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British Library, Add MS 47891. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 244-247.
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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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.
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I could find in my heart to begin this letter
in hearty good anger if there was not a good reason for
beginning it with something else. It will be delivered to
you by Mr – once the Reverend Thomas –
Clarkson,
Danvers gives
me but sad accounts of Mrs King,
By this time you have probably seen &
detected William
Taylors articles in the Annual Review.r Esqr
.xx him the
other evening in Coleridges bed room – he being ill in bed & I
having the commodious utensil before my eyes shot out this
illustration of the Philosophers xxxx head – Mr Godwin is
like that close-stool pan. generally empty, & when empty
less offensive than when full.
A Book of Bristol printing is come to me
which you should read – Davis’s Travels in America.
My brother Harry is
removed to Edinburgh where I suppose he will soon blaze as
the Comet of the Medical Society.blarneying (Mrs King will explain
the word) & assuring him that he must get it, till Coleridge growled out at last xx No Mr Frere,
Coleridge is now in bed with the lumbago. never
was poor fellow tormented with such pantomimic complaints.
his disorders are perpetually shifting, & he is never a
week together without some one or other. He is arraying
materials for what if it be made will be a most valuable
work, under the title of Consolations & Comforts,
If it were not for my unhappy eyes I should
have no bodily grievance to complain of. they teaze me, tho
now better than when last I wrote. I have this day been
staining paper with tobacco
an infusion of tobacco, to render candle-light writing more
tolerable.