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Bodleian Library, Eng. Lett. c. 24. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 463–464.
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.
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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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The severed halves are united, & both afloat in the world, such visitors making no long tarriance with me.
Your question where Henry Kirke Whites Remainsxxxx same provoking question which has been often put to me about my own publications, & xxx implies a
sort of ignorance by which I xxx am continually a loser. Any bookseller will get any book if it be wanted. Longman is one of the publishers of this.
Do as you please about the Specimens,& counteract the object in view, & hurt the effect of what is doing there. I
do not think any thing can ever carry off a book so mangled by the printer, to say nothing of other faults, – & yet am I
exceedingly desirous it should go off, for the sake of showing how good a one it may be made.
Here is something which I do not wish to be talked about. – Overtures were made me to bear a part in the Edinburgh
Review ‘chusing my own books, & expressing my own opinions.’ The pay is now ten guineas per sheet & soon to be greatly
increased, – & I was assured that I might thus add one or two hundred a year to my income. – I have returned a decided
refusal,xx upon
the grounds of my utter disapprobation of the system on which he proceeds. Tell Elmsley this, tho he may perhaps think I have done imprudently. The overtures were made thro Walter Scott who will probably be sufficiently surprized at the reply, tho especial care was
taken to make it as courteous as it was decisive. The Annual pays only seven pounds – not equal to five Scotch measure: the advantage
to have been gained from the civility which would have been insured to my future publications was still greater than the increase of
immediate pay – but it was impossible for me to coalesce with a man whom I consider as ‘a bad politician, a worse moralist, & a
critic in all matter of taste equally incompetent & unjust.’ These were the words I used.
Grosvenor there is ‘a sting in my tail as long as a flail which makes me grow bolder & bolder! like the Dragon of
Wantley, – & Jeffrey is not the Moore of Hall Moore-Hall of whom
I can stand in fear.to with certainty
who reviewed Thalaba in the British Critic & Madoc in the Monthly,
Espriella is coming again to England.