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National Library of Scotland, MS 20768. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 467–469.Manuscript note: No address sheet – text is from a typed copy of the letter.
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
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I am sorry to hear so bad an account of your health. To me who in the South of England am called a West-countryman it seems strange that any one should think of removing into Cumberland for the sake of climate. Yet certainly it must be a great change from the bleak Edinburgh winds which I remember with a sort of shivering antipathy to the long cheerless streets of your new town. Do you suffer most from cold, or from damp weather? We have more rain than they have at Penrith – but are much warmer; our mountains stop the clouds which come from the coast & manufacture plenty of their own – but they also screen us from bitter East winds, & our side of Skiddaw is green for many weeks before that which looks towards Carlisle has lost its winter covering. In our neighbourhood there is no house of the description that would suit you. I am making enquiry round about, – the neighbourhood of Cockermouth would suit you best in point of climate, as neither too near the sea, nor the mountains; – but any place on that side the mountains will be preferable to the Penrith side. Heartily glad shall I be to have you within such a distance that you may often see Keswick Lake, & receive ocular proof that there are times when neither pen nor pencil can convey ought but a faint idea of its awefulness.
Espriella
Your opinion of the moral & political opinions which pervade it, is highly gratifying to me. It is time that there should be a Sect of Moral Economists in the world & let you & I do our best to establish it.
There needed no explanation concerning the coincidence in one of your poems & mine, – the passage has that
dissimilitude which no imitator could ever have given it. You have elsewhere noticed another such which is wrongly imputed to me
(unless my memory fails me) but is I believe to be found in a poem of Coleridges upon the Princess of Wales, published many years ago in the Monthly Magazine.
I am much obliged to you for procuring Vieyra, & very much rejoiced at it. Have the goodness to send it by the
Carlisle Coach, directed to be forwarded from Carlisle by the Keswick carrier. You will be
interested by the history of that Vieyra,
I beg my remembrance to Mrs Grahame & am