ABSTRACT
‘I must tell you two quaint dreams’ Robert Southey wrote to his friend Grosvenor Bedford in September 1797
… because they have made a deeper impression upon my memory than any circumstances of infancy. I thought my head was cut off for cursing the King – and after it was done I laid my head down in my mother's lap – and every now and then looked up and cursed him.
In the other I was in a room with only Miss Palmer … I was sitting with her when the Devil came to pay her a morning visit. She put him a chair – ‘dear Mr Devil – pray sit down Mr Devil’ – and smirked and smiled all politeness while I sat and looked at his cloven foot, and perspired at every pore’. (NL, I, p. 150)
