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 rce759 letterEEd.26.750 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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. 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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750. Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor Coleridge [fragment], 12 January 1803 Location: Victoria University Library, Toronto, Coleridge CollectionUnpublished.Note on MS: the MS survives as 4 separate fragments. Wednesday night. 12 Jany. 1803

By your own account, dear Coleridge, it seems that your most violent attacks are the effect of imprudence. long foot journeys in a stormy country are foolish experiments for an invalid. here in the west I have given them up & probably I am the haler man of the two. if you go abroad, well. if you do not I wish & not wholly from selfish motives that you [MS missing] think of removing here. because the climate is far milder, & the the best [MS missing] view at Sea Mills.Harbour north-west of Bristol, used for bathing and with fine views up the Avon gorge. should we get [MS missing]

[MS missing] With respect to your letters upon FoxColeridge’s two ‘Letters’ to Charles James Fox (1749-1806; DNB) in the Morning Post, 4 November 1802 and 9 November 1802. I have only a feeling of pain & sorrow that you should attack a man who has already too many enemies, & for whom I feel a kind of affectionate veneration. not having seen either those letters – or any indeed any thing like regular news for these six months, you will conceive how incapable I must now be of judging. [MS missing]

[MS missing] Now for myself. I should like – no that’s a lie! – but I should find it very convenient to be again in the pay of Stuart.Southey had regularly written poems for the Morning Post in 1798-1799. He contributed three poems in late 1801 and another thirteen in 1803. my expences are heavier than I can bear. both Edith & myself are personally most honourably oeconomic – but I am drained at every pore. Harry is still an expence to me. Tom is with me. within the last twelvemonths I have paid more than an hundred pounds for my poor mother & poor Peggy – (I xxxx <may> tell you that their loss has gone deeper than it ought. or than any one believes.) – it is hard to be called from two such works as my poemProbably Madoc; Southey had written a fifteen-book version in 1797-1799 and by 1803 was correcting this for publication. A heavily revised version appeared in 1805. & my historySouthey’s unfinished ‘History of Portugal’. to write newspaper verses. but if Stuart will employ me – I am at his service – & you will serve me by telling him so – unless you think he wants no such help now for his columns. there is a sort of desperado pride in feeling that [MS missing]

[MS missing] These Booksellers & their Newspapers! their prospectusProbably the Literary Journal (1803-1806), which began publication on 6 January 1803 as a sixteen-page weekly magazine. Its editor was James Mill (1773-1836; DNB). Southey, badly nettled by the Edinburgh Review’s attack on Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), saw the critique of ‘a tendency to corruption in our taste, which obviously appears in an affected novelty of versification and sentiment, which seems daily to gain ground’ (Literary Journal, 1 (6 January 1803), 13), as aimed at himself; see Southey to John May, 9 March 1803, Letter 765. is the most xxxxxxx degrading insult that literature has ever sustained. some meddler has paragraphed me as translator of Amadis – tho it cost me forty pounds to conceal it.See, for example, Annual Review for 1803, 2 (1804), 597. I still am trying to conceal it – & have sent Longman & Rees this paragraph for their blackguard “literary” papers.

We understand that the translation of Amadis de Gaul ascribed to Mr Southey is the work of a Mr Southwell. mistakes have frequently been made between the names SothebyWilliam Sotheby (1757-1833; DNB), poet and translator. & Southey. it is rather remarkable that another name so similar should occur in the literary world.

Now if you will make the Morning Post suspect Sotheby before John Southwell Esq [MS missing]

[MS missing] I can struggle: & if it please God to spare my health & sight I can get thro that & all other drudgery, & still leave two works Joan of Arc (1796) and (1798) and Thalaba the Destroyer (1801). behind me that shall show what I would might have done in affluence.

That’s a serious paragraph – & in a tone which I am little used to. for to put my spirits in tune let me speak of Madoc.Southey had finished a version of Madoc in 1797-1799. He was revising it for publication, though it did not appear until 1805. Every night – because I cannot see to search badly printed folios – Madoc is my resource. correction is very laborious work – & I correct most rigorously – compressing & weeding at every fresh perusal. it [MS missing]

[MS missing] I will tel[MS missing] will xxxx net me above [MS missing] procuring 300 names. I shall not announce this till the [MS missing] that is for a last transcription & revisal. this will float me – & but float [MS missing] for I am in the mud. To my historySouthey’s unfinished ‘History of Portugal’. if I can ever get leisure for it I [MS missing] for independance. that will have a certain sale for its subject [MS missing] but general xxxxx a deep [MS missing]ubject. I cannot [MS missing] story to inweave [MS missing]

[MS missing] approbation. slow sale. [MS missing] get rid off. it will be as bad as the Odyssey in th[MS missing] which is difficult. the destruction of the superstition of the friendly tribe. & all th[MS missing]cription is to be added. I wish you were near me while it went thro the press. my poetical creed shall be given in a prefaceThe preface to Madoc (London, 1805) did not expound Southey’s ‘poetical creed’, but it did reject the ‘degraded title of Epic’ (p. ix). – if that may be called a creed which will be rather an abjuration of the articles of common faith. it will be dedicated to Wynn & the pleasure I shall feel in xxx that dedication is in truth the chief reason why I wish so soon to publish it. Madoc (1805) was dedicated to Wynn.

Chatterton is out. xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx What think you of a “List of Chattertons Bristol friends & acquaintance, with their professions as far as they can be ascertained?” Southey and Joseph Cottle, The Works of Thomas Chatterton, 3 vols (London, 1803), III, p. 494.

e.g. T. Carey – a pipe maker.

– Smith – a player [MS missing]

[MS missing] They wanted me to edite a newspaper at NorwichIn December 1802, William Taylor had offered Southey the editorship of The Iris, a newspaper that Taylor was involved in setting up in Norwich. for a hundred a year. but I m[MS missing] be in the West. I love Wm Taylor – but will stay by Charles Danvers. the Lady lives on & lives comfortably by the courtesy of Nature – & I believe loves me [MS missing] to her own children. & I love her better than I wish – for she will be a loss to me – [MS missing] next to him of Antwerp. My great friend & companion in this city wide city is [MS missing] dog Cupid, my own god-son. Oh if you could but see that little God of Love [MS missing] I have a book binder too so gloriously stupid that he is become a great favourit[MS missing] poor HortWilliam Jillard Hort (1764-1849) a Unitarian minister who taught in the school run by John Prior Estlin. He was the addressee of Coleridge’s ‘To the Rev. W. J. H.’, Poems on Various Subjects (London and Bristol, 1796), pp. [12]-14. has been dreadfully ill & is sadly pulled down. the den of the FoxCharles Fox (c. 1740-1809; DNB), poet, translator and neighbour of Southey in Bristol. stinks worse than ever. [MS missing] is our news external. the news internal is like your own – tribulation of tripes. take care of yourself [MS missing]

RS