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MS untraced; text is taken from Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850). Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.) Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), II, pp. 35–37 [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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Geese were made to grow feathers, and
farmers’ wives to pluck them. I suspect booksellers and
authors were made with something of the like first cause.
With Thalabamust
go. Complaints of immediate danger I have none, but
increased and increasing nervous affections threaten much
remote. I have rushes of feeling nightly, like fainting or
death, and induced, I believe, wholly by the dread of them.
Even by day they menace me, and an effort of mind is
required to dispel them. . . . . So I must go, and I will go. Now,
then, the sooner the better. Some progress is made in the
sixth book of Thalaba; my notes are ready for the whole, at
least there is only the trouble of arranging and seasoning
them. If the bargain were made, it would be time to think of
beginning to print, for the preliminaries are usually full
of delays, and time with me is of importance. I must have
the summer to travel in, and ought to be in Germany by the
beginning of June. Treat, therefore, with Longman, or any
man, for me.
The W.’s
But Lessing’s life – and I half wish he had
never lived – how long after the first of April (an ominous
day) will that confine you? Or if you come here to do it,
cannot I raise mortar and carry bricks to the edifice? . . .
. For Stuart I
must make out another quarter. I
have huge drains, like the Pontic marshes