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MS untraced; text is taken from John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856). Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 76–80.
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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Your letter from Oxford gave me great pleasure. I had been anxiously expecting to hear what news you had of
Worthington,
Since the stirring day of the French Revolution I have never felt half so much excitement in political events as
the present state of Spain has given me. I had often said, that if Europe was to be delivered in our days, in no country was its
deliverance so likely to begin as in Spain; and this opinion, if my recollections do not play me false, you will find expressed in
the reviewal of Semple’s ‘Travels’,felo-de-se, and if the Spaniards would bury the crown and sceptre which
they have left at four cross roads, little as I like to move from home, I think I would gird up my loins and go to assist at the
ceremony as devoutly as ever pilgrim put cockle-shell in his hat, and set off for Compostella. Spain is without a government;
there never was a country whose situation so plainly pointed out what Government would suit it best.
On every account it is desirable that the whole peninsula should be united; on many accounts it is equally
desirable that, in their internal governments, the several kingdoms should be kept distinct. A federal republic would accomplish
both objects, and would remove the main difficulty which stands in the way of a union with Portugal. Arragon, Biscay, &c.,
would retain their own fueros,
The Spaniards have to deliver their country first. I hope and believe that they will deliver it. I never had any hope from the old confederacies of Austria, Russia, &c. I never could have any from the old Governments of the continents; their hour is come, and we have only to regret that it did not come sooner. Nothing but a spirit of liberty and of patriotism can check the power of France. That spirit has arisen, and in a country where it cannot easily be checked or overpowered. Biscay, Asturias, and Galicia, have a population which contains above 400,000 men between the ages of sixteen and fifty, and there is, probably, not a peasant among them who is not a good marksman. The remembrance that they have once before recovered their country will assist them not a little in recovering it again; if the flame be not speedily put out, it must spread; and I heartily pray that the French who have made Lisbon the wretched place it is, may soon find their graves there. If once the tide turns against them, we shall witness such a vengeance as the world has never exhibited before.
I have been sadly impeded in my pursuits, – first, by a bilious fever among the children, which endangered little
Herbert, and latterly, by one of my violent catarrhs, which clings to me, and
afflicts my eyes, so that I spend half the day in the darkest place I can find. Still I get on a little, and in the intervals of
these interruptions, have got on considerably. My last notes to the Cid
Brazil, containing about two fifths of a volume.
Tom left us last week – summoned by an unsolicited appointment, which
happens to be a good one. It is to the Dreadnought, a ninety-eight, Admiral Sotheby’s ship.Dreadnought was a 98-gun second rate ship of the line launched in 1801. She had
fought at Trafalgar (1805) and was now under the command of Rear Admiral Thomas Sotheby (1759–1831), younger brother of the
author, William Sotheby (1757–1833;
Remember me respectfully to your mother. I have a longing recollection of the Hale strong
beer, and shall never see the abominable malt-physic of this country without thinking of it.