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Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previously published: Charles Ramos, The Letters of Robert Southey to John May: 1797–1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), pp. 78-79.
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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Robert Lovell is seven years
& seven months old. his disposition is good & he is sufficiently quick
of comprehension. his fathers family are Quakers. the grandfather an opulent man – a
pin-manufacturer. but tho opulent he has a very large family of young children
by a second marriage & his household is expensive. he has very abominably
thrown off this poor child, with some difficulty having been prevailed on to pay
his schooling till Midsummer next in the hope that by that time he might be got
into the Hospital.them him christened according to the Church forms.
When I go to London it will be alone. My Uncle has some commissions
for Lord Bath
The prospect of war distresses me on every account. with a view
to my own individual concerns I shall be materially inconvenienced if the French
should eject the English from Lisbon. any communication with Madrid would be
immediately cut off – no possibility of procuring more books – & no means of
going over to collate written documents – & examine the scenery country as I else hope & trust to do
in the winter of next year.
I shall be very glad to see you at Richmond & talk over with
you the subject of our late letters & a hundred things beside – We beg our
remembrances to Mrs May