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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 25. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), II, pp. 103–106.
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.
My only reason for putting the dedication in Latin was that I knew not how to render in English the ‘in
perpetuam amicitiæ memoriam’.consilio pollens,
To –
G. C. B.
this poem is inscribed
by his old schoolfellow & friend
R. S.
– if it be in Latin I should like after the G. C. B to insert if I were more sure of the Latinity
olim condiscipulo et semper amico
Chuse you between them, – for my own part I prefer the Latin, because it is <only> for things of this
kind only that I have felt ever felt our language x ill adapted, – but my reason for the
preference professing it here but the reason of my preference in this instance is the in perpetuam &c
– a foreign tongue here gives something of the same kind of license as a mask.
Some of your remarks upon these last books have been profitably attended to. About Mahommeds coffin you will find that
I have Mohammedan authority.xx tone of the speech cannot be mistaken, – its use
was to introduce some of those appropriate allusions of which the poem stands in need, the time in which it is laid being barren of
costume.
I have My ear is always accustomed to hear humble not umble
The string of namesnature of
the composition of the army, being Greek Roman, Gothic & Sueve & Vandal.
I will substitute wretch for Beast <or Blind> if you like it better. The only question is which is the more
natur dramatic; that is to say the more natural
In the first book there is all bloody all abominable things,
____
If Gifford lets you review Rodericksui generis,selon les
regles.becomes would no longer delight another. We
admire Homer deservedly (& undeservedly too, as might very easily be shown by a good analysis of the two poems), – but if Homer
were living t now, he would write very differently: book after book of butchery, however skilfully performed is unsuitable
to the European state of mind at present, & the raw head & bloody-bone-monsters of the Odyssey are not better. In this age
& xxx Homer would address himself more to our feelings & reflecting faculties.
If you say any thing of my stile & ‘the school’ as it is called, there would have been a good opportunity if some
egregious nonsense upon this subject had not got into the last number of the Quarterly.when of what might be termed poetical puberty when the voice of song began to be fixed, I had Bowles by heart. – Perhaps I have read more poetry than any man living, – much
Italian, much French, – almost every thing Spanish, Portugueze Latin & English, & in former times a proper share of Greek. But
for many years I had entirely laid it aside till within these few months. My mature style aims at nothing but to express in pure
English what I have to say: – xxx I profess nothing but to avoid the barbarisms & nonsense which have so long past
current in verse. Briefly, the subject being such as seems good to me, & the manner of treating it my own, I <endeavour to>
write <in> such English as would bear the assay of Q Elizabethsbad in
itself; – the sense may be worthless, but it is not nonsense.
Ballantyne was instructed to preserve the mss for you: I hope he has done so,
& that I may get it back from him in time to send it to you by Atra Nox,
Make the corrections in the Odes.
My Bustxxx x on the way – the head however remaining with no other injury than the loss of part
of the scalp. I have proposed to erect it upon a mop stick in the pea-garden, & accommodate it with one of my old hats, – where it
may serve to frighten away the birds.
Oliver Goffe was christened after his godfather Oliver Cromwell, & thereby came by one of the finest names in our
language. I marvel at your disliking it. Would you like Oliver Newman better for the title?methodisticé, or rather quakericé in reference to
his new birth. If you object of this remember the Οΰτις