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Royal Institution, London, Davy MSS. Previously published: John Davy (ed.), Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. (London, 1858), pp. 39–41.
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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Massena!the which unfortunately
I shall only be able imperfectly to understand. Science I
have none, except in Anatomy. knowing little but terms.
Thalaba the Destroyer,
For the Anthology also I have done something.
Some Songs characteristic of the different tribes of
American-Indiansan diff division of some length – in the after
volumesx
Tobin
I am revolutionizing here – organizing two beggarly cottages into one dwelling house. in the course of a fortnight we shall have a comfortable habitation to enter – small but big enough to hold us & any friend who may think it worth while to visit us. there is a garden quite large enough & quite empty, so that I may follow my own taste in filling it – the ground is very good & has long been fattening in fallowness. here I mean to take much of my necessary quantum of exercise.
The Brutus of your plan I suppose to be the
fabulous settler of Britain.mean have chosen the more
elevated & republican theme of Rome delivered – &
the expulsion of the Tarquins.name
xx germ fermenting in some recess of my brain,
by one day by
developement & accretion to assume a mature shape &
size. the history is so utterly unaccountable that I can
form no hypothesis probable enough for poetry.
Will you be good enough to send me some
foxglove for my
mother & likewise some of the asthma-drops,
that she may take when her cough is removed? Danvers will
convey them to me. – I shall not visit Bristol till I come
to superintend the printing of Thalaba – w[MS torn] must
first be written. in the spring however this will bring me
there – & I shall work perhaps with more eager industry
that I may the sooner see the old city where I <have>
ever had some person to remember with affection. Edith is
tolerable – & desires to be remembered to you. My brother – whom
you once saw – is a prisoner at Ferrol.Sylph, on which Tom Southey
was serving, had been captured and was at the Spanish
port of Ferrol.
near Ringwood.