493. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 23 February 1800*
Kingsdown. Feby 23. 1800.My dear Wynn
I did not design writing till you should have reachd Gloucester – but for an unpleasant cause. my income scroll1 was given in at Westbury– & as in moving about I have paid no installment the whole are now due there. this is a heavier demand than I can answer. with the Morning Post2 I have done – & have drawn too lately upon the Review3 for the sake of supplying one of my brothers – to be able to apply there. the booksellers offer about a school-book4 I, as I told you, rejected – & am by no means willing to retract my refusal: I think it better to apply to you. allow me in justification – for I ought to justify myself – to add that tho illness has increased my expences & lessened my means – still but for this debt – which certainly was not contracted by my own act or will – I should not have felt embarrasment.
God bless you. yrs affectionately R. Southey.
When is the proper season to write to Strachey?
Notes
Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr/ 5. Stone Buildings/ Lincolns
Inn/ London
Postmarks: BRISTOL/ FEB 24 1800; FREE/ FEB 25 1800; B/ FEB 25/1800
Endorsement: Feb 23 1800
MS: National
Library of Wales, MS 4811D. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished. Back
1. Presumably, Southey’s return for the new income tax. Back
2. Southey had stopped writing poetry regularly for the Morning Post in December 1799. Back
3. Critical Review, for which Southey had been reviewing books. Back
4. For Richard Phillips’s (1767–1840; DNB) offer; see Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 20 February 1800, Letter 492. Back