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BL Add MS 34046. Previously published: Mary Stuart (ed.), Letters from the Lake Poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, to Daniel Stuart (London, 1889), pp. 392–397.
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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I am very much obliged both by your letter & the offer which it contains.xxxx small quotium of verse which you require. The habit of versifying & of
catching all things in a poets point of view has gone from me thro long disuse. xxxx Weeks would pass on, & tho few
men are more willing or better able to gird themselves up for the labour of the day, I fear any the thought that I
ought to be writing for you, & the feeling that I was not in the mood for it, would fret my spirit, & end in abortive
attempts. There is however another way which may tempt me to recover the habit. Tho I cannot work by time, I can by the piece, –
when I can get a sheet full it shall be sent, – & the verses may be rated like oysters by the hundred, or like bricks by the
thousand.
You have mistaken the mention of the Mutineers in the Spaniards lettersTemeraire, expecting to be allowed leave in England, were
ordered to the West Indies. They mutinied on 1 December; on 6 January 1802 fourteen of them were convicted and hanged.at near
Bristol,
I did not expect you would agree with D Manuelon some points, where he speaks in my character & not in his own. The <main> point on which we seem to
differ is this, that you abominate one party, & that I have the most rooted contempt for all, & a strong conviction that
between them they wll ruin the country, as far it is possible for xxxx any per politicians to ruin it. At
present the Foxites
One newspaper will do more for a book than two reviews – I thank you for the lift you have given Espriella,itLongman follow it up by advertising, which he certainly does not do
sufficiently. It is my intention to bring Espriella to England again, & say in two volumes more what I had not room for in the
former work.some consequence importance to me. – this book seems likely to be more productive than any former attempt:
it wants initials, asterisks & personalities to make it greatly so. I think however if the object in view be at all
accomplished that the book will have some thing more than a temporary value.
There is one subject on which I have much to say, & that, as it appears to me, of considerable importance. It is the navy; but tho God knows it would be in the spirit of a true Englishman, & would tend to prevent much danger & much evil, I am afraid to do it, least it should injure my my brother, to whom of course the matter would be imputed immediately that it should be known to be mine. Yet I am certain that I could point <out> easy remedies for great grievances.
I perfectly agree with you in your opinion of Jeffreys reviewal of
Cobbettxxx labouring to frighten the nation into a peace. They are equally wrong about the
Catholick question. the immediate effect if it were carried, would be to send an Irish Priest on board every ship in the navy,
& every one of these men would be in the interest of Bonaparte & under orders from his vassal the Pope.
Your account of the cotton mill at Glasgow contains an important fact in confirmation of the opinion which I have
formed upon the manufacturing system, as at present existing. I do not believe that letter which you inserted in the Courier
contains a syllable of exaggeration, – there is however an oversight in it, where I have said that the price of labour remains the
same as what it formerly was.r Malthus, & the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
In a few days I shall fill a fools-cap sheet with all the verses I can muster up.