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MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick Jnr, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 79-83. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 256–259 [in part; dated February 1804].Dating note: Dated from internal evidence; Tuesday was 6 December 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.
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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.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
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Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
I like your Stork well – & doubt not you will like my motto
for it – which is – riddle-my-riddle-my-ree. I can find no better – but I can do
what is better – for the device being a true emblem I can make a poem upon it
which being put in one volume will serve instead of a motto for all the rest.
& I can put you in the Poem – so send me the drawing & I will write in
the very spirit of old honest Wither
And now about the Madoc-drawings.goings on under a clear sky – but at all other seasons, there is such
shifting of shades – such islands of light, such columns & buttresses of
sunshine – as ought almost make a painter burn his brushes – as the sorcerers
did their books of magic when they saw the divinity which rested upon the
apostles.
But once more to the drawings. Madoc is not such a painters poem
as Thalaba
I should be very much fretted if I had not determined never to
suffer any manufactory of fiddlestrings in my inside. my youngest brother, of whom you
have always heard me prophesy ill, is playing the Devil. he has left his ship –
is living with some stranger
Fare you well. you see I am in good spirits. in plain verity I
will not be cast down for what man can do. When God afflicts me it is for wise
purposes – & I bow & suffer & am the better. But whenever the folly
or depravity of any person with whom it is my misfortune to be connected, annoys
me – I feel it as an insult – & permit resentment to prevail in me, as the
best antidote to vexation. If you have never read Epictetus – get Mrs. Carters
translation