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National Library of Wales MS 4812D. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 377–378.
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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You will perceive that this poem
Yet it should seem reasonable rejecting rhymes as a necessary to admit it as an occasional ornament. & if this were
done in such parts as require ornament because the circumstances are less interesting – the xxxx feeling less empassioned
& the language in consequence in a lower key, I think the mark would be hit. – as I would willingly admire those ornamental
buildings &c at Stowexx in correcting the poem I have chiefly rhymed such parts xx <as> did not satisfy
me before; tho perhaps this may not be altogether wide of what I ought to be done – if xxx the rhyme gives such
passages the finish which they wanted.
I am disposed to go on thus – chiefly because I shall the more easily avoid any mannerism – any too frequent use of the same phraseology or turn of syntax. & because there are some parts of the story which rhyme would very much embellish & others which it would ruin. However your opinion of the experiment will weigh with me. Tell me if the rhyme surprizes you when you find it, or if you feel at a fault when you lose it.
There are about 600 lines more written but uncorrected. they do not require so much alteration as this first part
because there is more of passion in them & dramatic character. If I get thro them to my liking they will set me off. & I may
perhaps fall to in earnest & run thro the poem. You know my plan to exhibit all the fit mythologies in this form. After this there
will remain the Runic the old Persian. The classical – which may be considered almost as new ground so little have its recondite parts
been brought forward, & perhaps the Japanese, the Jewish as romanceified by the Rabbis, & the Catholic in all its glory. – It
is however somewhat discouraging to think that xxx more is to be got for a Farce than I can hope for half a dozen such poems
as Thalaba.