402. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 27 April 1799

402. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 27 April 1799 *
My dear Grosvenor
Tom & I expect to be in town together to breakfast on Tuesday morning, at the Saracens head, Friday Street, Cheapside [1] Side. I will call at the Exchequer [2] as near one as I can. before that time we shall have made our arrangements. Tom expects to stay in London but a few days. if Burnett will walk with me I shall eat my dinners [3] & walk off. Burnett arrives in town from Yarmouth at the same time with us. if he will not ramble & you have a bed at Brixton I will buy a Dutch Grammar & study Jacob Cats. [4] with my present feelings – it is almost ten o clock & I am tired hand & foot with walking & reviewing – I should look on with more satisfaction to reading & translating Dutch poetry than to wandering over the mountain sublimity of Switzerland. I want books & quietness – the less fatigue the better, & the less mental emotion. agitation is become painful.
I shall bring Madoc with me. 12 books are written out of 15. [5] should I be your guest at Brixton it will be the second epic poem that I shall finish there. [6] I wish to read it to you, if you can bear the almost improvisatore tone of one to whose manner of reading you are not accustomed.
Tom is recovered. I am not – & this is my ill time. however I begin to sleep well without opiates, & hope to be soon as drowsy ever as ever at the hour of owl-rising.
I want to be introduced to Pye – & for the same reason fancy he would like to be introduced to me, that we <may> talk about Alfred. [7] never did I go to London with the prospect of seeing so many friends – yet never did I leave home with more reluctance. exertion, fatigue, alteration are hateful to me. my sensations are such that like certain politicians I think all changes must be needs for the worse.
Now I have no wish for the fortnights vacancy but your library every morning & you every evening. tomorrow I shall think again of my knapsack & a ramble.
Good night.
yrs – huzza! as sleepily as ever
Robert Southey
Saturday night. 27 Apr. 99.
Notes
* Address: To/ Grosvenor Charles Bedford Esqr/ Exchequer/ London/
Single
Postmarks: [partial] BR/ AP; B/AP/ 29/ 99
Endorsement: 27 April. 1799
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c.
23. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished. BACK
[3] Southey was still – nominally – studying law. He needed to dine at Gray’s Inn in order to fulfil the terms of his legal studies. BACK
[5] Southey completed a fifteen-book version of Madoc in 1797-1799; the poem was heavily revised before its publication in 1805. BACK