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.
National Library of Wales, MS 4812D . Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850), IV, pp.41-42 [in part].
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.
I was in Bedfords office when your letter arrived; its
intelligence was certainly a disappointment, tho I felt it somewhat less than Dapple who does not know by experience how little the real happiness which
fathers derive from their children is affected by such things.xxx opinion.
Pyesonus of the office would be dropt, or if it were not that I might so execute it as to give it a new character,
& that as detur digniori
at xx whatever might be my determination,
was to call without delay at the Admiralty, thank C. for what was certainly
intended well, & learn how the matter stood.
Accordingly I called on Croker. He had spoken to the Prince & the Prince observing that I had written “some good things in
favour of the Spaniards” said the office should be given me. You will admire the reason; – & infer from it that I ought to have
been made historiographer because I had written Madoc.
Thus it stood when I made my first call at the Admiralty. I more than half suspected that Scott would decline the offer, & my own mind was made up before this suspicion was
verified. The manner in which Scott declined it was the handsomest possible:
nothing could be more friendly to me, or more honourable to himself.attempt to commemorate
them in verse, or not, as the spirit moved, in that case I should willingly accept the situation as a mark of honourable distinction,
which it would then become.
Be this as it may, the light in which I now look at this business makes me very sincerely thankful for such a
wind-fall. The salary paltry in itself: but it will nearly if not entirely cover a life-insurance for £3000, & to this purpose, the
moment the appointment is confirmed I mean to appropriate it. I am already insured for £1000 & this A provision will
thus be made for my family, sufficient with the produce of what I shall leave behind me, in addition to the value which to
place them in respectable, if not in easy circumstances. My disposition is too happy a one for me ever to have felt any fears upon this
subject, – I shall nevertheless feel a deep pleasure when this intention is effected, & the object secured.
Direct to me here. I shall remain in & about x town between four & five weeks longer.