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Bristol Reference Library, B20959. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 94–97 [in part]; Adolfo Cabral (ed.), Robert Southey: Journals of a Residence in Portugal 1800-1801 and a Visit to France 1838 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 62–64 [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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It is so long since I have heard from you that I feel a degree of uneasiness at your silence. but one great benefit of marriage is that it never allows those intervals of vacancy which must occur in the best directed solitude, & which probably create the epistolary mania in very young persons. this was my own case once. I wrote not from a fullness of matter to communicate but from sheer emptiness – day after day – fools-cap sheets & close writing for three pages & the top & bottom of the fourth. more knowledge & the daily increasing consciousness of how much yet remains to be learnt. more employments & marriage have long since cured me. My pleasure now consists in receiving letters, not in writing them.
The state of my health is in some respects amended, in others
stationary. I had accustomed myself to low living, seldom eating except at
breakfast & dinner & then with an appetite no ways like my Portugal one;
& when at home drinking only water. Since my removal here I have increased
the number of my meals, taken porter with my meat, & wine after it.
certainly I feel stronger, – but the startings & miserable feelings which
have so long distressed me at night still continued & were only lessened by
ether, not removed. About a fortnight ago I breathed the oxyd of azotefor the disease which for months before had
invariably preceded sleep. after several nights it recurred again. I repeated
the dose. & have taken it about once in three days since, & the
complaint has been till now removed. to say the gas has been the cause would be
hasty – but I cannot help thinking so. The pain in my side still continues – its
intermittance seems to prove that there is no organic affection, & this is
the opinion of all my medical friends. the spring is advancing – & I hope
something from warmer & less inconstant weather. certainly I will avoid the
next winter. the experience of two has satisfied me of the ill effect of that
season on my health. I have written to Lisbon, xx
x & stated to my
Uncle my reason for thinking of removing somewhere abroad, & the
sum I can raise for the consequent expence. my reasons also for not determining
immediately upon Lisbon, at the same time stating that if he thought that more
advisable, all circumstances considered, I would adopt that plan, & employ
my time there by seriously beginning the History of the country.probably determine me.
On the whole I am inclined to wish that his advice may favour this plan.
Occasional excursions of a fortnight or three weeks would afford novelty enough,
& enable <make> me well acquainted
with the whole of the country. I know the language well enough to travel without
embarrassment, & the subject of my studies would supply a constant interest
of employment. Less than two quarto volumes could not comprize the work. I
should suppose not less than three for the great Indian Episode would require
one to itself. the pecuniary profit of such a work might be estimated at not
much less than a thousand pounds. Gibbons six quartosske embryo skeletons of chapters on the religion & manners &
literature of the country are now [MS torn]ng before <me.> & one half
filld sheet of paper by the next packet may [MS torn] them all!
I wait here for this letter to regulate by it my movements.
either to lose no time in getting into Germany that I may reach Trieste by
autumn; or to return to Burton, which will not be & wait there a fit time for
my departure to Falmouth. in either case I shall see you – either when I visit
London, or when you visit Hampshire.
In the course of a very few weeks I shall have the second
Anthology
Will you exert yourself to assist the Chatterton
subscription?nam subscriptions. from
Hampshire I expect 20 or 30 more, a greater number from Norfolk. & in London
I suppose the great subscription will be. the sale of 750 copies would produce
about between four & five hundred
pounds. &, the circumstances considered, this will be a smaller subscription
than ought to have been expected.