to acknowledge it.

The allusion to Alibeg‘Hymn to the Penates’ in Poems (Bristol, 1797), p. 205 contained a reference to a Persian favourite who preferred his former simple life as a shepherd to the Court. This was a much-published story in the eighteenth century, about a mythical Persian visier called Alibeg. It derived from the fables of the French clergyman and writer, Francois de Salignac de La Mothe-Fenelon (1651–1715). For an English translation, see Twenty-Seven Moral Tales and Fables (London, 1729), pp. 69–84. Southey removed this passage in the 1799 third edition of his Poems. shall come out – I hardly know how it came in – it seemed to have a resemblance & yet has none. tocsin shall go if I can find a better word – but its reference to the French Revolution seems to appropriate it to that place. Misanthropy is so much the best personification I ever made, & so much the feeling with which I wrote the poem, that it must stay. it is in my own mind one of the most original passages I ever conceived.The paragraph deals with proposed changes to ‘Hymn to the Penates’, which Southey was revising for the third edition of his Poems (1797). Southey replaced the word ‘tocsin’, with ‘alarm’, Poems, 2 vols (Bristol, 1799), I, p. 196, but kept the personification of Misanthropy, pp. 198–199.

You will be pleased to hear that yesterday I finished Madoc – & as all poems should it rises in interest till the conclusion.

I have been breathing a newly discovered gasNitrous oxide, or ‘laughing gas’. which produces the most extraordinary effects. laughter, a delightful sensation in every limb – in every part of the body – to the very teeth, & increased strength with no after relaxation. it is a high pleasure for which language has no name, & which can be estimated by no known feeling. I took some this morning & still feel increased strength & spirits.

Edith is & has been exceedingly unwell. she is taking the strongest tonics, & is to bathe. We leave Bristol I believe on Monday week – & I hope soon to give you a good account of Queen Mary.Southey’s proposed tragedy, set during the reign of Mary I (1516–1558; reigned 1553–1558; DNB); see Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 190–192.

God bless you – yrs truly R Southey.