Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
British Library, Add MS 47890. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 80–82; Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 221–222 [in part, where it is misdated 14 October 1794].
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.
Better are a few lines of pleasant information than a long letter of inanity. our plan is in great forwardness nor do I
see how it can be frustrated. we are now twenty seven adventurers. Mr Scott
I wish I could speak as satisfactorily upon money matters. my Mothers house
You want news. the infamous falshood of the conspiracy to kill the King must have reachd you, & your own good sense
must have made you see thro the ministerial artifice.suffer <share> the same fate — the measure of iniquity must soon be full & then ———
thank you for the hanger. keep it for me. you shall not remain longer in the navy than January. live so long in hope. think of America! & remember that while you are only thinking of our plan — we are many of us active in forwarding it.
Would you were with us! we talk often of you with regret. this Pantisocratic system has given me new life new hope new energy. all the faculties of my mind are dilated — I am weeding out the few lurking prejudices of habit & looking forward to happiness.
Burnett has been with me. he left his fraternal remembrances to you.
I have the Bath volume
Expect it in the course of a week. you are short of cash & we will pay the carriage. I expect money soon & then you shall not want. I wish I could transfuse some of my high hope & enthusiasm into you — twould warm you in the cold wintry night.
fare thee well. thy life is very uncomfortable — but contemplate all things with the eye of philosophy — & you will discover the jewel which Adversity possesses.
My thoughts outran my paper. I could have filled a huge sheet but dreamt not of it on beginning.