786. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [c. 26 May 1803]*
Dear Wynn
To your ? inclosing the proof I thus reply. Amadis1 fills four volumes. the Annual Review2 was advertised for publication early in this present month. I shall come to London as soon as I receive certain commissions from my Uncle to be there executed. the House at Hereford has been let under its value for three years. the picture is Keenans3 own.
The inclosed is a true story, or else there have been lying historians in the world & the Pope is not infallible.4 You have seen Garci Ferrandez5 – & I will send you in my next a ballad of K Ramiro.6 In my capacity of Poet Laureat to the Morning Post I shall write more of these things & perhaps one day make a volume of them under the title of Romances of Spanish History.7
Tell me some politics. I am damning the French impudence like every body else – but the treaty of Amiens8 was a foolish business – & this is the fruits of it. I am trembling for Lisbon – next Autumn my history will be so far advanced as to make a voyage there desirable on that score – & I am almost afraid that this poor carcase of mine will need the help of that climate sooner.
God bless you R S.
Notes
Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ Lincolns Inn/
London
Postmark: [partial] BRISTOL/ MAY 26
Endorsements: May 26 1803; Mr Wynn
MS: National Library
of Wales, MS 4811D. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished. Back
1. Southey’s translation of Amadis of Gaul (1803). Back
2. Annual Review for 1802, 1 (1803). Back
3. John Keenan (fl. c. 1780–1819), Irish portrait painter. His portrait of Southey was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803. Back
4. Southey’s enclosure has not survived, but was probably ‘Queen Urraca, and the Five Martyrs of Morocco’, Morning Post, 1 September 1803; see Southey to Wynn, [early June] 1803, Letter 791. Back
5. ‘Garci Ferrandez’ was dated ‘Bristol, 1801’ in Southey’s Poetical Works of Robert Southey, 10 vols (London, 1837-1838), VI, p. 121. However, it does not seem to have been published until nearly a decade after its composition, first appearing in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1809, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1811), II, pp. 637-641. Back
6. ‘King Ramiro’, Morning Post, 9 September 1803. Back
7. This project was not realised. Back
8. The Treaty of Amiens was signed on 25 March 1802. It had produced a brief respite in the Anglo-French conflict that had been raging since 1793. Back