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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. d. 47. ALS; 4p. . Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 130–131 [in part].
These letters were edited with the assistance of Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt
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At last I hope there appears to be an end to the anxiety in which one thing after another has kept me with little intermission for more than two months. I cannot say that either child or mother are well; but both are materially better. The little one has been very ill with a spasmodic cough, the probability of an abscess is over, for the tumour is diminishing, as soon as it began to appear, one of the breasts was affected, – & that complaint also after some ten days fomentation seems to be going away. – All this tried my spirits severely, – & they are now pretty much like my ways & means, that is, they reach out with good husbandry, but are very unequal to any extraordinary demand upon them. – But of this you may always rest assured, that when I make most progress at my desk I am in best health both of body & mind. Nothing exhilarates me so much as a good days work at those employments by which no passion is excited.
Thank you for your stewardship. When you receive the next quarter
send me the balance – for I shall need it as soon as it can be had. It will be very
inconvenient for me if Gifford does not give place in his next number (that is the one after that
which is now due) to my sepulchral paper.of the work, because
there existed no previous work by which I could measure my scale, &
discover <see> what lay before me. It was travelling in an undiscovered
country. The historical part is finished, & I am half way thro the concluding
chapter, – which gives a view of Brazil as it was in 1808, – a tremendous chapter
both in length & labour.state of
its manners & civilization, geography, the manners of its aborigines, –
th & its actual state at the point of time when the writer
concludes, – as I have shall have prepared of Brazil; – a country of which
less was known than of any other (central Africa alon excepted)
xx which will soon be of the greatest commercial importance to G
Britain, & is in a fair way of becoming the greatest country of the New World, –
having I think x as much to hope as Yankee-Xxxxxxx <Land> –
& less to fear. – There is yet a months work more, tho 706 pages are
printed.
You are right concerning the monument.hominate allegory in stone. – Chantrey
Dr
Bell has sent me a very handsome barometer. This I mention because it
has plx been vacillating a hairs breadth about change
for the last week, & the weather all the while as fixed as fate: whence I
conclude that Dollandrather too young it would
have been better had the rat been not so young. It was more like roasted-pig than any
thing else. Shedaw liked it very much. Sara
thought it not amiss, but as for Mrs C. – you should have seen her
face when we talkd of it at breakfast.
It is a good thing for me that Tom is so near, – his house is a gunshot from
that delightful beck in Newlands wherein you & I have bathed. And there I shall
bathe before this weekx is over, if the xxxxxx weather continue
as warm as it is now.
I have had a cold & a touch of lumbago, – but both are gone.