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 rce820 letterEEd.26.811 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. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 320-321 [where it is dated [23 July 1803]].Dating note: Dated from the postmark and endorsement.

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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811. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [c. 23 July 1803] Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ To R Southey/ Worcester/ Worcester/ BristolPostmark: BRISTOL/ JUL 25 1803Endorsement: July 23/ 1803MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4811DPreviously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 320-321 [where it is dated [23 July 1803]].Dating note: Dated from the postmark and endorsement. My dear Wynn

You give me very great pleasure by saying you would gladly assist me in the legal departmentSouthey had asked Wynn to assist him with the ‘Bibliotheca Britannica’, a plan for a chronological account of literature written in Britain, which the prospective publishers Longman and Rees abandoned in August 1803. if you thought yourself equal to the task – for that ‘if’ will be no insurmountable obstacle (do you remember poor Bunbury & your theme upon Pride?)

Old law is no uninteresting study – it is too closely connected with the history of manners. I shall go thro the laws of InaIne, King of Wessex 688-726. He issued a code of laws in 694. This code was first translated in Aylett Sammes (1636-1679; DNB), Britannia Antiqua Illustrata (1676), no. 2405 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. (if as I think, they have been printed) & make a compendium of them. it will be a good preliminary study to the Codigo GothicoThe Visigothic Code of laws, promulgated in 642 and 654 and translated into Spanish in the 13th century. which I have been so long expecting from Madrid – the Partidas,The Siete Partidas (1265), a centrally important code of Spanish law. & the various codes that have sprung from the same Gothic root, the root of all that is valuable in European policy. to Hoel DhaWilliam Wotton (1666-1727; DNB), Cyfreithjeu Hywel Dda (1730), used in the notes to Madoc (1805). I must do the same propter MadocumThe Latin translates as ‘For the sake of Madoc’. – & I rather expect some interesting result from a comparison of Celtic with Gothic jurisprudence. you know that, maugre Madoc, my prejudices are all Gothic, & that I bless the Romans first & the Saxons for redeeming the Britons from the original sin of carrotty hair – red freckled faces more broad than long, & brains of the same flat character.

Now as for being equal to the task – I should feel myself quite equal to stating out of Glanvil,Ranulf de Glanville (c. 1120-1190; DNB), reputed author of Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Anglie (c. 1187-1189), a manual on royal judicial procedure. FletaFleta (fl. 1290-1300; DNB), name used to designate the author of a Latin treatise on common law. &c what was the law in their time – but to know what has been lopt away & what is overgrown by young shoots, that is beyond me. but it certainly is in your power. Crede quod habeas et habes.The Latin translates as ‘Believe that you have it, and you have it’. if you will read them as a lawyer, I shall, in pure book gluttony, look thro them for whatever is not law– & if any thing should escape us, it will hardly pass thro Turners sieve who will go thro them in his plan of going on with the history of England.

I thought you would like the plan of the Bibliotheca. it has made me quite happy in the future tense, & given a present value to all stray reading. all the dormant capital of knowledge in my cerebrum & cerebellum is about to be made productive. & my old stall gleanings seem to be sprouting out like potatoe-rinds, into an uncalculated return.

What became of the library of the Chandos family?The Dukedom of Chandos became extinct in 1789, but much of the family library had been sold in 1747. WartonThomas Warton (1728-1790), The History of English Poetry, 4 vols (London, 1774-1781), I, pp. 150-154, deals with the Antiocheis but does not mention its location. had heard that it contained a copy of the Antiocheis of Joseph of ExeterJoseph of Exeter (fl. 1180-1194; DNB), Antiocheis, an epic poem on the Third Crusade, of which only a fragment survives. – which poem – if that copy do not exist – is lost. I would give one of my ears to recover it.

——

Your sistersWynn’s sisters Charlotte (d. 1819), Henrietta (d. 1854), and Frances (d. 1857). correct me well. I meant the song to the old recitative sort of tune – like the song of Gregory Gubbins in the Battle of HexhamGubbins was a character in George Colman, the younger (1762-1836; DNB), The Battle of Hexham (1789). Southey probably means Gubbins’s song ‘What’s a valiant hero?’; see Songs, Choruses, &c. in The Battle of Hexham; or, Days of Old (London, 1789), pp. 5-7.

God bless you RS.