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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. 53–56 [in part]; Adolfo Cabral (ed.), Robert Southey: Journals of a Residence in Portugal 1800–1801 and a Visit to France 1838 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 69–71 [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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The day of our departure is now definitely fixed. We leave
Bristol next week, on Thursday. I do not wish to see you before we go; the time
is too short, and, moreover, the company of a friend who is soon to be left for
a long absence is not desirable. A few words upon business. For the Third
Anthology
There is not much danger in a voyage to Lisbon; my illness threatens little, and faith will probably render the proposed remedy efficacious. In Portugal I shall have but little society; with the English there I have no common feeling. Of course I shall enjoy enough leisure for all my employments. My uncle has a good library, and I shall not find retirement irksome.
Our summer will probably be passed at Cintra, a place which may be deemed a cool
paradise in that climate. I do not look forward to any circumstance with so much
emotion as to hearing again the brook which runs by my uncle’s door. I never beheld
a spot that invited to so deep tranquillity. My purposed employments you know.
The History
If peace will permit me, I shall return along the south of Spain
and over the Pyrenees. Edith little
likes her expedition; she wants a female companion, but this cannot be had, and
she must learn to be contented without one: moreover, there is at Lisbon a lady
of her own age,
I should willingly have seen Moses again: when I return he will be a new being, and I shall not find the queer boy whom I have been remembering. God bless him! We are all changing; one wishes sometimes that God had bestowed upon us something of his immutability. Age, infirmities, blunted feelings, blunted intellect, these are but comfortless expectancies! but we shall be boys again in the next world.
Coleridge, write often to me. As you must
pay English postage, write upon large paper; as I must pay
Portuguese by weight, let it be thin. My direction need only be, with the Rev. Herbert Hill, Lisbon; he
has taken a house for us. We shall thus govern ourselves, and the plea of
illness will guarantee me from cards and company and ball-rooms! No! no! I do
not wear my old cocked hat again! it cannot, certainly, fit me now.
I take with me for the voyage your poems, the Lyrics, the Lyrical
Ballads, and Gebir;
. . . . . . . . .