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Beinecke Library, Chauncey Brewster Tinker MS Collection, GEN MSS 310, Box 13, folder 554. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 81–83.
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 write to you from Ottery where I have been uncomfortably detained five days by the impossibility of finding lodgings anywhere in its neighbourhood. I wishd to be as near as possible on Coleridges account & additionally so as there is the probability of seeing you here – tomorrow however we go to Exeter where there can be no doubt of house room – & eleven miles is a very walkable distance.
I have now seen George
Coleridge. his
brother & you had taught me to respect him. in many things he
reminds me of you – there is the resemblance that two persons who have lived
much together & with attached affections, bear to each other. something too
he reminds me of my Uncle – of
his equalness & kindness of xx character,
but he is not so chearful as my
Uncle nor has his situation been so favourable. he told me that from
the age of eighteen he had never had leisure to read a book thro.
There are three classes of people in whose society I find pleasure. those in whom I meet with similarity of opinion – those who from a similarity of feeling tolerate difference of opinion, & those to whom long acquaintance has attached me, who neither think nor feel with me, but who have the same recollections & can talk of other times & other scenes. accustomed to seclusion or to the company of those who know me & to whom I can let out every thought as it rises, without the danger of being judged by a solitary expression, I am uncomfortable among strangers. A man loses many privileges when he is known to the world. go where I will my name has gone before me, & strangers either receive me with expectations that I cannot gratify, or with evil prepossessions that I cannot remove. it is only in a stage coach that I am on an equal footing with an companions & it is there that I talk the most & leave them in the best humour with me.
I have just learnt that you do not visit Devonshire – I however have the expectation of seeing you in Hampshire during the winter. George Coleridge has been very friendly towards me & I felt that his opinion of me had been influenced by you. he has his brothers forehead – but no other resemblance. it is wonderful how the strong feelings induced in composition change the countenance. strong thought is labour – an exercise essential to the minds health, or the face of a thinking man like the legs of a porter & the arms of a blacksmith indicate how he has been employed.
I thank you for procuring the Zendavestato find much folly in going thro it to derive
wisdom from perusing much folly. something I shall one day build upon the base
of Zoroaster. but what I know not. to Mango Capac
t 3.r Tuckers. Fore-Street-Hill – Exeter.x blended with all my opinions & systems,
their foundation indeed, their life & their soul. I could soon grow
unreserved with him & talk from immediate impulse. We were all a good deal
amused by the old Lady
In Exeter I find a humble imitation of Lisbon filth. but I also
find two good sale libraries of old books. you will smile at the catalogue title
of a Portugueze book which I bought here – it is an account of the das cousas que fizeram os Padres da companhia de Jesus, in
the East Indies & in Africa.Fizeramo’s account &c –
Edith is better than she has been
for many months. I find a sort of health-thermometer in the hair. my own curls
crisp & strong in proportion to the state of the whole system or becomes
weak & straightened. perhaps by & by the connection will be discovered
between the colour of the hair – & its quantity & its crispness, x & the constitution. physiology is yet it
its infancy. have you received the Annual Anthology?