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British Library, Add MS 47890. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 223–226 [in part, and misdated 14 March 1809].
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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Yesterday I returned from a visit to Harry & his
bride. I set off on Saturday the third after an early dinner, & walked to Penrith, slept there & took the mail next day to
Bowes, where Robert Lovell is at school, – from thence I walked on ten miles,
the same evening to Staindrop passing thro Bernard Castle, – a place very finely situated on the Tees. On the Monday I rose in time to
walk seven miles before breakfast – which meal I took at George Taylors,the
most delightful walks below such as no other city can boast, – thro fine old trees on the river side, from whence you look to
the noble building on the opposite side, & see one bridge thro the other. Harry is well off there getting rapidly into practise & living among all sorts of people, Prebends &
Roman-Catholicks, Fox-hunters, Cock-fighters, & Old women, with all of whom he seems to accord equally well. There is an old lady
whom they call his Mamma, because she takes such care of him, – as indeed she is bound to do, for she lives by his rules, & he
keeps her alive on nothing but milk. It is a place where any person might live contentedly, – among all these thousand & one
acquaintances there are some whom one might soon learn to love, x a great many with whom xxx to be amused, &
none that are insufferable. Mary seems to think herself fortunate in
finding so many kind-hearted persons.
One day I dined with Dr Zouch who wrote the Life of Sir P. Sidneyof with him. Dr Bell was there, the original
xxx transplantor of that xxx Hindoo system of teaching which Lancaster has adopted;r Fenwick,
On Monday last, after a weeks visit, I took coach to Newcastle, where I had appointd to pass a day with James Losh, whom you know I have always mentioned as coming nearer the ideal of a perfect man
than any other person whom it has ever been my fortune I know, – so gentle, so firm; so zealous in all good things, so equal-minded, so
manly, so without speck or stain in his whole life. I slept at his house which is two miles from Newcastle, & the next day took the
mail to Carlisle, – it is an interesting road, – frequently in sight of the Tyne before you reach Hexham, & then as frequently
along the Eden. xxx We reached Carlisle at half-past ten. Yesterday I rose at five & walked to Hesket to breakfast – 14
miles, – a mile lost on the way made it 15. There was many a gentle growl within for the last five miles. from thence another stage of
14 brought me home by half-after two – a good march, performed with less fatigue than any other of equal length in the whole course of
my pedestrian campaign.
I found all well at home – God be praised. Your letter was waiting for me, & one from Gifford, containing 16–8 for my articles in the second Quarterly,xxx a reviewal of
Holmes’s American Annals in his hands for the third number,t Neots, the brother of Alfredxxx office of justifying Frere against Sir J Moores friends,
being decidedly of opinion that he was thoroughly in the right, & the General utterly unequal to his situation.
Send for Wordsworths pamphlet,
I am almost as glad you have got Solly again as Solly himself can be, & will forgive soft Tommy all his
past actions & fatheadedness for letting you get him on board.Dreadnought, the flagship of his younger brother Rear Admiral Thomas Sotheby (1759–1831).