Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 24. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 338–339 [in part].
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
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
I have myself so strong a sense of Mr Percevals
public merits that I cannot help writing to you to say how much I wish that a
statue might be erected to him. This could only be done by subscription, but
surely such a subscription might soon be filled if his friends
thought <think> it adviseable to begin it.
Suggest this to Herries,
& if the thing should be begun, pu when the list has the proper
names to begin with, put mine down for five guineas, which could not at this
time be better employed.
The fit place for this statue would be the spot where he fell.
Permission to place it there would no doubt be obtained, & the opposition
made to it would only recoil upon his political enemies.
I have often been grieved by public events; but never so
depressed by any as by this. It is not the shock which has produced this, – nor
the extent of private misery which this wretched madman has occasioned,xxxx
refrain from tears while I write. It is my deep & ominous sense of danger to
the country, from the Burdettites on one hand, & from Catholic concessions on the
other. You know I am no high church bigot, – it would be impossible for me to
subscribe to the church articles. Upon the mysterious articles
<points> I rather withhold assent than refuse it, – not presuming to
define in my own imperfect conceptions what has been left indefinite. But the
plenary inspiration of the scriptures, which is the established tenet of every
church except the S modern Socinians, I decidedly
disbelieve, & this is a gulph between me & the Establishment which can
never be past. But I am convinced that the overthrow of the Church Establishment
would bring with it the greatest misery <calamities> for us
& for our children. If any man could have saved it, it was Mr Perceval.
The wealth of the church will tempt the Wellesleys,have
are of the East Indian religion, – that is no religion at all. The Foxitesxxxxxxxx-philosophisticators to a man Atheists at
heart, & the greater numbers of them as arrant rascals as Fouche
or Talleyrandwe x you
will <have> Catholic members for all his boroughs. All these parties will
join in plundering the church. No man is more thankful for the English
Reformation than I am, – but nearly a century & half elapsed before the
evils which it necessarily originated had subsided.
As for conciliating the wild Irish by con such
concessions the notion is so preposterous, that when I know a man of Wynns understanding can maintain
such an opinion, it makes me sea sick at heart to think upon what
sandy foundations every political fabric must <seems to>
rest!
I have strayed on unintentionally. – Go to Herries, & if he will enter into my feelings about the statue let no time be lost.