The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Grosvenor C. Bedford, 1 January 1806
“You use Godwin’s name as if he had maliciously reviewed Madoc, which I do not by any
means suspect or believe, though he has all the will in the world to make me
feel his power. The Monthly
was rather more dull than he would have made it. I should well like to know who
the writer is; for, by the Living Jingo,—a deity whom D. Manuel* conceives to have been worshipped by
the Celts,—I would contrive to give him a most righteous clapper-clawing
in return.
“Thalaba is faulty in its language. Madoc is not. I am become what they call a
Puritan in Portugal, with respect to language, and I dare assert, that there is
not a single instance of illegitimate English in the whole poem. The faults are
in the management of the story and the conclusion, where the interest is
injudiciously transferred from Madoc to
Yuhidthiton; it is also another fault,
to have rendered accidents subservient to the
catastrophe. You will see this very accurately stated in the Annual Review: the remark is new, and of
exceeding great value. I acknowledge no fault in the execution of any
magnitude, except the struggle of the women with Amalahta, which is all clumsily done, and must be rewritten.
Those faults which are inherent in and inseparable from the story, as they
could not be
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| Ætat. 32. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 9 |
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helped, so are they to be considered as defects or wants
rather than faults. I mean the division of the poem into two separate stories
and scenes, and the inferior interest of the voyage, though a thing of such
consequence. But as for unwarrantable liberties of language—there is not
a solitary sin of the kind in the whole 9,000 lines. Let me be understood: I
call it an unwarrantable liberty to use a verb deponent, for instance,
actively, or to form any compound contrary to the strict analogy of the
language—such as tameless in Thalaba, applied to the tigress. I do not recollect any coinage in
Madoc except the word deicide; and that such a word exists I have no doubt, though I cannot
lay my finger upon an authority, for depend upon it the Jews have been called
so a thousand times. That word is unobjectionable. It is in strict
analogy—its meaning is immediately obvious, and no other word could have
expressed the same meaning. Archaisms are faulty if they are too obsolete.
Thewes is the only one I recollect; that also has a peculiar meaning, for which
there is no equivalent word. But, in short, so very laboriously was Madoc rewritten and corrected, time after time, that I
will pledge myself, if you ask me in any instance why one word stands in the
place of another which you, perhaps, may think the better one, to give you a
reason, (most probably, euphoniæ
gratiâ,) which will convince you that I had previously
weighed both in the balance. Sir, the language and versification of that poem
are as full of profound mysteries as the Butler; and he, I take it, was as full
of profundity as the great deep itself.
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| 10 |
LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE |
Ætat. 32. |
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“I do not know any one who has understood the main
merit of the poem so nearly as I wished it to be understood as yourself: the
true and intrinsic greatness of Madoc, the
real talents of his enemies, and (which I consider as the main work of skill)
the feeling of respect for them;—of love even for the individuals, yet
with an abhorrence of the national cruelties that perfectly reconcile you to
their dreadful overthrow. You have very well expressed this.
“. . . . . I have written this at two days,—many
sittings,—under the influence of influenza and antimony. I am mending,
but very weak, and sufficiently uncomfortable.
R S.
“Jan. 1. Multos et felices.”
Grosvenor Charles Bedford (1773-1839)
The son of Horace Walpole's correspondent Charles Bedford; he was auditor of the
Exchequer and a friend of Robert Southey who contributed to several of Southey's
publications.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
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.
