Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 197–198.Dating note: Internal evidence suggests this letter was written after Southey’s tour of the north Somerset coast in early August 1799, but before his visit to Nether Stowey later in the month.
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.
All quotation marks and apostrophes have been changed: " for “," for ”, ' for ‘, and ' for ’.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey's spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
Since my last I have endured a perpetual
state of uneasiness on account of Ediths health.
you know we purposed visiting Devonshire. for some time
previous to our departure she had been exceedingly unwell, –
it was thought the journey would benefit her & we set
out in much hope, fortified with advice & a stock of
medecines. We got to Minehead, where I intended to pass a
fortnight. during the whole of that period she was so
exceedingly ill as to make me think it expedient to return.
she however slowly amended. Mrs Coleridge came to her & Edith returned
with her, a distance of but a few miles, if she amended we
could proceed from thence – if not we should be nearer
Bristol. I went westwards, for much confinement & little
sleep had brought back my old evil symptoms with greater
violence than ever. on my return I find her still slowly
amending.
In these circumstances & under this state of mind you will see how impossible it is that I should have done anything. I only played with the pen I took up – & if a book was open before me read the words & scarcely affixed to them any meaning.
My walk has not perceptibly benefited me – it
was from Minehead down the North coast of Somersetshire to
Ilfracombe & round by Barnstable Tiverton &
Taunton.s
with the dashing of the rivers. even without the sea this
place would be one of the most interesting I ever saw.
ascending half a mile from hence up a road serpentinely
perpendicular almost you turn into the Valley of Stones – a
miraculous place. the range of hills here next the sea are
completely stripped of their soil & only the bones of
the earth left – stone upon stone. Its origin I could not
conjecture. water if it had overwhelmed it must have
inundated all the lower lands in the country, for these are
very high – & yet the hills on the other side the Valley
– not an arrows flight distant are cloathed with herbage. a
water spout perhaps – but I am no naturalist to my shame,
& so endeavoured to find out a poetic origin for it. was
it the work of our aboriginal giants? no – for Goemagog one
of the hugest was not so big but Corineus could carry him –
ergo no Giants could have been large-limbd enough.
here I past some hours, alone, on the summit of the highest point two stones inclining on each other form a portal. in this I lay down – a little platform of turf lay level with me about two yards long – & then the eye fell upon the sea – a tremendous depth of precipice. you can hardly imagine the feeling it gave me to close my eyes a minute – & then open them upon the scene.
direct to Cottles still – & your letters will find me somewhere. I wish you well to Berlin – anywhere – rather than to Ireland.