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.
British Library, Add MS 30928. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 135-140; Adolfo Cabral (ed.), Robert Southey: Journals of a Residence in Portugal 1800-1801 and a Visit to France 1838 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 157-160 [in part].
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.
You have not written – & I am rather anxious lest the new Thalaba book should not have reached you. I sent a copy
to Wynn to guard against the accident.poetical romance – on the
half-title you will take care to use the more proper word metrical.
My Mother will show you her letter by this packetx been wetted, & for three days threatened
with dark & lowering clouds. of course the Sun was welcome – it dried us & warmed us, & made every thing chearful. the
country is hilly & well watered – olives & oranges every where, & cypresses thick as poplars about London. mountains
bounded the scene – the farthest object was one snowy summit of the Estrella, glittering in the sun. down the southern boundary a few
clouds were floating, so beamy white that they seemed like light condensed to visible shape & substance. The city with its fine
convents shone on an eminence over the Mondego, now in the fullness of its waters. Coimbra is the spot of which the historian & the
poet scarcely ever loses sight – whatever was interesting in the history or literature of Portugal centered here – & I looked at
the city with the strong recollection of old times & old heroes. Knowing what to expect within I was prepared for the contrast –
yet was it impossible not to feel disappointment at quitting so rich a scene to enter narrow & stinking streets, crowded with
blackguard students, or with townspeople rendered vicious & knavish & impudent by the contagion of the University. the first
object was disgusting – passing under an old gateway – the prison fronted us. & two gallows-faced fellows fastened with chains
round their necks were standing in the street begging. We met several other prisoners dragging their fetters thro the town on the same
employment. Every where in Coimbra some relic of antiquity presents itself, but every where it is mixed with modern patches. In the
monastery of Santa Cruz, one of the oldest & most famous establishments in the kingdom I saw nothing so remarkable as – the poultry
yard. the royal tombs were comparatively modern & miserably poor after what we had seen at Alcobaça & Batalha. the sword of
Alfonso Henriquex what I knew not to be genuine. Relics affected me little – what was a finger of Saint
Antony
The Fountain of Tears was far the most heart-interesting object in this vicinity. it is the spot where Ignes de
Castro
Of Museums & Colleges & Public Buildings – what is to be said? would you not yawn over the description – as we
did over the sight? things that might each have excited admiration if seen simply, cloy in a collection, like a dinner of sweet-meats.
Of more importance is the moral picture of Coimbra – the spring from whence Portugal is watered. it is Westminster & Oxford united
– at once school & university. the students are attached to English literature – indeed to medical studies it is become
indispensable. they are also votaries to the French principles. but – a set of more impudent blackguards never were assembled in one
city. they followed us with such impertinence that had we not been with two Professors
I can only skim the cream of our after journey. our party was swoln to the very inconvenient number of eight when the
Miss Petries
One anecdote is worth mentioning. we were every where the sight of the neighbourhood – a boy on his way to school stopt
to see him us. he had his book under his arm & I was anxious to see what a fine clever looking boy
about 14 might be learning. it was “Directions for a converted Sinner.” poor boy! I longed for the translation of Robinson Crusoe
Of our return. We expect Portugal to make her peace
Edith sadly wanted the cloak on her journey – which her sisters