1426. Robert Southey to Walter Scott, 11 February 1808 ⁠* 

My dear Scott

I should long ago have thanked you for your offer of Sir Lancelot, [1]  – but as I had written to Heber requesting from him all his Round Table books, [2]  I waited xxx or rather have been waiting to see whether or not it would be among them. It is above two months since news came that Heber would look them out for me, but as they are not yet arrived & my appearance in London has been expected for the last two or three weeks, it is probably that he is waiting to let me look them out for myself. I go for London next week, – my family having just been increased by the birth of another girl, – an event for which I have been waiting.

I prest upon Longman your opinion as to the shape in which Mort Arthur should be printed. [3]  They in the Row like long rows of books, thinking that those persons who furnish libraries like them also; & they press upon me the expediency of printing one in the same size. They are however very willing to give prints of costume, & this shall be done if I find it possible to get xxxxxx any designs which will satisfy me. Mr Ballantyne printed so carefully as well as so beautifully for me, that I should be glad to have him always for my printer, even without your tho you had not mentioned it, – if it were not for two reasons, – the one that all my proofs pass backward & forward between this place & London franked by George Longman; [4]  – & the other that there is in London a young printer just starting in business who I have known thirteen years, who know xx xxx xxxx my proof sheets; – who learnt his trade upon my earliest publications, & whom I am very desirous of assisting, just at this time, when assistance is of most consequence to him.

Wordsworth has compleated a most masterly poem upon the fate of the Nortons, [5]  – two or three lines in the old Ballad of the Rising in the North gave him the hint. [6]  The story affected me more deeply than I wish to be affected; younger readers however will not object to the depth of the distress, & nothing was ever more ably treated. He is looking too for a narrative subject to be pitched in a lower key. I have recommended to him that part of Amadis wherein he appears as Beltenebros, which is what Bernardo Tasso had originally chosen, [7]  & which is in itself as compleat as could be desired. – This reminds me that to day I met with the name Amadis as a Christian name in Portugal, in the age between Lobeira & Montalvo. [8]  having found Oriana: Briolania Grimanesa & Lisuarte there before, they may be looked upon as five good witnesses that the story is originally Portugueze.

My Chronicle of the Cid [9]  is printed & waits for the Introduction & supererogatory notes, both which will be of considerable length, & must be compleated at Holland House, where I shall find exactly those books which were out of reach of my means. The History of Brazil will be in the press as soon as this is out of it. [10]  What an epoch in history will this emigration of the Braganzas [11]  prove, if we are not cajoled by such cowardly <& dwarfish> politicians as Little Jeffray the Second into making peace & cajoling them back again to Portugal! Such men as this have long since extinguished all political morality & political honesty among us, & now they <would> extinguish national honour, which is all we have left to supply their place. My politics would be to proclaim to France & to the world that England will never make peace with Napoleon Bonaparte, because he has proved himself to be one whom no treaties & no ties can bind, & <still more> because he is notoriously a murderer, with whom it is infamous to treat. or xxxxxx xxxxx Send this language into France, & let nothing else go into it that our ships can keep out, & the French themselves would in no very long time rid the world of a tyrant. The light of Prince Arthurs shield would bring Orgoglio to the ground. [12] 

God bless you –

yrs very truly

R Southey.

Keswick. Feb^y 11. 1808