The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John Rickman, March 1804
“March, 1804.
“Dear Rickman,
“. . . . . I have more in hand than Bonaparte or Marquis
Wellesley,—digesting Gothic law, gleaning moral history
from monkish legends, and conquering India, or rather Asia, with Alboquerque; filling up the chinks of the day
by hunting in Jesuit chronicles, and compiling Collectanea Hispanica et
Gothica. Meantime Madoc
sleeps, and my lucre of gain compilation* goes on at night, when I am fairly
obliged to lay history aside, because it perplexes me in my dreams, ’Tis
a vile thing to be pestered in sleep
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| Ætat. 29. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 281 |
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with all the books I have been reading in the day jostled
together, God bless you!
Afonso de Albuquerque (1453-1515)
Nobleman who established the Portuguese colonial empire in the Indian Ocean.
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Richard Wellesley, first marquess Wellesley (1760-1842)
The son of Garret Wesley (1735-1781) and elder brother of the Duke of Wellington; he was
Whig MP, Governor-general of Bengal (1797-1805), Foreign Secretary (1809-12), and
Lord-lieutenant of Ireland (1821-28); he was created Marquess Wellesley in 1799.
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.
