The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 25 July 1801
“In about ten days we shall be ready to set forward for
Keswick; where, if it were not for the rains, and the fogs, and the frosts, I
should, probably, ![]()
| 152 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 27. |
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be content to winter; but the climate
deters me. It is uncertain when I may be sent abroad, or where, except that the
south of Europe is my choice. The appointment hardly doubtful, and the probable
destination Palermo or Naples. We will talk of the future, and dream of it, on
the lake side. . . . . I may calculate upon the next six months at my own
disposal; so we will climb Skiddaw this year, and scale Etna the next; and
Sicilian air will keep us alive till Davy
has found out the immortalising elixir, or till we are very well satisfied to
do without it, and be immortalised after the manner of our fathers. My
pocketbook contains more plans than will ever be filled up; but whatever
becomes of those plans, this, at least, is feasible. . . . . Poor
H——, he has literally killed himself by the law;
which, I believe, kills more than any disease that takes its place in the bills
of mortality. Blackstone
is a needful book, and my Coke is a borrowed one; but I have one law book whereof to make an
auto-da-fé; and burnt he shall be: but whether to perform that ceremony, with
fitting libations, at home, or fling him down the crater of Etna directly to
the Devil, is worth considering at leisure.
“I must work at Keswick; the more willingly, because
with the hope, hereafter, the necessity will cease. My Portuguese materials
must lie dead, and this embarrasses me. It is impossible to publish any thing
about that country now, because I must one day return there,—to their
libraries and archives; ![]()
| Ætat. 27. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 153 |
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otherwise I have excellent stuff
for a little volume; and could soon set forth a first vol. of my History,
either civil or literary. In these labours I have incurred a heavy and serious
expense. I shall write to Hamilton, and
review again, if he chooses to employ me . . . . . It was Cottle who told me that your Poems were reprinting in a third edition: this
cannot allude to the Lyrical
Ballads, because of the number and the participle present . . . . I
am bitterly angry to see one new poem smuggled into the world in the Lyrical Ballads, where the 750 purchasers of the first
can never get at it. At Falmouth I bought Thomas
Dermody’s Poems, for old acquaintance sake; alas!
the boy wrote better than the man! . . . . Pyes Alfred (to distinguish him from Alfred the pious*) I have not yet
inspected; nor the wilful murder of
Bonaparte, by Anna Matilda;
nor the high treason committed by Sir James Bland
Burgess, Baronet, against our lion-hearted Richard. Davy is fallen stark mad with a play, called
the Conspiracy of
Gowrie, which is by Rough; an
imitation of Gebir, with some
poetry; but miserably and hopelessly deficient in all else: every character
reasoning, and metaphorising, and metaphysicking the reader most nauseously. By
the by, there is a great analogy between hock, laver, pork pie, and the Lyrical Ballads,—all have a flavour, not beloved by those who require a taste, and utterly unpleasant to dram-drinkers, whose diseased
palates can only feel
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| 154 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 27. |
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pepper and brandy. I know not whether Wordsworth will forgive the stimulant tale of
Thalaba,—’tis a turtle soup, highly seasoned, but with a
flavour of its own predominant. His are sparagrass (it ought to be spelt so)
and artichokes, good with plain butter, and wholesome.
“I look on Madoc with hopeful displeasure; probably it must be corrected, and
published now; this coming into the world at seven months is a bad way; with a
Doctor Slop of a printer’s devil
standing ready for the forced birth, and frightening one into an abortion. . .
. . . Is there an emigrant at Keswick, who may make me talk and write French?
And I must sit at my almost forgotten Italian, and read German with you; and we
must read Tasso together. . . . .
“God bless you!
Joseph Cottle (1770-1853)
Bristol bookseller and poet; he published the
Lyrical Ballads,
several heroic poems that attracted Byron's derision, and
Early
Recollections, chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols
(1837).
Hannah Cowley [née Parkhouse] [Anna Matilda] (1743-1809)
English playwright and poet, author of
The Belle's Stratagem
(1780); her Della Cruscan poetry printed in
The World newspaper was
ridiculed by William Gifford in
The Baviad (1794).
Sir Humphry Davy, baronet (1778-1829)
English chemist and physicist, inventor of the safety lamp; in Bristol he knew Cottle,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey; he was president of the Royal Society (1820).
Thomas Dermody (1775-1802)
Prolific Irish poet whose early promise a child prodigy went unfulfilled; after the
publication of James Grant Raymond's 1806 biography he became a type of the wastrel
bard.
Samuel Hamilton (1841 fl.)
The son of Archibald Hamilton; he was a London printer, active 1799-1841, who succeeded
his father as proprietor of the
Critical Review (1799-1804).
Henry James Pye (1745-1813)
Succeeded William Whitehead as Poet Laureate in 1790; Pye first attracted attention with
Elegies on Different Occasions (1768); author of
The Progress of Refinement: a Poem (1783).
Sir William Rough (1772 c.-1838)
Educated at Wesminster and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he knew Southey and
Coleridge, respectively), he was a poet, barrister, and chief justice of the supreme court
in Ceylon.
Torquato Tasso (1554-1595)
Italian poet, author of
Aminta (1573), a pastoral drama, and
Jerusalem Delivered (1580).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Madoc. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805). A verse romance relating the legendary adventures of a Welsh prince in Wales and
pre-Columbian America.
