The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John Rickman, 21 January 1810
“I am one of those lucky people who find their business
their amusement, and contrive to do more by having half a dozen things in hand
at once than if employed upon any single one of them. . . . . You will like
what I have said concerning the Catholic question*, and not dislike the way in
which I have discharged a little of my gall upon the Foxites, the
place-mongers, and Mr. Whitbread. This
is a very profitable engagement. They give me 400l. for
it; and if it continues two or three years (which I believe rests wholly with
myself), it will make me altogether at ease in my circumstances, for by that
time my property in Longman’s
hands will have cleared itself, the constable will come up with me, and we
shall travel on, I trust, to the end of our journey cheek by jowl, even if I
should not be able to send him forward like a running footman.
“The Quarterly pays me well—ten guineas per sheet: at the same
measure, the Annual was only four. I
have the bulky
Life of Nelson in
hand, and am to be paid double. This must be for the sake of saying they give
twenty guineas per sheet, as I should have been well satisfied with ten, and
have taken exactly the same pains. . . . .
“The next news of my grey goose quill is, that I have
one quarto just coming out of the press for you.
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| 274 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 36. |
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I have another just going in for Mrs. Rickman, though I suspect it will be less
to her taste than any of my former poems. Kehama has been finished these two months,
is more than half transcribed, and the first part ought to have reached
Ballantyne’s a month ago, but
those rascally carriers have delayed or lost it. The days are now sufficiently
lengthened to give me some half hour before breakfast, and I have begun Pelayo, conquered the
difficulty of the opening, and am fairly afloat. Add to all this, that from the
overflowings of my notes and notanda I am putting together some volumes of
Omniana (which will, I
have no doubt, pay better than any of the works of which they are in the main,
as it were, the crumbs and leavings), and then you will have the catalogue of
my works in hand. . . . .
“Mathetes
is not De Quincey, but a Mr. Wilson,—De
Quincey is a singular man, but better informed than any person
almost that I ever met at his age. The vice of the Friend is its roundaboutness. Sometimes
it is of the highest merit both in matter and manner: more frequently its
turnings, and windings, and twistings, and doublings provoke my greyhound
propensity of pointing straightforward to the mark.
“The Coalition* which you seem to look on, is
* “If Lord
Grenville consent to leave the experiment (of
establishing Romanism in Ireland) untried, I do not see what should
hinder him from joining with Lord
Wellesley, Perceval, and Canning in forming a stronger government than the
present; and I should the less wonder at it, as one may suppose
that all the Tantarararas . . . . are bodily frightened at the
remarkable progress of Cobbetism, built on the late disasters of our
armies, though I cannot consent to wish the battle of Talavera
unfought, that having established that there is some truth in the
old opinion of the bravery of the British, who that day, even by
confession of the enemy, were not half their
numbers.”—J.
R. to R. S., Jan. 14.
1810. |
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| Ætat. 36. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 275 |
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likely enough to take place; if it should, and Dutens were to die, I might be the better for
it; the country would not. The journey to Falmouth seems the best prospect; and
yet, at my time of life (the grey hairs are coming), and with my habits, it
would be much more agreeable to me to stay at home. I have no hope from
chopping and changing, while the materials must remain the same. It signifies
little who plays the first fiddle. Tantararara will always be the tune, till
there be an entirely new set of performers.
James Ballantyne (1772-1833)
Edinburgh printer in partnership with his younger brother John; the company failed in the
financial collapse of 1826.
George Canning (1770-1827)
Tory statesman; he was foreign minister (1807-1809) and prime minister (1827); a
supporter of Greek independence and Catholic emancipation.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
English essayist and man of letters; he wrote for the
London
Magazine and
Blackwood's, and was author of
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).
Louis Dutens (1730-1812)
Huguenot diplomat and writer who edited Leibnitz (6 vols, Geneva, 1768). The author of
Mémoires d'un voyageur qui se repose (1806), he was a book
collector and historiographer to the king.
William Wyndham Grenville, baron Grenville (1759-1834)
Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he was a moderate Whig MP, foreign secretary
(1791-1801), and leader and first lord of the treasury in the “All the Talents” ministry
(1806-1807). He was chancellor of Oxford University (1810).
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
Spencer Perceval (1762-1812)
English statesman; chancellor of the exchequer (1807), succeeded the Duke of Portland as
prime minister (1809); he was assassinated in the House of Commons.
John Rickman (1771-1840)
Educated at Magdalen Hall and Lincoln College, Oxford, he was statistician and clerk to
the House of Commons and an early friend of Charles Lamb and Robert Southey.
Susannah Rickman [née Postlethwaite] (1771-1836)
Originally of Harting, Sussex, in 1805 she married the statistician John Rickman. Her
eldest daughter was Anne Lefroy, who left a family memoir.
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.
Samuel Whitbread (1764-1815)
The son of the brewer Samuel Whitbread (1720-96); he was a Whig MP for Bedford, involved
with the reorganization of Drury Lane after the fire of 1809; its financial difficulties
led him to suicide.
John Wilson [Christopher North] (1785-1854)
Scottish poet and Tory essayist, the chief writer for the “Noctes Ambrosianae” in
Blackwood's Magazine and professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh
University (1820).
The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the
Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the
Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.
