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 Wales, MS 4811D. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 348–349.
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.
This time ten years, Wynn – you & I were at Oxford together, & in those ten years I have had my full share of
the contingencies of life. To live fast, is something more than a metaphor, we see it in the system of nature. the short life of the
ephemera is all action & active joy – the toad in a stonethink talk over your Claret till midnight in Skeleton Corner.
And now that this sort of mood is come upon <me> I will tell you some of my speculations upon this world of
mysteries in which we are placed. What the old Bards held of progressive transmigration appears to me a probable belief. There is in
all of us a living power distinct from intellect, or connected with it (as it surely is) by some hypostatic union altogether
unintelligible to our present capacities. I mean that wonderful wisdom which directs our bodily & involuntary actions, that makes
& disposes the secretions – & fills the bosom with milk as the embryo ripens in the womb, this truly aweful life has perhaps
past through a long series of ascending habitations, gradually acquiring those instincts, which are in it perfect wisdom. How well
would such an opinion explain the original difference of human character, for the wolf & the sheep would be equally high in the
scale, & the xxx Life which took one road would go on in it.
Of all living being which have locomotion fish seem the lowest – Even propagation is with them a single & wholly
selfish act, the male not impregnating the spawn till it has been ejected by the female – & then both sexes without sense or
feeling eat it indiscriminately. The Whale & Dolphin species are alone to be excepted. Animals have the οργη
There are some valuable facts respecting instinct which rather strengthen a hypothesis of progressive life, for if a
link of the chain be broken instinct is destroyed. hens hatched in the Egyptian ovenshat reared in the natural way, for they will
very seldom sit. So again, the ducklings hatched under a hen take to the water – the Drakes attempt to tread the hens instead of their
own females. how these things are who can tell? but so they are, & the more we know, the
less shall we be disposed to disbelieve any thing because it is mysterious.
____
Did I ever tell you a very extraordinary fact which happened under my own eyes? I had promised to kill some of the
horned beetles for Carlisle, – for the insect is common about the New Forest
& rare, or unknown, in the other parts of England. he had directed me to pour oil upon them, which to all insects is certain death.
I had killed a female thus, who might have struggled with the poison for about two minutes – certainly not longer. I placed a buck (as
they are called for the love of their horns) in the same saucer, & in like manner pourd about a teaspoonful of oil over him, so as
to touch every part. he also experienced the same suffocation, went thro the same struggles, & was apparently exhausted & in
the very point of death when he discovered the dead female. a paroxysm of lust came upon him, & that insect lived a full half-hour,
in vain attempts to copulate with the dead body, which he could never so place as to effect his purpose. I was as much shocked as
astonished. perhaps a more extraordinary fact has been never been observed. Excitement will I believe always protract death.
one whom I knew fell into the water & was taken out senseless – he had felt no pain – for the accident was sudden. a person who had
attempted suicide by drowning & was restored, relates that the sufferings were long & painful, – the mind had been in the
highest possible state of stimulation. – It is well known that in cases times of contagion they who fear the disease rarely
escape or survive it, but how many are the instances wherein courageous affection or danger duty have braved & escaped
the danger!
Now do I believe that among all the letters which in the course of thirteen years you have received from me – you
had never had one of this complexion before.
y. 1804.