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British Library, Add MS 30928. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 239-242 [in part; dated October 1803].Dating note: Dated from internal evidence relating to Coleridge’s return (15 September 1803) and the ascent of Skiddaw.
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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I should more speedily have replied to your
enquiry about the receipt for preserving berberries – but
that in fact the receipt is so nothing at all that if
Betty
Since my last I have taken very vigorous
exercise & am the better for it. one morning round the
lake – a ten or twelve mile walk, only disagreable as being
solitary. yesterday with Coleridge to the top of Skiddaw – the work of
four & a half hours – that is there & back but the
descent is mere play. up-hill a mans wind would fail him tho
his lungs were as capacious as a church organs, & the
legs ache tho the calves were full grown bulls. the panorama
from the summit is very grand – not indeed equal to what I
had seen from Monchiqueto the down to the
glens, so that like old women Skiddaw must grow shorter. for
some little distance below, nothing but moss grows – for it
is bitter bleak there next door to heaven. – To day I have
been tracking the river Greeta, which instead of Great A
ought to have been called Great S. but its name hath a good
& most apt meaning – the loud lamenter. it is a lovely
stream. I have often forded such among the mountains of
Algarve, & lingered to look at them with that <a> hungry eye, if
I may so express myself xx
with a feeling that it was the only time I was ever to
behold the scene before me, so beautiful. that feeling has
often risen in me when gazing upon the permanent things of
Nature which I was beholding but for a time. God knows I
often looked upon my poor child with the same melancholy, as
tho to impress more deeply in remembrance a face whose
beauties were certainly to change – & perhaps to pass
away. – How glad shall I bex to shew you these
things & to make you confess that if He who tempers the
wind to the shorn lamb, should brace me up to the climate –
this is the best place for my sojourn. We had indeed a
gloomy & comfortless parting. your comfort had been more
deeply rooted up than mine – & yet the axe cut deep at
mine.
Edith continues
as you would expect – silently & deeply affected. I have
not yet been able to get her out of the house tho our
weather has been uncommonly fine – & without exercise
the tonics which she takes under Doctor Southey will be of
little avail. last night indeed wex went to see a set of strollers play She Stoops
to Conquer.
Moses
grows up as miraculous a boy as ever K Pharoahs
daughterI’se always thinking
of my thoughts. – The Child’s imagination is equally
surprizing. he invents the wildest tales you ever heard – a
history of the Kings of England who are to be. how do you
know that this is to come to pass Hartley
– why you know it must be something or it could not be in my
head – & so because it had not been did Moses
conclude it must be & away he prophecies of his King
Thomas the third. then he has a tale of a monstrous beast
calld the Rabzezekallaton. whose skeleton is on the outside
of his flesh – & he goes on with the oddest & most
original inventions till he sometimes actually terrifies
himself & says I’se afraid of my own thoughts. It may
seem like superstition but I have a feeling that such an
intellect can never reach maturity – the springs are of too
exquisite workmanship to last long.
You will see by the inclosed bill of
Savarys