678. Robert Southey to Thomas Hill, [21 May 1802]

678. Robert Southey to Thomas Hill, [21 May 1802] ⁠* 

Duke Street. Friday Afternoon

My dear Sir

I return your book [1]  & am much obliged to you for letting me see it. Excuse the haste in which I write, surrounded with proof sheets, [2]  & preparation for clearing out from London. – I am glad to have seen you again, & that Time has laid his hand on you so gently.

Farewell, & with many thanks for this, & former such kindnesses, believe me always

Yrs very truly

Robert Southey


Notes

* Address: To Thomas Hill Esq.
MS: Houghton Library, MS Hyde 10 651. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.
Dating note: In his letter to Danvers of Monday, 17 May 1802, Letter 677, Southey expressed his intention to leave London by the following Monday or Tuesday. This letter was, therefore, probably written on Friday, 21 May 1802. BACK

[1] Unidentified. But in Southey and Joseph Cottle’s subscription edition of The Works of Thomas Chatterton, 3 vols (London, 1803), I, ‘Preface’, unpaginated, Southey thanked Hill for providing the editors with the poem ‘On Thomas Phillips’s Death’ (I, pp. 191-192), ‘with some other valuable pieces’. Hill was a subscriber to the Chatterton edition. See also Southey to Joseph Cottle, 24 June 1802, Letter 684. BACK

[2] Proofs of the Chatterton edition, eventually published in 1803. BACK

Places mentioned

Duke St, London (mentioned 1 time)