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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. 133–134.
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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This evening I have received yours of the 12th with its inclosure of £50. which sum with the
preceding one shall be replaced as soon as I receive what will be due to me when the second edition of the Life of Nelson is
published.
I will give fresh directions about the Bust.
Yesterday I had the satisfaction of compleating my poem, – which was begun 2 Dec. 1809.that in order that passion rather than action may be expected from it, – & it has this
character peculiar to it, that tho the story is deeply tragical, it is nowhere painful: for the characters with whom you
sympathize are in a state either of enthusiasm, or piety, or moral heroism which renders them more the objects of admiration than
of pity. It is not unlikely that the reestablished Inquisitionimpxx exaggerating facts into miracles, after the ordinary course of poets, I have by a better chemistry
extracted something like truth from miraculous legends. Mr Walpolesfirst next thing which I shall compleat. I neither know who engraved the head of Nelson,
You ask me about Norway.king monarchies, the one had ceded to another a portion of its border territory as the price of peace at the
end of an unsuccesful war. In the state of our relations with Denmark, & of Denmarks obstinate adherence to Buonaparte,
England & her allies would have been clearly justified, if they had deprived Denmark of its existence as a Kingdom. A cession
like that of Norway is unjust if, as in the memorable instance of the Seven Reductions in Paraguay,
In this new Quarterly I have an account of the Nicobar Islands,any temporary occupations would have
produced more than the poem will do. This however is a sacrifice which I am far from regretting, – for I owed it to myself.
I am about to address a letter to Coleridge upon the state of his family, – the purport of which is, that unless I obtain a satisfactory reply to it by the beginning of next month, I must be compelled to consider him as having left them to take their chance in the world; & regarding him as if he were no longer in existence, or no longer a moral agent, take measures accordingly for providing for the children. If, as I expect, my letter be not answered, I shall write to you at length upon the subject.
– I shall send a small parcel to Harry in a few days, &
will inclose in it your brothers journal, which has afforded me much amusement, some information, & some hope for
Brazil.