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 rce472 letterEEd.26.463 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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:>

Romantic Circles c/o Professor Neil Fraistat Department of English University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 fraistat@umd.edu

By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions: These texts and images may not be used for any commercial purpose without prior written permission from Romantic Circles. These texts and images may not be re-distributed in any forms other than their current ones.

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.

National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. 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.

 NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on 2009-02-26 Architecture Artifacts Bibliography Collection Criticism Letters Drama Life Writing Politics Folklore Ephemera Fiction History Leisure Manuscript Reference Works Humor Education Music nonfiction Paratext Perodical Philosphy Photograph Citation Family Life Poetry Religion Review Visual Art Translation Travel Book History Law Southey Letters: Biographies Southey Letters: Places Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming after latest corrections Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan corrections from proofing Averill Buchanan Part II added
463. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [c. 16 December 1799] Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr/ 5 Stone Buildings/ Lincolns Inn/ LondonPostmarks: BRISTOL DEC 15 99; B/ DEC 16/ 99Endorsement: Dec 16 1799MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4811DUnpublished. Saturday night My dear Wynn

Yours with the draft reached me by this days post, – my letters never reach me in time to be acknowledged by return – & luckily this makes no delay in the present case.

With regard to my expences, reviewing & the Morning Post have enabled me to support their increase. at present I was xxx almost out of cash from a delay in the newspaper payment; I had given them notice that from the state of my health &c I could not engage beyond the existing quarter, & they may likely have dropped their punctuality when it was no longer their interest to be punctual. Beddoes I have not consulted, because I am satisfied with the advice of MauricePossibly Joseph Maurice, an apothecary based at St Michael’s Hill in Bristol. (long my apothecary,) & of Davy, the pupil of Beddoes & the superior man infinitely, who manages the Pneumatic Institution.The Pneumatic Institute, Dowry Square, Bristol, had opened in March 1799. & also because I was willing to avoid the unpleasant circumstance of offering a fee, where I had reason to expect it would not be received.

Both Maurice & Davy agree with Dr SkeyDr Skey (dates unknown), probably a physician practising in or near Bristol. that the heart is not affected – urging that no disease of the heart is felt there, that the effects would be constant & in the pulsation. the pain therefore must be muscular, & the irregular action, nervous. that I am in a state of diseased irritability (mark you – not of temper!) I daily & hourly feel. for this I xx am about to try a medecine prescribed in like cases by Beddoes with success – & I am using an external application to my side, which is certainly less painful. At present I am losing strength – the flood gates of my bowels have again been opened, & a slight complaint of this nature materially weakens one already much debilitated.

I have given up the Morning Post,Southey’s commitment to provide poems on a regular basis for the Morning Post. from an inability longer to perform task-work. my playSouthey’s proposed play on the ‘Days of Queen Mary’, set in the reign of Mary I (1516–1558; Queen of England 1553–1558); see Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 190–192. is a lottery ticket – & may be a good prize. but however Thalaba will cost me less time than another years manufactory of weekly rhymes, & pay me better. besides it is an employment to which I turn with pleasure. my design is to print it like the small Joan of Arc,The second edition Joan of Arc (1798), published in octavo, rather than the quarto first edition Joan of Arc (1796). & sell the whole edition to a London bookseller. Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) was published by Longman and Rees, but Southey was unable to keep the copyright and he was paid only £115. of finding a purchaser there can be no doubt. I calculate by Cottles profit on that second edition, & expect to gain from 130 to 150 pounds – reserving to myself the copyright. this money, if possible, I design to keep unbroken, & as soon as I possibly can, furnish with it a house in town, that I may at least attempt to do something in the law. I have thought of going abroad seriously, believing a warmer climate the best restorative – but this expends much time & much money.

For some days I have been thinking of your Xmas readings & endeavouring to bear-lick some lump-ideas into shape. something you shall have – but I have not the prophetic feeling of its worth – nor will the happy stories of the Old Woman & her Son the Surgeon be soon equalled.‘A Ballad Shewing How An Old Woman Rode Double and Who Rode Before Her’ and ‘The Surgeon’s Warning’, Poems, 2 vols (Bristol, 1799), II, pp. [143]–160, [161]–173. I would try something about the Vampires – but that I have incorporated that into my plan of Thalaba in a way that promises much effect. Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Book 8, lines 102–203. See also See Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 184–185. “the Hand of Glory” is also link-holder in the same great repository of out-of-the-way fictions. Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Book 5, lines 301–360. A ‘Hand of Glory’ was the dried and pickled hand of a man who had been hanged. It was believed to be endowed with a variety of magical properties. however you shall have The Lady AnnabelIf Southey did write a poem on ‘Lady Annabel’, it has not survived. – & the story of the Marine in the Mars, who, if you remember his history, did not keep the fifth commandment quite strictly.The story Southey heard from his brother, Tom, of the sailor who persuaded his father to murder his mother and then gave evidence against his father to ensure he was hanged; see Robert Southey to Thomas Southey, 5 January 1799, Letter 369, and Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, p. 193. This was scarcely honouring the fifth commandment to ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’, Exodus, 20: 12. these look like good plans. there xxxxx <are some> Greek stories, which would be fine ground-works if I had enough knowledge to manage them – & Greek diablerie would have some novelty now.

God bless you yrs Robert Southey.