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British Library, Add MS 30928 . Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 324-326.
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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My first letter is to you – to give you the
earliest notice of our safe arrival. We staid five days with
Miss Barker –
Edith could
nowhere have been so comfortable. Miss B. is really
attached to us, & I know few persons & scarcely any
women who possess so much good sense & good humour.
yesterday we reached this place. I feel more pain at the
sight of little Sara
Coleridge is still in Scotland, he is expected for three weeks unless he be taken ill, which is very probable.
This morning must be a time for
letter-writing. that task once overgot
(as they say in Staffordshire) I shall fall to my usual
employments. In the disturbance of our departure I forgot to
beg King to write
after me & tell me of his wife
An army of letters had arrived here before me. the ugly one by way of Bristol was from Edward. another was a letter of condolence from Longman! a very curious letter, so characteristic of a very simple but good hearted man – that, tho I could not <but> smile at his simpleness I shall always like him the better for it.
It is now two years since we left this place,
& in that time the old Mountains & their Lakes, have
not changed as I have done. there is something aweful in the
unchangeableness & duration of these then things of Nature to one
who has so lately felt the instability of human existence. I
shall be the better for dwelling among them at least the
poet-part of me, which is the best part, will be fed &
fostered, whatever may become of what St
Franciscofirst to the completion of
Madoc,
Mrs Coleridge is in high health. every
time I see her she seems improved. Hartley
the same unique animal. Derwent
& the young one are very fine children but no ways
remarkable. it is my [MS torn]f that where God Almighty has
actually given genius it may be seen in the earliest
dawnings of infant-reason. that if a child does not look
quicker than other children at six months xxxx there will never be any
manifest natural superiority. – Remember me to my Bristol
friends. thank Hort
My next will be to Rex. let me hear from you. I am afraid such a load of my poor folios will inconvenience you – yet you cannot be so inconvenienced by their company as I am by the want of them. Edith bore the journey well. she appeared tolerably well by day but can get no sleep. God knows when she will recover her loss, her feelings are all so deep & lasting.
poor Cupid