Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
National Library of Scotland, MS 42551 . Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), II, pp. 60-62.
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
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
I should sooner have expressed my own thanks & those of Mrs
Southey for Nelson in his full dress,
The general sort of dislocation which a long sickness produces in a family, with the perpetual sense of anxiety & discomfort attending it, had for weeks or indeed for months rendered me very little adequate to serious efforts of composition, – I should else have been in London ere this. You will see me I think in about three weeks.
Meantime I think the sooner it can be announced that I am employed upon the history of the war,probably prevent Stanier Clarke from laying irreverend hands upon a
subject, which, as Historiographer he is very likely to think his consider his own.might should otherwise feel to a xxx list of subscribers, – &
the names with which you could begin the list would draw others after them, & probably secure a greater first crop than could else
be calculated upon. This is a matter which you must understand far better than I possibly can do. But I am the more induced to mention
it as worthy of consideration, because Sharp to whom I was xx speaking
of my undertaking yesterday, suggested the same thing.
Was there ever such a book as Clarksons life of Wm Penn!whom
to <whom> for public respect as well as individual regard I would not for the world give the slightest pain, – it is
best to leave his volumes unnoticed, – tho I dare say he reckons in full confidence upon a favourable report at my hands. If I could
make a life of Wm Pennxx any degree interesting, the better way would be so to do,
& to avoid all criticism, – but it must needs be a dull task, & I fear it would prove an invidious one, – for I should have to
xx show that Penn was only a good man of considerable talents for business, & little talent for any thing else; –
& that his name has become conspicuous in history, almost by mere accident, – certainly not by any greatness or merit of his own.
He was a Quaker who being rich by inheritance, vested his property in colonial speculations – those speculations happened to succeed, –
& he being xx Quaker necessarily framed his settlement upon the principles of his sect. – I knew he was a mere Quaker in
literature, but like the multitude I had given him credit for being a great man till Clarkson undeceived me. – Such is my feeling upon the subject. Nevertheless if it must be reviewed I will do what I can,
& serve him <it> as we do a calf’s or a cods head, – conceal its inspiditty by the xxx xxxx <aid>
of the sauce.
I have written to Cadiz, to Coruña & to Lisbon, & opened fresh channels of information. Here in England Herries has offered all the assistance his office can furnish, which is
considerable. Mr [MS torn] made no doubt of Marquis Wellesley’s willingness
to assist us, – but I should be glad of a direct assurance of this, for the use of which I could make of it abroad. – The battle of
Vittoriaxxx hold out
against a long blockade; – that once recovered & the work is done. – I hope Mur Sir J Murray has not been too rash at
Tarragona;but be
that as it may xx we are now masters of the field, & the fortresses must fall unless it were possible for the enemy to
recover their superiority. Even a contintental peace would not do that xxx effect that for them when we are so near the
passes as in reality to be masters of them,