1257. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 4 January 1807*
My dear Rickman
I thank you & Mrs R. – as truly for your invitation as if I could accept it. By Gods blessing however before the end of the year you shall see me & my first volume on our way to the Printers.1
I have no more reviewing than a few friendly books, & a few others which came here for my brmy brother, but for which his Doctorship had not the fit knowledge. they will soon be done, & with them my reviewing for ever. Don Manuel2 is in more forwardness than you suppose. Much I am obliged to omit which was intended – yet as it is, am advancing hard upon the end of the third volume – & then shall stop. the printer3 lags, but my last note will spur him. Wynn has been my Franker General during your absence.4
My Pisgah-View of Brazil sheweth it to be a Land of Promise.5 It does provoke me when I think of that rascally Scotchman who wrote a brief & bad summary of the Voyage of Columbus & the conquests of Mexico & Peru – & called this a History of America!6
My end in writing now is to beg your help for the inclosed.
Vale RS.
Jany 4. 1807.
Notes
Address: To/ John Rickman Esqr
Endorsement: RS./ 4 Jan 1807
MS: Huntington Library, RS 98. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished. Back
1. Of the Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807). Back
2. Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella. Translated from the Spanish (1807). Back
3. Letters from England was being printed by Richard Taylor (1781–1858; DNB), printer and naturalist, who would go on to establish the publishing firm of Taylor and Francis with his son William Francis (1817–1904; DNB) in 1852. Back
4. With Parliament no longer in session, Rickman’s franking privileges as Secretary to the Speaker of the House of Commons were suspended; see Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 8 August 1806, Letter 1208. Back
5. According to the Bible, it was from the summit of Mount Pisgah in Jordan that Moses beheld the Promised Land. Back
6. William Robertson (1721–1793; DNB), The History of America (1777–1796). Back