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National Library of Wales, MS 4811D . Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 206-209 [misdated 19 December 1802].
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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Bishop Taylor says of Heaven “– a blessed Country where an enemy
never entered, & from whence a friend never went
away”.xx the all bodily enjoyment of Mohammeds
I envy you not so much for seeing the Lion
You did not mention whether the Cid
I am glad to hear of Stracheys
well-doing. the feelings that make him querulous are the price he has paid for
it – & to be querulous is not necessarily the same as
to be unhappy. I cannot tell why men like to be pitied – for pity proceeds from
superiority. Strachey is at a
distance from his friends that is true – but can a man live any where so long
& not have made new friends –? If he were a married man there would be an
end of his complaints! I wish our East Indian Governors would afford their
countenance to the Missions that are now struggling there for existence. I have
<been> reading overxxxx
with <rest> upon the base of Xtianity.
It is possible that you may x see
St Pierretalked with him about it heard him talk very
eagerly about it, but not very acutely. I like the old boys sermon
My little girl has
taught me some new feelings – I have learnt to see beauty in that total absence
of all thought & all feeling in an infants face, as soon as there is good
matter in town she is to be inoculated for the cow pox – I begin to think Dr Jennerneither that the sum was not enough for such a
discovery – nor for a great nation to bestow.
Now were you in England & that the M.P. would cover the sin –
I would not write a line farther – having in truth nothing to say – & quite
enough to do – but <to send> a blank page thro a foreign office were
committing a huge trespass. De meipsot Franciscothe monachism from the
period when it was caught in Egypt – down to the ripening of the Cistercian
order under S. Bernard.foggy this weather is at this minute, you
would not wonder that I am ready to grumble with this climate.
I am afraid that my Uncles business will call me into Herefordshire about Xmas. shall you then be any where within reach?