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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. 83-85.
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.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
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.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
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I write to you with a far better will than
when last I took pen in hand for that purpose. after
receiving your last I wrote to Harry
& mentioned his concealment of Mr
Martineausm Taylor had enabled him to remove – was
– that he had answerd for his debts: the 20£ was what
removed him & of which he expected to have 7£ left on
his arrival – as in fact he had 6. he did not mention the
present in his letter to you from haste – not from
concealment, as he had read W m Taylors letter which did mention
it. for the truth of this he appeals to Wm Taylor – & he begs me to state it
to you that he may be thus far exculpated. I do it as you
may conceive with real pleasure & a lightened heart. He
adds that he has borrowed 10£ for the Lecturesm Taylor was to send him
10£ – & that the whole expence of the first winters
Lectures &c will be 18£ – 13 – which is what Dr Reeves – 6 & is therefore
about to remove – his dinners are to cost him fifteen pence
daily. I hope he feels seriously & am disposed to think
so. the fact is that at Norwich his information had outgrown
his situation, & he was tempted to indolence the more
easily from undervaluing what he had to do.
No letters from Lisbon – so that I know
nothing but from the papers. but they give me reason to hope
that you will have time to remove your property, if that be
needful. my hope is that this tumultuous state of the world
will not continue long. Yet I confess that every thing looks
gloomy – the moral & physical world to me wear a blacker
aspect than the political. I see pestilence visiting the
only part of the civilized world to which we could else have
looked with hope,
That poem upon poor young Emmet in the Iris
is mine.I know he said it) that we should lose
Ireland at last – & he said it with tears in his eyes.
We shall not lose it yet – but good God! how do we keep it?
by main force & amid continual conspiracies. Our
governors (I do not mean the royal family–) are good easy
men, who wish well to the country, & would do all the
good they can – but they want intellect. in good times they
would be good ministers – twelve years ago they would have
been so. But the country is sick at heart – poisoned by the
cursed quacks who have undermined her constitution, &
then good nurses with their simples cannot set her to
rights.
I am in Emanuels xxx & instructs me
after so long a lapse of years. Twould do me good were I a
Catholic to send him Ave Marias by the dozen for his
Purgatory score.