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British Library, Add MS 47890. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 455–57.Dating note: In this letter Southey states he has received a letter from Thomas Smith in reply to his one dated 25 June 1807 (Letter 1334).
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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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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You have done quite right in keeping back the bedstead & I dare say in every thing else. The MS.S. I hope have been found & sent in the box by the waggon; they are of very great value, & if lost would be irreplaceable.
Rickards
We shall meet oftener than you believe. I shall as a regular thing go every other year to London, & if you cannot
contrive to meet me there, will come home by way of Bristol. In that direction it would not be very difficult establish a line of
acquaintance along the road. This place is a good one for me, because it is cheap: & I would certainly rather keep a boat here than
a coach any where else – Besides I could not move. All my life long I have labouring to get a sum large enough to enable me to settle
& get my things about me, & it has been labour in vain. Coleridge tells you that I am cheated. If he has any reasons for thinking so he should explain them to me: perhaps I may
learn them from Wordsworth when he returns to Grasmere. at any rate I may derive x some instructions from W. upon the art of
driving a bargain – as I know no man likely to make a better for himself. I have no reason to think ill of my publishers, – none
whatever. They have me at their mercy, as they must every person for whom they publish, – there neither is nor can be any check upon
them: they may be rogues if they will, but their fair profits are so enormous that there can be no excuse for them if they are.
I am out of all patience with the printer. There are but two sheets of Espriella in his hands, & I wait day after
day for them in vain.
The Lord be praised that any body should praise my Specimens, for Bedford has contrived to make the book as bad as bad can be.
I shall be on the alarm till the books arrive. Should they be lost in the way I should literally fret myself with a fever. Sam I hope will lose no time in looking after them at Liverpool. vessels come weekly from thence to Whitehaven & Workington, so that they need not lie there. – Beg him when he has reshipped them to apprize me of it.
C. Burnetski’s book to judge of it by the Magazine samples, will be better than
you seem to expect. xxx every body else thinks him. I am in good
hope that he is likely to become a thriving author. He is coming here on a touring project, in which I shall give him all the
assistance in my power, & tread over again with him the ground which you & I, I hope xxx shall travel over once more
before our joints grow stiff.
I have a letter from T Smith in reply to one writtenx me to him, & one from him to me have been lost – which is
very odd. But certainly I wrote when he told me of his sisters arrival at Lisbon,
Sir George & Lady
Beaumont are coming to lodge at Jacksons, & the rooms will be in
better plight for them than they were for Miss Davis.th.
When Tom was at Bristol he bought two sheets of what he called
water-proof paper for me, at the time when you bought the last allotment at Barry’s.ducks,