227. Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, [c. 25 June 1797]*

My dear Cottle

You mistake me concerning the wine. I want only the great hamper & the carpet. there is wine in the hamper & I shall not want the two dozen till we return to town. you directed to London & your letter followed me here.

I have found Chapelain1 by the industry & kindness of John May — a pupil of Coleridges brother whom I became acquainted with at Lisbon, & who at every meeting rises higher & higher in my esteem & love. strong terms for one who knows enough of mankind to distrust & despise them. I found a valuable Spanish book likewise in town which will be inestimable in my new edition. Dr Aikin tells me my poems are gone in London. I must now write up to give directions for sending Chapelain & shall then immediately set seriously to thoroughly correct my Joan of Arc & make it a work worthy of myself & of her.

When you come (& the sooner the better) I shall be obliged to you to bring me a little box of books from my mothers. the Salisbury Coach by which you will come passes thro Bath — xxxx for my xxxxxx xxx the box is not a large one — & unluckily has my interleaved Joan in it.

I met your ci-devant minister Mr Hughes2 in London.

We will make you as comfortable here as we can. you will not mind an ugly bedroom a-la-mode Espagnol in conveniences. it is by Ediths desire I say this — for judging of you by myself, I feel that you will be satisfied & happy with seeing me.

Do you know my brother Tom’s adventures? Phillips3 has requested me to get a particular account of them for the Magazine.4 “The Rhedycenian Barbers”5 is Grosvenor Bedfords — & a most incomparable parody it is.

A long walk on the beach has made me horribly hungry — dinner is ready — & I hope the Post will call for my letter. apropos. direct

at Mrs Barnes’s6

Burton near Ringwood

Hampshire.

yrs affectionately R Southey.

Sunday

Notes

Address: Mr Cottle/ High Street/ Bristol
Stamped: RINGWOOD
Endorsements: Robt. Southey June 1797; 30 (82)
MS: Columbia University Library. ALS; 4p. (c).
Unpublished.
Dating note: Dated from internal evidence, in particular Southey’s reference to his intention to request that John May send him the copy of Chapelain he had located; see Southey to May, 26 June 1797 (Letter 228). Back

1.  Jean Chapelain (1595–1674), La Pucelle ou la France Délivrée (1656). Southey included a summary of it in the second edition of Joan of Arc, published in 1798. Back

2.   Joseph Hughes (1769–1833; DNB), a Baptist minister, who in the early to mid 1790s worked as a teacher and assistant pastor at the Baptist Academy and Broadmead Baptist Church in Bristol. During his time there he met Joseph Cottle and moved in literary circles. He took up a post in Battersea, London in July 1796 and remained there until his death. In 1799 he was involved in the formation of the Religious Tract Society. Back

3.  Sir Richard Phillips (1767–1840; DNB), proprietor of the Monthly Magazine. Back

4.  For an account of Thomas Southey’s ‘adventures’, see Southey’s letter to the editor of the Monthly Magazine 4 (August 1797) (Letter 241). Back

5.  Grosvenor Charles Bedford’s poem was published in the Monthly Magazine, 3 (May 1797), 382 under the signature ‘P.H.’ (‘Peter the Hermit’, a signature Bedford had used during his schooldays). Back

6.  Mrs Barnes (first name and dates unknown) was Southey’s landlady at Burton in 1797. Back