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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. Previously published: Adolfo Cabral (ed.), Robert Southey: Journals of a Residence in Portugal 1800–1801 and a Visit to France 1838 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 89–91.
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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I say nothing of how I arrived & how I am
settled, & quid novi,
Who were the father & mother of Love is
an a point of
genemythology undetermined. he was probably hatched in the
great mundane egg – which by the by accounts for his wings –
& that egg was probably a ducks egg, for his pinions are
mightily like a flappers. what would have happened if
Ahriman – (the Persians write him Ahriman,xxxx going to tea at Stockwell. leaving then the
parentage of Love unsettled, the parish registers being very
defective upon this subject, & there being nothing about
him in the book of Genesis, all I can discover of his
infancy is that Idleness was
<is> his nurse. Mathesiskill starve him by dry
nursing – & Chemistry would certainly kill him in
experimenting. Poetry indeed is an excellent nurse, for she
makes a pet & a plaything of him.
Love certainly infects by inoculation. in
blind people indeed it may be caught by contact like the
itch. but starving which is the preparatory for the small
pox, serves as a preventative against the other disease – a
Catholic Lent would be a fair dose. in one respect it
resembles the rheumatism – that of never being xxx acute & chronic at
the same time.
Now in what mood will this find you? in rain
or in sunshine? in the hot or the cold ague fit? I am
writing it in a wet day – & – our Lady forgive me! with
the history of our Lady of Guadalupe
Poor Hainesx could have written.
We are still busy in the ceremonials of first visits, & a week must yet pass before I feel full leisure. I rise early & take my siesta after dinner. letter writing has been a serious employment since my arrival & has almost monopolized my time, so many persons are there who expect to hear of me & who would interpret silence into neglect or unkindness. I have yet hardly half done this task work which keeps me from more important employments. A summer here will be new to me, & the grand Corpus Christi procession & the Bull fights. Edith has every thing to see & as you may suppose is highly amused by the strangeness of every thing. Our servants understand no English – she no Portugueze – so I am interpreter – but enough for these purposes is soon & inevitably acquired, for my part instead of losing my knowledge in England, I am far better acquainted with the language than when I left the country. reading has done this for me. & I now gain ground every day.
John May is about to
send me some books here – if
your Musæuso 4 Tavistock
Street Bedford Square, it may come with them. I forgot to
mention this to him – & if you will therefore send him a
note with it, it will supply my forgetfulness.