“I am very much obliged to you for the offer which you
make concerning the Edinburgh
Review, and fully sensible of your friendliness, and the advantages
which it holds out. I bear as little ill-will to Jeffrey as he does to me, and attribute whatever civil things
he has said of me to especial civility, whatever pert ones (a truer epithet
than severe would be) to the habit which he has acquired of taking it for
granted that the critic is, by virtue of his office, superior to every writer
whom he chooses to summon before him. The reviewals of Thalaba and Madoc do in no degree influence me. Setting
all personal feelings aside, the objections which weigh with me against bearing
any part in this journal are these:—I have scarcely one opinion in common
with it upon any subject. Jeffrey is for peace, and is
endeavouring to frighten the people into it: I am for war as long as Bonaparte lives. He is for Catholic
emancipation: I believe that its immediate consequence would be to introduce an
Irish priest into every ship in the navy. My feelings are still less in unison
with him than my opinions. On subjects of moral or political importance no man
is more apt to speak in the very gall of bitterness than I am, and this habit
is likely to go with me to the grave; but that sort of bitterness in which he
indulges, which tends
| Ætat. 33. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 125 |
“Your letter was delayed a week upon the road by the
snow. I wish it had been written sooner, and had travelled faster, or that I
had communicated to you my own long-projected edition of Morte d’ Arthur. I am sorry to have
forestalled you, and you are the only person whom I should be sorry to forestal
in this case, because you are the only person who could do it certainly as
well, and perhaps better, with less labour than myself. My plan is to give the
whole bibliology of the Round Table in the pre-
| 126 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 33. |
“The reviewal of Wordsworth I am not likely to see, the Edinburgh very rarely lying in my way. My own notions respecting the book agree in the main with yours, though I may probably go a step farther than you in admiration. There are certainly some pieces there which are good for nothing (none, however, which a bad poet could have written), and very many which it was highly injudicious to publish. That song to Lord Clifford, which you particularise, is truly a noble poem. The Ode upon Pre-existence is a dark subject darkly handled. Coleridge is the only man who could make such a subject luminous. The Leech-gatherer is one of my favourites; there he has caught Spenser’s manner, and, in many of the better poemets, has equally caught the best manner of old Wither, who, with all his long fits of dulness and prosing, had the heart and soul of a poet in him. The sonnets are in a grand style. I only wish Dundee had not been mentioned. James Grahame and I always call that man Claverhouse, the name by which the devils know him below.
“Marmion is expected as impatiently by me as he is by ten thousand
others. Believe me, Scott, no man of real
genius was ever yet a puritanical stickler for correctness, or fastidious about
any faults except his own. The best artists, both in poetry and painting, have
produced the most. Give me more lays, and correct them at leisure for after
editions—not laboriously, but when the amendment comes
| Ætat. 33. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 127 |
“The Cid is about half through the press, and will not disappoint you. It is much in the language of Amadis, both books having been written before men began to think of a fine style. This is one cause why Amadis is so far superior to Palmerin. There are passages of a poet’s feeling in the Cid, and some of the finest circumstances of chivalry. I expect much credit from this work.
“To recur to the Edinburgh Review, let me once more assure you that, if I do not
grievously deceive myself, the criticisms upon my own poems have not influenced
me; for, however unjust they were, they were less so, and far less uncourteous,
than what I meet with in other journals; and, though these things injure me
materially in a pecuniary point of view, they make no more impression upon me
than the bite of a sucking flea would do upon Garagantua. The business of reviewing, much as I have done in
it myself, I disapprove of, but, most of all, when it is carried on upon such a
system as Jeffrey’s. The judge is
criminal who acquits the guilty, but he is far more so who condemns the
innocent. In the Annual I have only
one coadjutor, all the other writers
being below contempt. In the Edinburgh I should have
had many with whom I should have felt it creditable to myself to have been
associated, if the irreconcileable difference which there is between Jeffrey
and myself upon every great principle of taste, morality, and policy, did not
occasion an irremovable difficulty. Meantime, I am as sincerely
| 128 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 33. |
“I am very curious for your Life of Dryden, that I may see how far your estimate of his merits agrees with my own. In the way of editing we want the yet unpublished metrical romances from the Auchinleck MS., of which you have just given such an account as to whet the public curiosity, and a collection of the Scotch poets. K. James, who is the best, has not been well edited; Blind Harry but badly; Dunbar, and many others, are not to be procured. Your name would make such a speculation answer, however extensive the collection might be. I beg my respects to Mrs. Scott, and am,
