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National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 292–294.
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 fear I have lost my brother in this unhappy affair of the
GalateaGalatea, a fifth-rate 32-gun
frigate, had, on 14 August 1804, made an unsuccessful attempt to cut out the French privateer General Ernouf
(formerly the British sloop of war Lilly) lying at the Saintes near Guadeloupe. Of the 90 men sent on the
mission, 65 were killed or wounded, and Southey suspected that his brother was among the dead. Thomas was the first lieutenant, but
was absent from the raid because he had been placed under arrest. Charles Hayman (d. 1804) was made first lieutenant in his stead
and died in the attack.
When you were here you were talking how time draws closer the ties natural ties. I have been very
unfortunate in mine. There is now not one person left with whom I can <who can> talk with me of my childhood, – not
one who nurst me in infancy, or played with me in my fathers house. What a desolating feeling thought is this! to have so
many feelings & recollections which no being on earth can participate.
No man was ever more contented with his lot than I am, for few have ever had more enjoyments, & none had ever
better or worthier hopes. Life therefore is sufficiently dear to me, & long life most desirable, that I may accomplish
all which I design. But yet I could be well content that the next century were over, & my part fairly at an end, having been gone
well thro. to the xxx Just as at school one wished the school days over, tho we were happy enough there, because we expected
more happiness & more liberty when we were to be our own masters, how we might lie as much later in the morning as we
pleased, have no bounds & no exercises; – just so do I wish that my exercise were over, that that ugly chrysalis state
were passed thro which we must all come, & that I had just burst my shell & got into the new world whe with
my wings upon my shoulders, or some inherent power like the wishing cap – which would annihilate space all the
inconveniences of space.
Restoration of all that was ever beloved is to form one of the main blessings of finer happiness in heaven, according
to your Bards, or mine I may say for I have a claim to be affiliated by them. I do think it very probable that their system as it
appears in the Triads,here this. I have made too little use of this in Madoc, not having then
thought of it or felt it enough. The system of progressive existence seems of all others the most benevolent, & all that we do
understand is so wise & so good, & all that we do or do not so perfectly & overwhelmingly wonderful, that the most
benevolent system is the most probable.
I could write you a long letter upon this – but I did not begin to write with this object. – Whenever any thing
distresses me I fly to hard employment, as many fly to the bottle; – what I meant to write about was to trouble you, as thus. In the
first Vol. of the Cambrian Register