2213. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 30 January 1813
2213. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 30 January 1813 *
My dear Grosvenor
I cannot forebear communicating something to you which seems materially & most alarmingly to concern our friend Elmsley. Indeed I do not see how he could walk the streets in safety, if what I have just learnt were generally known. – In Parkins edition of Culpepers Herbal I find oil of Peter recommended as a remedy for a strain! [1] What would become of him if some Apothecary, as remorseless as a surgeon, knowing this should set eyes upon him, from whom it might be procured genuine & in such quantities!
RS.
Jany 30. 1813.
Pray tell Gifford that I desire to review Coleridges play as soon as it is published. [2]
Notes
* Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqr/ Exchequer.
Endorsement: 30
Jany 1813
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 25. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Nicholas Culpeper’s (1616–1654; DNB) compendium of remedies and nostrums; see John Parkins (fl. 1810s), The English Physician, Enlarged with Three Hundred and Sixty-Nine Medicines made of English Herbs, not in any former impression of Culpepper’s Herbal (London, 1810), p. 381, which recommended Oil of Peter (an old name for petrol) as a component of ‘A remedy for a strain’. BACK
[2] Remorse (1813). Southey did not review it for the Quarterly. Instead John Taylor Coleridge’s notice of the second edition appeared in Quarterly Review, 11 (April 1814), 177–190. BACK
