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University of Kentucky. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 99–102.
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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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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You have, I hope, before this received the ‘Chronicle of the Cid,’ and the new edition of the ‘Letters,’ both which
Longman was instructed to send to Tavistock Street.Nescit vox missa reverti;
I need not tell you what my feelings were respecting Sir Hew Dalrymple’s convention.
There will be bloody work in Spain, but I have no fears for the result. Meantime, will this present deliverance of Portugal enable you to recover some part of your lost property?
Winter is come upon us here prematurely – at least six weeks before its usual time. My grasshopper season is at an end,
and fire and candle evenings bring with them regular employments, which there is now nothing to disturb. When Longman will be for
putting my first volume
The last news from my publishers was that the edition of ‘Thalaba’l. from this source.
Slow and sure, but it is satisfactory to see the fruit trees of one’s own planting beginning to bear, however slender the first crop.
The most apparent alteration will be in the manner of printing. It went through the press while I was last in Portugal, and I never saw
a proof sheet of it. There is an unpleasant effect by the manner of placing the notes; for many pages have only a line of text, and so
the eye runs faster than the fingers can turn them over. I shall now place the notes at the end of each book.
I am getting on with my new ‘Letters’,almost all the information with which books can supply me.
We go on well. Herbert grows stout, and Edith looks like a great girl beside the two younger ones. Of Harry I have not heard for some time, but I conclude he has not much employment,
because the papers do not speak of any remarkable mortality at Durham. Tom has no
chance of any practice in his line: the maritime war is at end as to what Irishmen call ‘de fun of de ting’, and with that said fun has
gone all his chance of preferment.