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Bodleian Eng. Lett. c. 23. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 378–380.
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.
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.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
He of the long hands tells me the printers have ‘returned to their duty.’xxxxx severely. that there would have been no lack of talents if
his moral stamina had been sounder, & that Burns’s admiration for him & Allan Ramsay seems to have been taken up like his
attachment to the Stuarts, as a national prejudice, in this instance strengthened by a natural feeling for the unhappy fate of one
whose faults so nearly resembled his own.
I have some brief things to say about Scotch poetry as to the Language, which will best come in under Allan
Ramsay.spoken there than here it is a sort of Rowleyism,
composed of all the Scotch words they can collect – as Chatterton raked in glossaries,
Mr Bedford I saw your pamphlet, your secret was kept Sir, but yet it did not escape me, a simple
man, living among the mountains – yet one who has intelligences Mr Bedford xxxxx <from quarters>
Mr Bedford, which Mr Bedford does not suspect. It is good sense well put. But you did not go
the right way to make it produce an effect. there are two ways – that of writing shortly & stingingly in a newspaper – which is the
best if followed up, – & that of making a volume with a parody of knowledge, & an ostentation of secret information – of being
<behind> the curtain. A pamphlet is lost from its form, tis a child in a crowd. By this time Mr Bedford will
perceive that when I publish any thing my bookseller is instructed to forward a copy. But Sir I have the Letter to Mr Pitt on the success of his political experiment.
Tom has had another escape, having changed his Captain the ship was watering at
St Kitts when he wrote instead of at Dominica.Amelia was William Charles Fahie (1763–1833). The previous captain, William Allen Proby,
Lord Proby (1779–1804), died on 6 August 1804 at Surinam, from yellow fever.th of Feby he would have been that very day made prisoner by the French fleet!xx yet had.
We go on badly in the East, badly in the West & badly in the at home. Grosvenor that same Minister whom
you talked civilly to is a cursed Charlatan. the difference between him & Addingtonr Trotter?
& my Lord Brazenface?fight garrison the West Indies with Sepoys also. We want ports in the Mediterranean & ought to
reclaim Tangiers, & to take Ceutagood straight-forward good sense, & that this prate-apace should pass for a
politician.
You have got Madoc.
Let me see the first proofwill may be called upon for his sign manual.