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 rce852 letterEEd.26.843 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: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 238-239 [where it is dated 28 September 1803].Dating note: Dated from internal evidence noting the loss of Southey’s books. Friday was 30 September in 1803.

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.

All quotation marks and apostrophes have been changed: " for “," for ”, ' for ‘, and ' for ’.

Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.

Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.

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Southey's spelling has not been regularized.

Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.

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 NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on 2009-02-26 Architecture Artifacts Bibliography Collection Criticism Letters Drama Life Writing Politics Folklore Ephemera Fiction History Leisure Manuscript Reference Works Humor Education Music nonfiction Paratext Perodical Philosphy Photograph Citation Family Life Poetry Religion Review Visual Art Translation Travel Book History Law Southey Letters: Biographies Southey Letters: Places Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming after latest corrections Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan corrections from proofing Averill Buchanan Part II added
843. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [30 September 1803] Address: [deletions and readdress in another hand] To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ Wynnstay/ Wrexham Holywell/ FlintshireStamped: KESWICK / 298; WREXHAM/ 202MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4811D Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 238-239 [where it is dated 28 September 1803].Dating note: Dated from internal evidence noting the loss of Southey’s books. Friday was 30 September in 1803. Dear Wynn

I am thinking – or rather trying to think about a song for you. & if I can make a good one you shall have it. but motions of the brain are not like motions of the bowels tho Dryden by his remedy of stewed prunes seemed to think them xxxxx so.John Dryden (1631-1700; DNB), whose recommendation of prunes to make writing easier was well-known and much-ridiculed; see Walter Scott, The Life of John Dryden (Edinburgh and London, 1834), p. 389.

My reviewing work lies before me – like a holydays task an ugly job left till the very last. Owen CambridgeGeorge Owen Cambridge (1756-1841), The Works of Richard Owen Cambridge (1803), Annual Review for 1803, 2 (1804), 583-585. whom you so much admire is among the prisoners – & a great volume of the History of Maritime discovery by Stanier Clarke,James Stanier Clarke (1766-1834; DNB), The Progress of Maritime Discovery (1803). Southey reviewed the book in Annual Review for 1803, 2 (1804), 12-20. which said Clarke I am breaking upon the wheel for the crimes of pedantry, stupidity, jack-assness & pick-pocketry. MadocSouthey had finished a version of Madoc in 1797-1799 and was revising it for publication. It did not appear until 1805. goes on & if my poor eyes allow you shall have a good spell of books for a Xmas dish. But still historySouthey’s unfinished ‘History of Portugal’. suits me best. do you know that the Portugueze got at Tombuctoo?John II (1455-1495, King of Portugal 1481-1495) sent a number of embassies to important West African economic centres, including the city of Timbuktu. now as they did get there & yet say nothing particular about it, it is a very fair corollary that Tombuctoo is not very much better than the other collections of negro-sties which are called cities in Africa. the state of society in Negroland puzzles me. we read of cities & courts & palaces & Kings, & Kings they are to all intents & purposes. yet when we think of one of these King Toms with a captains old coat, a pair of Monmouth StreetA street near Covent Garden, London, famous for its second-hand clothing shops. red breeches – a tye wig, playing with his brass buttons, or with a rattle one wonders how the Devil they came by the forms of a regular government. they look to me like a degraded race. as if they had been civilized once & had sunk into the dotage – the second childhood of society.

Your wine is ordered as I gave no directions for the payment the merchant has drawn upon the gentleman to whom it is consigned. I have had a grievous loss. a whole cargo of books for which I had been waiting & my Uncle searching two years – taken in the King George Packet.Edward Bayntun Yescombe (1765-1803), Captain of the packet, King George, which sailed between Falmouth and Lisbon. He died on 11 August 1803, from wounds received when his ship was attacked by a French privateer on 30 July 1803. The King George was taken to the Spanish port of Vigo, and Southey lost his books. Among them was the oldest Poem about the Cid,An edition of ‘El Cantar de Mio Cid’, the oldest Spanish epic poem, probably from the 13th century. & the oldest Gothic codes.The Visigothic Code, promulgated in 642 and 654 and translated into Spanish in the 13th century. Surely in time of war our Packets ought to be armed vessels or frigates. We give our mail coach a guard & yet leave our foreign mails to the mercy of every French privateer.

My eyes are very bad again. this is a sore evil & I fear it will cling to me. in other respects I am well & should be sufficiently happy were it not for the stinging recollection how much happier I have been. in company I am not less alive & chearful than ever, but when alone I feel myself sadly different from what I was – as if the roots which attach me to earth were all loosened. my head does not teem with plans & hopes as it used to do. I go to Madoc & my history with a feeling that when I have finished them my work will be done. this feeling makes me regard them with deeper interest & proceed more perseveringly least they should not be finished.

God bless you. R S.

Keswick.  Friday.