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 rce482 letterEEd.26.473 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.

Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), II, pp. 37–39 [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.

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
473. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 1 January 1800 Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqr / Exchequer/ Westminster/ SingleStamped: BRISTOLPostmark: B/ JAN 2/ 1800Seal: PartialEndorsement: 1 Janry 1800MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), II, pp. 37–39 [in part].

We shall be very glad to see you my dear Grosvenor if you can come. there is a bed in the house & I am of necessity an idle man – & can show you all things worth seeing – & get you a dose of the beatifying gasNitrous oxide, or ‘laughing gas’. which is a pleasure worth the labour of a longer journey.

I have written to Duppa, & asked him some questions about Italy. Florence or Leghorn are certainly safe. & for the inconvenience of travelling I have the advantage of experience, & know how best to obviate them. go I must. it is recommended – & tho my malady is not imaginaire, yet is imagination the cure for it: employment prevents it – it is a disease of association & no way so likely to break the chain as by precipitating myself into a scene where every thing is new.

Myself I have often thought of the Chancery lineSouthey was discussing whether to concentrate a future legal career on civil cases heard in the Court of Chancery. – & for the reasons you have alledged. Wynn did not seem to like it. he is ambitious for me – & perhaps hardly understand how utterly I am without that stimulus. I shall write to him a serious letter about it. Do not suppose that I feel burthened or uneasy – all I feel is that were I possessed of the same income in anyother way – I would never stir a finger to increase it in a way to which self gratification was not the immediate motive instead of self-interest. it is enough for all my wants, & just leaves motive enough not to be idle that I may have to spare for my relations. this Grosvenor I do feel. practically I know my own wants, & can therefore speculate upon them securely.

Come to Bristol I pray & beseech you. winter as it is (& damned cold – in a parenthesis –) I can show you some fine scenes, & some pleasant people. You shall see Davy, the young chemist – the young every thing, the man least ostentatious of first talents that I have ever known, & you may experimentalize if you like – & arrange my Anthology papers Annual Anthology (1800). – & be as boyish as your heart can wish, so write & say when you will come, & when you come get into a hackney coach & tell the man to drive to Kingsdown Parade – to Mrs Roulwrights lodging house – on a line with the Mountague & not many doors from it.A well-known tavern on Kingsdown Parade in Bristol. & come in the Mail then I can meet you for the hour is certain – & I can give you LaverLaver is a type of edible seaweed. Southey did not write a poem on its origin, but see Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, p. 21 for his note on the possibility of a poem on ‘Laver; how it was ambrosia’. for supper – oh rare laver! & you shall help me write an ode upon its origin for which I have a thought most mythologically-allegorical. Come – come – come! Come! come! come! Grosvenor. of all my friends you are the one of whom I have seen least, except at your own house.

Lord Herbert of CherburyEdward Herbert, 1st Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582–1648; DNB), whose De Veritate (1624) upheld reason rather than revelation as the source of truth. was a strange man – I should like to see his papers. an infidel in his time was a rare character – & he united enthusiasm with infidelity, loving God too much & revering him too much to believe in common Christianity.

I cannot remember with much pleasure your friend Mrs SmithThomas Woodroffe Smith (c. 1747-1811), a wealthy Quaker merchant, who lived at Stockwell Park, Surrey, near the Bedfords. In 1789 he married as his second wife Anne Reynolds (dates unknown) of Carshalton; see Robert Southey to Edith Southey, 20 May 1799, Letter 412. – she has that reserve which is very disagreable – a witholding herself while she draws out you; there is feeling in her face & manners, but no openness. the Quakers are to me an unpleasant sect. they are made up of appearances, & uniformly have I found them insincere.

Carlisle I like much – very much – but not wholly. out of his profession he has no depth, – he cannot swim & will yet get into deep waters. besides he is a man of no consistent views, & perhaps of no consistent feelings. Grosvenor I go calmly to work with my connections – & over-appreciate nobody. all have their faults. for him I feel neither much affection nor much esteem – but his company always gives me pleasure, & he certainly is not made of common clay. Perhaps the closest friendships will be found among men of inferior intellect, for such can most compleatly accord with each other. there is scarcely any man with whom the whole of my being comes in contact, & this with different people I exist another & yet the same. with Combe for one instance – the school boy feelings revive – I have no other associations in common with him – with some I am the moral & intellectual agent – with others I partake the daily & hourly occurrences of life. you & I when we would see alike must put on younger spectacles, whatever is most important in society appears to us under different points of view. the man in Xenophon blundered when he said he had two soulsXenophon (431–355 BC), Cyropaedia, 6.1.41. The fictional Persian sage, Araspas, argued men must have a good and a bad soul. – my life for it he had twenty.

God bless you. yrs affectionately Robert Southey –

Jany. 1. 1800. A happy new year!

X P.S. Damn the French! – that came heartily from the depths of a Jacobine-heart.France had adopted the Constitution of the Year VIII on 24 December 1799. It concentrated power in the hands of three Consuls and limited popular participation in government.