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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 22. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), I, pp. 240–241 [where it is dated 15 June 1795].
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.
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Bedford — he is dead. my dear Edmund Seward. after 6 weeks suffering.
these Grosvenor are the losses that gradually wean us from life. may that man want consolation in his last hour who would rob the survivor of the belief that he shall again behold his friend.
you know not Grosvenor how I loved poor Edmund. he taught me all that I have of good.
When I went with him into Worcestershire I was astonished at the general joy his return occasioned. the very dogs ran out to him. Good God in that room where I have so often seen him — he now lies in his coffin.
it is like a dream. the idea that he is dead. that his heart is cold — that he whom but yesterday morning I thought & talked of — as alive — as the friend I knew & loved — dead. when these things come home to the heart they palsy it. I am sick at heart. & if I feel thus acutely what must his sisters feel — what his poor old mother — whose life was wrapt up in Edmund. Good God I have seen her look at him till the tears ran down her cheek.
there is a strange vacancy in my heart. the sun shines as usual — but there is a blank in existence to me. I have lost a friend — & such a one! —
God bless you my dear dear Grosvenor. write to me immediately. I will try by assiduous employment to get rid of very melancholy thoughts — I am continually dwelling on the days when we were together. there was a time when the sun never rose that I did not see Seward. it is very wrong to feel thus — it is unmanly.
Write to me immediately.
I wrote to Edmund on receiving your last. my letter arrived the hour of his death 4 o clock on Wednesday last. perhaps he remembered me at that hour.
Grosvenor I am a child. & all are children who fix their happiness on such a reptile as man. this great this self-ennobled being called man! the next change of weather may blast him.
there is another world. where these things will be am[MS torn]ded.
God help the man who survives all his friends.