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. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 91–94.
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 do not think you rightly understood my
opinions upon the Orientalists. to climate I attribute very
little, even referring the sensuality usually attributed to
it, to the effect of polygamy. However the more the subject
engages my thought & as yet I have only thought about
it, the more it convinces me that every fact may be warped
to suit a system, & that every system must be erroneous.
the evidence of facts (& Lord Grenville risques another
campaign for the sake of obtaining it)
The Hell of Women is rather about Hudsons Bay
than in xx South America.
Hearnes Journey to the N. Oceanxx respected. does it
not appear that the women
nations remarkable for their courage have usually better
treated their females than more effeminate ones? as if a
sort of chivalry resulted from courage. Would it not be well
to connect with the Beguinage,
Beddoes’s
wifexxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxx
xxxxxxxx.
From Madoc I shall only have to erase the
very few lines that are only applicable to Peruvian
customs.
This is a place of experiments. we have
consumptive patients in cow-houses some,only result seems to be that
a cure may sometimes be effected, but very rarely. I have
taken the nitrous oxyd – the wonder-working gas. I think
with benefit. at first I was apprehensive that it might
injure me, & refrained from it with continence that
would not have disgraced a hermit. but on trying its effect,
they appear beneficial, & certainly have not been
injurious. Davy
is making important experiments upon the respiration of the
different airs – which will probably occasion an alteration
in the nomenclature. I saw a mouse die for want of
azote
I wish you had among your schemes a way of manufacturing paper so as to render it cheap. if this could be done from some of our useless vegetables, or the parts of the esculent ones that are thrown away, it would be of great service by rendering publications cheaper, & thereby pos[MS torn]tending their circulation & influence. is not this practicable? – your wooden clogs I shall be glad to profit by. leathern ones are expensive, & wet feet very disagreeable.
This morning I picked up a book upon alchemy,
poetry & prose, text & comment; all the others books
in this rare science that I had seen were pure dullness, but
this soars into the sublime of nonsense – Kings & Queens
& deaths & resurrections, & gate after gate, – a
perfect book of Revelations. Eirenæus Philalethes the
author, alias, if I mistake not, Thomas Vaughan,
Edith &
my
mother desire to be remembered. – I sent Biddlecombe some fortnight ago a book upon
ulcerated legs