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 rce709 letterEEd.26.700 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. 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
700. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 30 July 1802 Address: [deletion and readdress in another hand] To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr M.P./ Wynnstay/ Wrexham <Worcester>Stamped: WREXHAM/ 202Postmark: [partial] 122/ BRISTOL/ JUL 30Endorsement: July 30/ 1802 MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4811DUnpublished.

This story of the Dog is so exceedingly painful that I have not Englished it. Captain Gaspar de VillagraGaspar Pérez de Villagrá (1555-1620) served as a captain in the 1598 expedition that first colonised New Mexico. His epic Historia de la Nueva México (1610), Canto 19, lines 221-244, described how he was forced to kill his dog for food. However, he then found he was unable to eat the animal. was a wretched poet – his whole work is minute narrative in the baldest language without one glimpse of imagination. but this shocking story he could not fail to relate pathetically. here the fault of his general manner became a beauty – just as the rusty weathercock must be sometimes with the wind & the standing watch tells true once in the twelve hours.

Bedford tells me that Lambe is going Consul to Lisbon.Thomas Davis Lamb was offered but rejected the post of Consul, and with it the salary of between £2000-2500 p.a. I wonder that with this in view he should return himself for Rye.On 6 July 1802, Lamb had been elected as an MP for Rye, a town whose political life his family dominated.

My brother is gone to Taunton to his Uncle. this delays our projected walk & therefore I think Mahomet had better come to the Mountain.A phrase first used by Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans (1561-1626; DNB), in ‘On Boldness’, Essays (1625). Southey noted the idea in Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, p. 20, and intended to use it in the epic on Muhammad (570-632), Prophet of Islam, that he planned to write with Coleridge. there are some few things within a walk, & others within a mornings drive that you have not yet seen in this neighbourhood. in particular there a row of elms whose trunks form the finest proof of Wartons opinion upon the origin of Gothic architectureThomas Warton (1728-1790; DNB) whose influential essay on gothic architecture was first published in his Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London, 1762), II, pp. 184-198. It is not clear what point Southey was making. In so far as Warton ascribed an origin to Gothic architecture, he looked to the influence of Arabic styles. – & the boiling well – of which one a little is described in ThalabaThe Boiling-Well, a spring near Stoke’s Croft, Bristol; described in Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Book 11, lines 361-373. – & only little for the place would not admit more.

The sum for Mrs JamesMrs James (first name and dates unknown) had lost her four sons in a shipwreck earlier in 1802. Southey and his friends were attempting to raise money to invest in an annuity for her. See Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [c. 21 June 1802], Letter 683. is already made up by the 18 pounds which Elmsley received of your brother Henry.Wynn’s youngest brother, Henry Watkin Williams Wynn (1783-1856). what else you have collected will form a seasonable present sum – till her annuity becomes due. it is distressing to see the poor woman. at first she bore up wonderfully well – but now appears daily to feel it more & more.

I am heartily glad you are again M.P.Wynn had been re-elected as an MP for Montgomeryshire on 13 July 1802. it is such an admirable excuse for a short

letter –

God bless you – R S. Friday 30 July. 1802.