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British Library, Add MS 47890. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 330-332 [dated October 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.
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An hour to supper – & I have run myself out of breath in a
spell at MadocRomances del Cid,
Coleridge is taking the
gout-medicine – which I suppose will die his marrow bones red like madder, for
it makes every thing look bloody that comes out of him. beyond all doubt his
complaint is the gout – yet it will not come to a regular fit. & as to what
Beddoes says of whipping &
spurring with this medicine – taking glass after glass till he glows red hot –
it is utterly impossible unless he wishes to see his whole intestines in the
close stool. the childrenr Edmundson
Have you seen – or heard from King of some damnable articles in the Morning Post to prove <advise> that we should give no
quarter to the French?
No news of Tom tho I look sharp for the Galateas prizes in the paper. Harry I see is made a Lieutenant in the Norwich Volunteers. Of Killcrop I hear nothing, & tho well pleased to be spared postage for his letters yet wish to know whether he be still afloat, or has run home to his Aunt. The news from Lisbon is very ugly yet I always distrust newspaper news from Portugal never having seen anything but ignorant report or mere lies. it is cruelly vexatious to have ones letters taken.
You will be glad to hear that I am hot upon Madoc – quite in my
full gallop mood. his whole narrative is now finished. without reckoning the
line-by-line alterations & smaller insertions, there are about 800 new lines
of new matter added. I am now in the old fourth book & still travel in open
having a clear country before me. there will be about fifty or fourscore lines
to add here containing an excommunication scene
Fine stormy weather, & the winds make the finest
magic-lanthorn work upon the mountains that heart could wish. they lie before us
like a great scene which Nature is eternally painting. I saw to day a xxxx pillar of light slant down upon a single
green field at their feet, & that field xxxxx <was> flooded with sunshine when the woods &
mountains around were all dark & clouded. it did not look like an earthly
landscape. the lake now is black & chequerd with waves by the wind –
yesterday it was so dead a calm, that the woods & fields were mirrored on
the water in so vivid a picture – that the lake seemed like a continuation of
the woods & fields & you would not have believed that it was water.
God bless you Charles. Oh you must come to Keswick.
I hope you have learnt some tidings of my poor books.