3086. Robert Southey to Charles Butler, 2 March 1818⁠* 

Keswick. 2 March. 1818

Dear Sir

It is not till this evening that I have been able to acknowledge your obliging letter of Jan^y. 2^d. by thanking you for enriching my library with your works. [1]  They arrived only an hour ago in a box which I had long been expecting from Mess^rs Longmans. I look with great pleasure to a careful perusal of them.

You have indeed Sir written in a spirit of true Catholic charity, in the true acceptation of the word. And did the question of a reunion depend upon such minds as yours, that most desirable of all objects would easily be effected. As yet, according to human judgement, it is far distant, – yet sooner or later we shall be one fold, under one Shepherd, – & the increasing toleration of your Church is an advance toward it. I shall be much interested in your history of the English Catholics. Some of your martyrs (for I allow & respect the name) were men every way excellent. I wonder that a collection of Southwells works is not published. He holds no mean rank among the Elizabethan poets, & as a prose writer, he has rarely been excelled.

His “Epistle of Comfort, to the Reverend Priests & to the Honorable, Worshipful & other of the Lay sort restrained in durance for the Catholic faith” is a most beautiful composition of its kind. [2] 

I am still busy with the Jesuits in South America; – their establishments in the centre of that continent among the Chiquitos & the Moxos are less known than those in Paraguay, – but not less interesting; & had they not been placed in a most unhealthy region, they would soon have outstripped them in prosperity.  [3]  I verily believe that if the Jesuits had not been expelled from that country, there would not at this day be have been a single horde exisiting there in a savage state. My concluding volume is in great forwardness, & will contain a great portion of matter altogether new to the public, being drawn from unprinted documents.

Believe me Dear Sir

with sincere respect

your obliged & obedient servant

Robert Southey.