The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 2: 1798-1803 A Romantic Circles Electronic Edition Southey, Robert, 1774-1843 Lynda Pratt Romantic Circles General Editor, Neil Fraistat General Editor, Steven E. Jones Technical Editor Laura Mandell 2011-08-15 rce702 letterEEd.26.693 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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Beinecke Library, Osborn MSS File ‘S’, Folder 14117. Not previously published.

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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 NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on 2009-02-26 Architecture Artifacts Bibliography Collection Criticism Letters Drama Life Writing Politics Folklore Ephemera Fiction History Leisure Manuscript Reference Works Humor Education Music nonfiction Paratext Perodical Philosphy Photograph Citation Family Life Poetry Religion Review Visual Art Translation Travel Book History Law Southey Letters: Biographies Southey Letters: Places Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming after latest corrections Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan corrections from proofing Averill Buchanan Part II added
693. Robert Southey to George Dyer, 12 July 1802 Address: George DyerMS: Beinecke Library, Osborn MSS File ‘S’, Folder 14117Unpublished. Dear Dyer

Your parcel arrived safely & I will deliver the copiesOf Dyer’s Poems and Critical Essays (1802). duly. I have sent Beddoes’s by one who is in the habit of seeing him which I am not. Estlins I will deliver myself & leave CoatessWilliam Coates (dates unknown), was a Clifton resident. He was known to Davy and Coleridge and was a subscriber to a number of Bristol literary works. His brother was Matthew Mills Coates (d.1819) of the law firm Morgan and Coates, Small St, Bristol. Both brothers were radicals and may have been related to John Prior Estlin’s first wife, Mary Coates (1753-1783). at his brothers for he is gone to France for a long journey. for my own copy I have to thank you. your ‘Padlocked Lady’George Dyer’s ‘The Padlocked Lady. A Vision’, Poems and Critical Essays, 2 vols (London, 1802), II, pp. 177-210. is rather an unfortunate title – methinks you ought to take it as sufficient praise that I can only find such a fault. Do you know the riddle-my-riddle-my-ree of your Polly Whitehead & Penelope TrotterGeorge Dyer’s ‘Funeral Procession of Polly Whitehead’ and ‘A Monody on the Death of Penelope Trotter’, in his Poems and Critical Essays, 2 vols (London, 1802), II, pp. 216-228 and 229-235. quite puzzled my dull wit – till blind Tobin saw thro them!

I have also to thank you for some trouble taken in the Chattertonian business – which I hope is drawing to a close.Southey and Joseph Cottle’s planned subscription edition of Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770; DNB), eventually published in 1803. you will give your opinion to Cottle as a weighty one upon all I may have advised or suggested – for tho mine be a voice potential & double as the Dukes Othello, Act 1, scene 2, lines 13-14. – I have not the least inclination to exercise it autocratically. I am only Grand Turk in the business – Cottle is Grand Vizir – & you shall either be a Bashaw with three tailsIn the Ottoman empire, bashaws signified their status by the number of horse tails on their standards; three tails indicated high rank. See Peter Pindar [John Wolcot (c. 1738-1819; DNB)], Tales of the Hoy (London, 1798), p. 58. – or Aga of the JanizariesThe chief of the standing army of the Ottoman empire. – which you like best – or Mufti.In Sunni Islam, a scholar who is an expounder and interpreter of Islamic law.

I am hard at work – or rather have been hard at work – & am now idling in a sort of holy day with my brother who is just returned safe from the West Indies after having escaped the fever & the land crabs there, & the bullets at Copenhagen.Tom Southey had been slightly wounded at the Battle of Copenhagen, 2 April 1801; see the London Gazette (15 April 1801). mine are slow labours – therefore the better.

Our Ladies for whom you enquire are all well – we miss Miss Barker as you may suppose. indeed I miss many London friends – but the quiet of the place – & the fields & the noble old elms which I see from the window make me heartily rejoice that I have escaped from the eternal noise & filth of the Strand. Your friends the Estlins John Prior and Susannah Estlin. are well – I know not if there be any one else here in whom you take interest enough to listen to their transactions – except indeed Charles FoxCharles Fox (c. 1740-1809; DNB), orientalist, poet and parrot owner. – he has been doing something. a long Persian poem into blank verse which is to make two volumesFox never published his two-volume translations of Persian poetry. – & which I heartily & selfishly wish published – for he is too jealous ever to communicate any of his knowledge before it is in print. this is foolish. if he had given me any information by which I could have profited in ThalabaSouthey’s annotated Islamic romance Thalaba the Destroyer (1801). – I should have amply repaid him in a note which would have advertized his book permanently.

Remember me to such of my friends as you may see – I particularize Lamb & his sister. Anna Seward I hear has been mixing oil & vinegar for me.Anna Seward’s critique of Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) had appeared in The Poetical Register, and Repository for Fugitive Poetry, for 1801 (London, 1802), pp. 475-486. I have not seen her criticism – but I like her for honestly signing it, & am more pleased by her frankness than I can be offended by her censure.

God bless you, yrs truly Robert Southey.

The Ladies desire their remembrances

July 12. 1802.