Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 12 June 1796: 'Lewis’s Monk I have not seen — [material scored out] Such publications may be made the vehicles of much truth & utility — yet have I hitherto seen very few that really are so. in his Anna St Ives Holcroft has succeeded — but his Hugh Trevor is outrageously caricatured. Things as they are — is likewise a very faulty novel, & one which shews William Godwin to be little acquainted with human characters. I have planned a work to delineate existing systems & their consequent vices & misery, & hope to do some good by it if I have ever leisure to fill up the outlines.'