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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 322–323 [in part; misdated 22 September 1797].
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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Is not this beautiful Grosvenor? but it is a damned lying sheet of paper.
me voici then at Bath & why had not you your birth day poem? in plain downright sincere sincerity, as the man said who dedicated his book to God Almighty,
We left Burton yesterday morning. the place was very quiet & I was very comfortable, nor know I where to expect again so pleasant a summer. We live in odd times Grosvenor — & even in the best periods of this bad society the straightest path is most cursedly crooked.
I shall be with you in November. send me my Coke
How does Godwin bear his loss?
Something odd came into my head a few hours since. I was feeling that the love of letter-writing had greatly gone from me & enquiring why. my mind is no longer agitated by hopes & fear, no longer doubtful, no longer possessed with such ardent enthusiasm. it is quiet — & repels all feelings that would disturb that state. when I write I have nothing to communicate — for you know all my opinions & feelings, & incidents none can occur to one settled as I am. what followed these reflections? I have long intended to write my own history — or rather to trace the development of my own character which I can accurately recollect. will you be my Confessor — & will you with most Catholic secresy receive the detail of the past? not that I have one sin to confess, tho follies enough — but I would not have such letters seen by persons who cannot understand them — perhaps by nobody save yourself.
Now Grosvenor here will be matter enough for me to write long letters & when I am dead — you will have a series more interesting then than now.
write to me.
Charles Lloyd is still my companion. I never expected [MS torn] another friend, & yet chance has birdlimed me to one in a most odd manner.
God bless you. have you received my parcel of Poems? do not delay Musæus.
Saturday. like an idiot I forgot that
the useless day following
What thinks Carlisle of Carnot?