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MS untraced; text is taken from Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850). Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850), II, pp. 220-223 [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.
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I meant to have written sooner; but those little units of
interruption and preventions, which sum up to as ugly an aggregate as the items
in a lawyer’s bill, have come in the way.
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Your plan
For my own comfort, and credit, and peace of mind, I must have a
plan which I know myself strong enough to execute. I can take author by author
as they come in their series, and give his life and an account of his works
quite as well as ever it has yet been done. I can write connecting paragraphs
and chapters shortly and pertinently, in my way; and in this way the labour of
all my associates can be more easily arranged.
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And, after all,
this is really nearer the actual design of what I purport by a bibliotheca than
yours would be, – a book of reference, a work in which it may be seen what has
been written upon every subject in the British language: this has elsewhere been
done in the dictionary form; whatever we get better than that form – ponemus lucro.
The Welsh part, however, should be kept completely distinct, and
form a volume, or half a volume, by itself; and this must be delayed till the
last in publication, whatever it be in order, because it cannot be done till the
whole of the Archaeology
The first part, then, to be published is the Saxon; this Turner will execute, and to this you
and William Taylor may probably
both be able to add something from your stores of northern knowledge. The Saxon
books all come in sequence chronologically; then the mode of arrangement should
be by centuries, and the writers classed as poets, historians, &c, by centuries, or by reigns, which is
better. .
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Upon this plan the
Schoolmen will come in the first volume.
The historical part of the theology, and the bibliographical, I
shall probably execute myself, and you will do the philosophy. By the by, I have
lately found the book of John Perrott