Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
Manuscripts and Archives Section, New York Public Library. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 407–409.Dating note: Despite the postmark, the contents of this letter suggest it was written before that to Rickman of 19 November 1805.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
Our succession of visitors is over, the summer birds have all taken flight. The Islanders are gone, the General is gone. & our in door circle also is contracted, Harry & Miss Barker have left us, the season for reviewing is begun & I have put on my winter cloaths & commenced my hybernation.
My Scotch excursion with Elmsley was a pleasant one. We saw
Melrose on our way, if not the most picturesque ruin, certainly the finest architectural one in the whole island.side end of a
flat bottomed crazy boat as she floated sideways down a rapid stream, & to keep her even, & prevent her from striking against
the rocks & so upsetting. I did my part well, & having no evil designs upon the salmon came home quite innocent, &
sufficiently instructed in a very singular <savage> sport. Scott is a pleasant man, of open & friendly manners, so full of
topographical anecdote that having seen him you would be perfectly well satisfied how well history may be preserved by tradition. We
saw much classic ground besides the Tweed. The Yarrow with Newark Castle, Branksome overlooking the Tiviot & Johnny Armstrongs
strong hold on the Esk.
At Edinburgh Jeffrey was invited to meet me. Before he would
venture to do this he sent me his reviewal of Madoc, then printed but not published.xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx they who fling dirt at me will
only dirt their own hands – for I am out of reach. So Jeffrey & I met
courteously & are very good friends. In fact I am not very irascible, & if I had been so – found him too little to be angry
with. he is not above five foot one. a man of ready wit, no taste & so little knowledge that it would have been scarcely
xxxxx inaccurate to have said none. Bating the very immoral trade which he has set up, of <publicly> speaking ill
of books which he makes no scruple to commend in private, a good-natured man, who only writes malignantly because it gratifies his
vanity & sells his review. He has since been to the Lakes & supt with me.
Of all the Scotch reviewers who have fallen in my way, & with the exception of Sidney Smith
Bedford sleeps over the unhappy Specimens,hav occasions me is more than he conceives. I am vexed – but have learnt to
rely upon myself next time.
I sent to Rickman the journey of D Manuel to London, & have
another large cargo ready to send, from which you will be able to form an adequate idea of the tone & temper of the work.
I have seen the Monthly Review of Madoc, some wretched man who either has been reviewed by me with deserved severity,
or fancies that he has – has been permitted to vent his spleen there, which he has done very clumsily. It is stupid & blunt ill
nature. A blue-bottle fly wriggling his tail & fancying he has a sting in it.
Edinburgh is the finest city I have ever seen. having had no new coat since I was in London & no new hat except a seven shilling white one of felt, it was judged proper by Edith that I should beautify my appearance in Scotland, & also adorn myself with new boots & new pantaloons. But when I was there, & contemplated the very respectable figure I made, considering the vanity of externals, & moreover that as learning was better than house & land it must be much better than new cloathes – I laid out all my money in books, – & have in consequence the pleasure of laughing at the manœuvre & reading the books.
How goes on Michael Angelo?
How are our friends at Stockwell?r Smith.