The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to C. W. W. Wynne, 16 April 1805
“April 16. 1805.
“Dear Wynn,
“Madoc has reached Keswick. I am sorry to see Snowdon uniformly
mis-spelt, by what unaccountable blunder I know not. It is a beautiful book,
but I repent having printed it in quarto. By its high price, one half the
edition is condemned to be furniture in expensive libraries, and the other to
collect cobwebs in the publishers’ warehouses. I foresee that I shall get
no solid pudding by it; the loss on the first edition will eat up the profits
of the second, if the publishers, as I suppose they will, should print a second
while the quarto hangs upon hand. How-![]()
| Ætat. 30. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 329 |
![]()
ever, after sixteen
years it is pleasant, as well as something melancholy, to see it, as I do now
for the first time, in the shape of a book. Many persons will read it with
pleasure, probably no one with more than you; for whatever worth it may have,
you will feel, that had it not been for you, it could never possibly have
existed. It is easy to quit the pursuit of fortune for fame; but had I been
obliged to work for the necessary comforts instead of the superfluities of
life, I must have sunk as others have done before me. Interrupted just when I
did not wish it, for it is twilight—just light enough to see that the pen
travel, straight,—and I am tired with a walk from Grasmere, and was in a
mood for letter-writing;—but here is a gentleman from Malta with letters
from Coleridge. God bless you!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
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.
