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 rceNaN letterEEd.26.759b Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. The Latin version (original) is to be found in Letter 759b.. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 307-308.

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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759b. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [c. 10 February 1803] [translation]Address: To/ G C Bedford Esqr/ Exchequer/ LondonPostmarks: BRISTOL/ FEB 10 1803; [partial] B/ 11Endorsement: 10 Feby. 1803 <1803>MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. The Latin version (original) is to be found in Letter 759b.Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 307-308.

Ah you Dog! - & that’s my answer to your card Mr Bedford.

I have many things to do. I had Coleridge with me, and he made me lose a great deal of time. My eyes are always bad when the east wind blows, and during the winter months it is always blowing. I have – God only knows – how many books to review!Southey was reviewing these for Annual Review for 1802, 1 (1803). big books, medium-sized books, and little books of every kind, which of necessity must all be killed off without delay. That is still another reason why I did not write.

I copied a great part of the second book of Kehama for your reverence, but I deliberated upon the propriety of adding some verses. Hence that delay. I hope during the coming week, God willing, to send you the book.Southey finally sent Grosvenor Bedford a draft of Book 2 of The Curse of Kehama (1810) on 9 March 1803 (see Letter 764).

There are several things to say concerning the translation. I am quite angry that any man in the year of our Lord 1803 should waste his time translating a part of Ovid,Anon., Four Heroick Epistles of Ovid; Translated into English Verse (1803). seeing that we have a sufficient number of translations of that poet – and good enough – and as critics say of that epistle, recently translated, very well done. It is worthless labour, a flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication! If you are going to translate, take something not done before, something from the Silvae of Statius,Publius Papinius Statius (c. AD 45-c. 96), Silvae (c. AD 89-96). the fragments of Valerius Flaccus, Claudian,Gaius Valerius Flaccus (d. c. AD 90), who wrote an unfinished epic poem, the Argonautica; and Claudian (d. c. AD 404), who also wrote an unfinished epic, De Raptu Proserpinae (c. AD 395-397). or better still go to the Greeks, to Hesiod, or Apollonius, or perhaps to Nonnus,Hesiod (c. 8th century), author of Works and Days and Theogony; Apollonius of Rhodes (d. after 246 BC), author of the epic poem, the Argonautica; and Nonnus (c. 4th-c. 5th centuries AD), author of the epic poem, Dionysiaca. whom I very much wish to read. It is best not to translate at all because the best translator always injures the original. Although he eats good meat, he does not send forth good meat. He loses the odour and taste in the digestion. Even if your genius is not so good as Ovid’s, it is better than Ovid at second hand.

I shall write again as soon as possible. Farewell.