488. Robert Southey to John May, 9 February 1800 ⁠* 

My dear friend

It is so long since I have heard from you that I feel a degree of uneasiness at your silence. but one great benefit of marriage is that it never allows those intervals of vacancy which must occur in the best directed solitude, & which probably create the epistolary mania in very young persons. this was my own case once. I wrote not from a fullness of matter to communicate but from sheer emptiness – day after day – fools-cap sheets & close writing for three pages & the top & bottom of the fourth. more knowledge & the daily increasing consciousness of how much yet remains to be learnt. more employments & marriage have long since cured me. My pleasure now consists in receiving letters, not in writing them.

The state of my health is in some respects amended, in others stationary. I had accustomed myself to low living, seldom eating except at breakfast & dinner & then with an appetite no ways like my Portugal one; & when at home drinking only water. Since my removal here I have increased the number of my meals, taken porter with my meat, & wine after it. certainly I feel stronger, – but the startings & miserable feelings which have so long distressed me at night still continued & were only lessened by ether, not removed. About a fortnight ago I breathed the oxyd of azote [1]  – the air whose strange effects you must have seen some account of in the Reviews. [2]  I had been fearful of it since my return to Bristol – but on making the experiment, was surprized by its beneficial influence. I slept without for the disease which for months before had invariably preceded sleep. after several nights it recurred again. I repeated the dose. & have taken it about once in three days since, & the complaint has been till now removed. to say the gas has been the cause would be hasty – but I cannot help thinking so. The pain in my side still continues – its intermittance seems to prove that there is no organic affection, & this is the opinion of all my medical friends. the spring is advancing – & I hope something from warmer & less inconstant weather. certainly I will avoid the next winter. the experience of two has satisfied me of the ill effect of that season on my health. I have written to Lisbon, xx x & stated to my Uncle my reason for thinking of removing somewhere abroad, & the sum I can raise for the consequent expence. my reasons also for not determining immediately upon Lisbon, at the same time stating that if he thought that more advisable, all circumstances considered, I would adopt that plan, & employ my time there by seriously beginning the History of the country. [3]  a work which I could compleat in England, but for which the materials & the necessary topographical knowledge must be sought in Portugal. his answer will probably determine me. On the whole I am inclined to wish that his advice may favour this plan. Occasional excursions of a fortnight or three weeks would afford novelty enough, & enable <make> me well acquainted with the whole of the country. I know the language well enough to travel without embarrassment, & the subject of my studies would supply a constant interest of employment. Less than two quarto volumes could not comprize the work. I should suppose not less than three for the great Indian Episode would require one to itself. the pecuniary profit of such a work might be estimated at not much less than a thousand pounds. Gibbons six quartos [4]  acquired him eight thousand. here is a great plan – & the ske embryo skeletons of chapters on the religion & manners & literature of the country are now [MS torn]ng before <me.> & one half filld sheet of paper by the next packet may [MS torn] them all!

I wait here for this letter to regulate by it my movements. either to lose no time in getting into Germany that I may reach Trieste by autumn; or to return to Burton, which will not be & wait there a fit time for my departure to Falmouth. in either case I shall see you – either when I visit London, or when you visit Hampshire.

In the course of a very few weeks I shall have the second Anthology [5]  to send you. numerous contributions have arrived, & I shall not have written a single line myself with an immediate view to the volume. [MS torn] Thalaba eight books are finished.

Will you exert yourself to assist the Chatterton subscription? [6]  I am setting all my friends to work in this way, & a little trouble will render the sister & her daughter [7]  comfortable for life. the volumes will be fairly priced at 16 shillings. we have 177 names on our list, chiefly Bristol & Cumberland nam subscriptions. from Hampshire I expect 20 or 30 more, a greater number from Norfolk. & in London I suppose the great subscription will be. the sale of 750 copies would produce about between four & five hundred pounds. &, the circumstances considered, this will be a smaller subscription than ought to have been expected.

Edith desires to be remembered. God bless you.

yrs affectionately

Robert Southey.

Kingsdown. Bristol. Feb^y. 9. 1800.