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.
. 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.
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.
I should have acknowledged the receipt of the bill yesterday had there been any post to London. there was no inconvenience whatever in our not receiving it sooner.
In about ten days our future habitation will be made habitable. the former tenant has quitted – & the carpenter & the mason & the whitewashes & the painter are busy in repairing the dilapidations of many years. two beggarly cottages will soon be revolutionized into a decent dwelling. these necessary alterations are not at our expences – the little improvement which savour of luxury we set about ourselves as soon as we get in, such as papering & filling up an ugly corner with a convenient cupboard. the house will be small, but large enough to be comfortable & to have a spare bed room, a sine qua non with me. the garden is a large piece of ground, & quite empty, so that I may please myself in filling it, & have already in my head allotted out its various divisions of potatoes, peas, cabbages, artichokes, currant & gooseberry bushes, & the near turf plat where a few larger fruit trees may be ornamentally planted – planting is a trifling expence, & I shall at least have the pleasure of seeing the trees grow – tho perhaps the changes of life may prevent me from enjoying any other advantage. a spring rises close by the garden & fills a fishpond at the bottom. I mean to take much of my due exercise in the useful employment of gardening, which will be putting out time upon good interest.
I mentioned to you if I recollect aright some time ago, that we
were uneasy respecting a brother of
Edith, who went to sea & had not been heard of. after being driven
by storms into Spain & walking thro that country into Portugal he is
returned. the boy is about fifteen, & has been much neglected, but he is a
good boy, & thoroughly sick of the sea life x which I believe he originally adopted rather from want of any
better employ than from inclination. As soon as we are settled I mean to send
for him, & do what I can in the way of informing him, by setting about this
properly I can save time which is the most important thing. my after views are
to make a printer of him. because it is a business which he may exercise without
a long apprenticeship – <which> requires perhaps a smaller capital than
any other, & because whenever he shall be able to exercise it I can at once
put into his hands three fourths of that
employment necessary for his support.
I have made some progress in my metrical Romance, Thalaba the
Destroyer. a poem from which I expect credit & emolument. it will give me
pleasure to read it to you when you visit Burton. the extent will be ten books, of which the fourth is nearly
finished. it will probably be ready for publication in the spring. The second
Anthologysort of memorial of those who are distant. These
then are my employments, I wish I could give you as good an account of my health
– but that certainly does not improve.
My opinions upon all important subjects have long since ceased to
fluctuate. I repose upon Christianity, aware of the arguments against it, &
flinging like JJ Rousseau, the weight of hope into the scale of reason.
So far you will readily comprehend me – but you will not perhaps
understand how my political opinions are founded upon feelings precisely the
same. I examine the extremes of society & know that they are not fitted to
the nature of man – that both extremes necessarily deprave him. I am <too>
metaphysical enough <not> to know that our
characters are for the most part the effect of surrounding circumstances, &
I am too pious to believe that God can have made us naturally sinful, therefore
necessarily wretched. hence the love of equality which is rooted in my heart
& blended with all xx xx my associations. I
see evil produced by existing establishments & know that it might be better
& am with all the ardour & sincerity of my soul a Republican. On all
points that may can come into action there is
little difference between us. with most of my friends I agree in some essential
point, scarcely with any in all.
Keenan