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:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
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.
National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), II, pp. 94–98 [in part]; Adolfo Cabral (ed.), Robert Southey: Journals of a Residence in Portugal 1800–1801 and a Visit to France 1838 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 103–104 [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.
Cintra.
My dear Wynn
Your letter, or packet has, this morning reached me. but thro the
Portugueze post office, like all other letters, & at the expence of half a
moidore. do not imagine that half a moidore could have procured me an equal
quantity of pleasure in any other way, but the people in office, in England, are
ignorant of their how far their own privilege
extends, & often make us pay a heavy double postage by franking their
letters. the direction which I gave you to Captain Yescombe,King George, which sailed between Falmouth
and Lisbon.
You must long ere this have received my second letter.
Thalaba is finished & I am correcting it. the concluding
books you shall shortly receive. the Haleb descriptionant tyrant, which
<as> it stood at first. you object to “fools of the air”,th
book explains enough what Azrael
Thank you for George
Stracheys letters. I shall enclose a letter <one> to him, xxxx
<when next I write,> – the only mode of conveyance with which I am
acquainted. George Strachey &
I both of us were sent into the world with feelings likely little likely to push us forward in it. one overwhelming
propensity has formed my destiny & marred all prospects of rank or wealth,
but it has made me happy, & it will make me immortal – Strachey
was when I was his shadow,xxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx
<again the friend that was lost>. from that time a hasty visit is all I
saw of him. it was his indolence – I know he esteems me. Our former coolness, I
remember among my follies. you were with me when I atoned for it by a voluntary
letter, & you saw an answer such as I had reason to expect. I wrote again to
him, a common young mans letter; he never answered it. the fact was I had the
disease of epistolizing & he had not. – Our future intercourse cannot be
much. by the time he returns to London I trust I shall have retired from it,
& pitched my tent near the churchyard in which I shall be buried Of the E.
Indies I know not enough to estimate the reason & reasonableness of his
dislike. were I single it is a country which would tempt me, as offering the
shortest & most certain way to wealth, & many curious objects of
literary pursuit. About the language S. is right. it is a baboon jargon not worth learning: but were I
there I would get the Vedans,m
Jones,
I have written no line of Poetry here except the four books of
Thalaba, nor shall I till they are corrected & sent off, & my mind
compleatly delivered of that subject. some credit may be expected from the poem,
& if the Booksellers will not give me 100 £ for a 4to edition of 500 copies
– or 140 for a pocket one of 1000: why they shall not have the poem.
I long to see the face of a friend, & hunger after the bread & butter comforts & green fields of England. yet do I feel so strongly the effects of climate – & I am now sweating in my shirt while I write, in the coolness of Cintra, a darkened room, & a wet floor – yet so much better do I like the climate & feel it, that I certainly wish my lot could be cast somewhere in the south of Europe. the spot I am in is the most beautifull I have ever seen or imagined – I ride a jack ass – a fine lazy way of travelling – you have even a boy to beat old dapple when he is slow. I eat oranges figs & delicious pears. drink Colaras wine – a sort of half way excellence between Port & Claret. read all I can lay my hands on – dream of poem after poem & play after play, take a sesta of two hours, & am as happy as if life was but one everlasting today, & that tomorrow was not to be provided for.
Here is a long letter about myself & not a word about Portugal. my next shall be a brimming sheet of anecdotes. Sir Herberts hue & cry is as if a convicted pickpocket should charge the Constable with an assault for taking him up. it is not unlikely that some of my friends in England may take him in hand.
I am sorry Strachey is so disgusted with India, tho I cannot wish he were
otherwise. from all accounts an English East Indian is a very bad animal. they
have adopted by force the luxury of the country & its tyranny & pride by
choice – a man who feels & thinks must be in solitude there. yet the comfort
is that your wages are certain – so many years of toil for such a fortune at
last. Is a young man wise who devotes the best years of his life to such a
speculation. – alas if he is than am I a pitiable blockhead but to me the fable
of the ant & grasshopperI hear him bray – I wish my burro boy could get at him