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 rce469 letterEEd.26.460 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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MS untraced; text is taken from J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843). Previously published: J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), I, pp. 309–310 [in part].

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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460. Robert Southey to William Taylor [fragment], 8 December 1799 MS: MS untraced; text is taken from J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843)Previously published: J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), I, pp. 309–310 [in part].
Kingsdown Parade, Bristol,

Sunday, Dec. 8th, 1799.

My dear Friend,

Do not from my long silence suspect me of negligence. I have been ill–so reduced by a nervous fever as neither to read nor write. On recovery I repaired to Bristol, to seek relief for a worse complaint. My heart is affected, nervously I hope; but pain there, and frequent irregularity in pulsation, convinced me that I ought not to delay obtaining able advice.

My hexameters come to you in a ragged state. I meant to have corrected them with care; but as they are, they may serve as a specimen of what I can do in this way, and it would be foolish to wait till I have leisure for correcting. These liberties I have allowed myself– sometimes a superfluous short syllable at the beginning–sometimes the pyrrhic–sometimes the amphimacer. These licences must of course be sparing; and what you will meet with would probably have been altered in correction.

[Here follow 109 hexameter lines from the intended poem on Mohammed,Coleridge and Southey’s plan for a jointly-written poem in hexameters on Muhammad (570–632), the Prophet of Islam, did not make much progress; see Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 18–20. A fragment by Southey was published posthumously in Oliver Newman: a New-England Tale (London, 1845), pp. 113–116; and 14 lines by Coleridge in The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, 3 vols (London, 1834), II, p. 68. mentioned in the letter of the 1st September.]

Remember, these are apprenticeship lines; but I think that now I can wield the metre, and that it makes a magnificent mouthful of sound.

Thank you for your offer to house Harry; we however wish once more to see him, and not quite to abandon him in a land of strangers. I wish he were old enough to be placed as pupil at the wonder-working Pneumatic Institution.The Pneumatic Institute opened in Bristol, under the direction of Beddoes, in early 1799. You visited Bristol too soon, before our luminary had arisen. Davy is a miraculous young man, but his health is injured. Beddoes even apprehends consumption. At present he is in London, and when he returns I hope my residence here will draw him a little from perpetual experiments and the noisome fumes of the laboratory.

Don’t be daunted by the nonsense and unintelligibility of ‘Gebir’Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864; DNB), Gebir (1798), although the poem was published anonymously. from going through it; it looked to me like a Norwich-printed book, but that you would have known. Your townsman’s ‘Cupid and Psyche’ is well done.Hudson Gurney (1775–1864; DNB), Cupid and Psyche, a Mythological Tale from The Golden Ass of Apuleius (1799). Where can I find a sketch of the idolatry of the Poles? I want to make an ode on the sacrifice of their Queen Venda.Wanda, legendary Queen of Poland. According to different legends, she committed suicide to save Poland from invasion, was a pagan sacrifice, or lived a long and happy life. Southey did not write an ode on this subject.

Yours affectionately, Robert Southey.