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MS untraced; text is taken from John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856). Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 423–424.
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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That part of your letter which relates to the booksellers requires immediate answer. Messrs. Longman & Co. are my publishers; and, so far from having any possible
objection to their being applied to, it would give me pleasure that this should be the case, and would necessarily be of advantage
to the work, inasmuch as they would include it in their innumerable advertisements with the Cyclopædia,
In one of the letters to Mr. Hill, your brother mentions a very
good miniature of himself by Millet, which was taken gratis with the idea that some time or other it might be engraved; you, I am sure, will anxiously inquire after this, (the existence of which you seem either to
have forgotten or not to have known): if it be a better likeness than the profile, it may not be too late to engrave it in
preference; at all events, while one is prefixed to the book, the other may be engraved for the ‘Monthly Mirror,’ and thus we who
wish to preserve every relic may insert both in our own copies.
Do not be apprehensive of sending me too many materials; a single sentence of his own which can aptly be inwoven gives that sort of life and soul to biography which make it most valuable.
Before Henry went to Cambridge, I spoke of him to Mr. Basil Montague, who then resided in that town, knowing a family acquaintance to be one of the things most wanted in a University, and thinking this would prove a desirable one.
Montague entered fully into my feelings, and promised also to interest Mr. Smythe,will to befriend him, not the means. Now it is otherwise, and I can do what I
would: but that this should be the case is regretted almost as deeply by me as by his nearest relatives.
It is my full belief that English literature had never a greater loss.
To a part of your letter I have only thanks to give, and to say that as I am so thoroughly acquainted with all Henry’s dearest friends, the intimacy must not always be only on one side. Nottingham is not in my way to London, but assuredly I will one day make it so.