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MS untraced; text is taken from John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856). Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, 164-166; Adolfo Cabral (ed.), Robert Southey: Journals of a Residence in Portugal 1800-1801 and a Visit to France 1838 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 177-178 [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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Your letter found me on the point of setting
out for Worcester, to meet Wynn, with whom
I was to take counsel as to my future destination. He will
procure for me the place of secretary to some legation in
the south of Europe, – probably to Naples.
I perceive, by your account, that a bill for
30l., which I exchanged at
Falmouth, had not then reached you; my two journeys in
Portugal, the return home, and, above all, the heavy expense
of the books which I have purchased will account for the
balance, and, I trust, acquit me of all extravagance. In the
spring, my appointment will probably take place, the person
who at present holds the office at the Neapolitan court
You will ask why I treat for a poem rather than for the materials which, with so much cost and labour, I have procured in Portugal. To Portugal I must one day return, to correct those materials when they are digested, and to gather what remains. It is even possible that I may one day hold an official situation in that country. To publish any thing now would be barring the doors of the archives against me: my first volume must touch popery to the quick. Thus have I a year’s labour lying dead. These, then, are my plans. I am about soon to visit Coleridge at Keswick; his house will hold us, and there I shall devote myself to labour as unremitting as will be consistent with health and prudence.
I look with anxiety for Lisbon news. Should my uncle return to England, as I hope and expect, it will relieve me from a weight of much anxiety. He is much pleased with the prospects which are opening upon me. If they only gave me a prudent opportunity of seeing Italy, that were much; but they also afford rational expectations of opulence, while they bestow immediate independence.
You have not mentioned your sister,
We move for Cumberland as soon as my business
is transacted with Longman, and my affairs here settled. In the
autumn it is possible that I shall pass a few weeks with
Wynn, in
Wales, and take my long-intended journey in the steps of
“Madoc.” I dream of Sicily, – of reading Theocritus,