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. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 181-183; Orlo Williams, Lamb’s Friend the Census-Taker. Life and Letters of John Rickman (Boston and New York, 1912), pp. 65-67 [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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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.
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This morning I called on Burnett, whom I
found recovering from a bilious flux & in the actx of folding up a letter
designed for you. he then for the first time showed me your
letter, & his reply. I perceived that the provoking
blunder in Lambs
direction affected the tone of yours other, & that the
seventeen shillings-worth of anger fell upon George. your
caustic was too violent, it eat thro the proud flesh – but
it has also wounded the feeling & healthy part below.
the letter which I have suppressed was in the same stile as
his last. I prevailed on him to lay it up in his desk –
because it was no use showing you the wound you had
inflicted – & your time would be better any how employed
than in reading full pages that were not written with the
design of giving pleasure. That your phrases were too harsh
I think & Lamb & Mary Lamb think also. twas a horse medicine – a
cruel dose of yellow gamboodge
What I foresaw – or rather hoped would take
place is now going on in him. he begins to discover that
hackneying authorship is not the way to be great. to allow
that six hours writing in a public office is better than the same number of hours labour for a
fat publisher – that it <is> more certain – less
toilsome – quite as respectable. I have even prevailed on
him to attend to his hand-writing – on the possibility of
some such happy appointment – & doubt not ere long to
convince him, in his own way, of the moral fitness of
writing straight lines & distinct letters – according to
all the laws of mind. he wishes to get
a tutors place. in my judgement a clerks would suit him
better, for its permanence. nothing like experience! he
would be not think its
duties beneath him. & if he were so set at ease from the
daily bread & cheese anxieties that would disorder a
more healthy intellect than his – I believe that passion for
distinction which haunts him, would make him in the opinion
of the world – the booksellers – & himself – a very
pretty historian. quite as good as any of the Scotch breed –
It puzzles me how he has learnt to round his sentences so
xx ear-ticklingly. he
has never rough-hewn any thing – but he finishes like a
first journeyman.
Write to him some day, & lay on an
emollient plaister. it would heal him – & comfort him. a
very active man we shall never have. but as active as nature
will let him he soon will be – & quite enough for daily
official work. If you could set him in the Land of
Potatoes
Mr
Corry & I have met once since my last – &
no mention was made about Egypt – the silence satisfied me –
because Portugal is a better & far more suitable
subject. it is odd that he has never asked me to dine with
him – & not quite accordant with his general courtliness
of conduct. Seeing little of him – I have not formed so high
an opinion of his talents or information as you had led me
to conceive. doubtless in his own department he possess both
– but on all other ground I am the better traveller – &
he hardly knows the turnpike when I have beat thro all the
by ways & windings & cross roads. I found it
expedient to send him my sundry books in compliance with a
hint to that effect. he called to thank me – & this
dropping a card has been the extent of my personal & avoidable
civility. to my great satisfaction I have entire leisure –
that is to my present comfort – for it
does not promise much for the future.
I had nearly forgotten to ask you for the
transfer to the Library.
Your friend Vaughan Griffithsxxx spirit having left it I
suspect Vampirism in its present
life.
Coleridge is in town. you should commute your
Starits <a> family likeness
to its Half-brothers. Madoc
The letter to which you referred in your
money-letter as directed here, never
arrived. You who have the Great Sealstraight. & do give Burnett a line
– your letter was too [MS obscured] – & you would do a
kind action by easing him of resentment.