786. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [c. 26 May 1803]
786. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [c. 26 May 1803] *
Dear Wynn
To your ? inclosing the proof I thus reply. Amadis [1] fills four volumes. the Annual Review [2] was advertised for publication early in this present month. I shall come to London as soon as I receive certain commissions from my Uncle to be there executed. the House at Hereford has been let under its value for three years. the picture is Keenans [3] own.
The inclosed is a true story, or else there have been lying historians in the world & the Pope is not infallible. [4] You have seen Garci Ferrandez [5] – & I will send you in my next a ballad of K Ramiro. [6] In my capacity of Poet Laureat to the Morning Post I shall write more of these things & perhaps one day make a volume of them under the title of Romances of Spanish History. [7]
Tell me some politics. I am damning the French impudence like every body else – but the treaty of Amiens [8] was a foolish business – & this is the fruits of it. I am trembling for Lisbon – next Autumn my history will be so far advanced as to make a voyage there desirable on that score – & I am almost afraid that this poor carcase of mine will need the help of that climate sooner.
God bless you
R S.
Notes
* Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ Lincolns Inn/
London
Postmark: [partial] BRISTOL/ MAY 26
Endorsements: May 26 1803; Mr Wynn
MS: National Library
of Wales, MS 4811D. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished. BACK
[3] John Keenan (fl. c. 1780–1819), Irish portrait painter. His portrait of Southey was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803. BACK
[4] Southey’s enclosure has not survived, but was probably ‘Queen Urraca, and the Five Martyrs of Morocco’, Morning Post, 1 September 1803; see Southey to Wynn, [early June] 1803, Letter 791. BACK
[5] ‘Garci Ferrandez’ was dated ‘Bristol, 1801’ in Southey’s Poetical Works of Robert Southey, 10 vols (London, 1837-1838), VI, p. 121. However, it does not seem to have been published until nearly a decade after its composition, first appearing in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1811), II, pp. 637-641. BACK
