The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Grosvenor C. Bedford, 9 June 1811
“I completed the Register last night. Its enormous length has cost me at least three
months’ labour more than the former volume, the whole of which is dead
loss of the only capital I possess in the world. This is considerably
inconvenient; half that time would have sufficed for the Life of Nelson, the other half have set me
forward for the next three numbers of the Quarterly. My ways and means, therefore, are considerably deranged.
. . . .
“So —— lectures
to-morrow upon the Curse of
Kehama! I like for the same reason for which Dr. Johnson liked Mrs. Mary Cobb. ‘I love
Moll,’ said he; ‘I love Moll
Cobb for her impudence.’ I like
——, however, for something else; for though he is ![]()
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impudentissimus homo and the very emperor of coxcombs,
yet, nevertheless, —— —— is an honest fellow, and has a
good heart. He is a clever fellow, too, in the midst of his quackery. And so
partly because I like him for the aforesaid reasons, partly because half an
hour’s conversation with him will afford mirth for half a year
afterwards, I will certainly call upon —— when I go to
town, and shake hands with him once more. Ah, Grosvenor I people may say what they will about good company,
or what Sharpe, more suo, denominates the ‘very best’ society,—the
‘very best,’—there
is no company like that of an odd fellow whom you can laugh with and laugh at, and laugh about, till your eyes overflow with the very oil of gladness.
“God bless you!
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.
Mary Cobb [née Hammond] (1718-1793)
The daughter of Richard Hammond; she was a Lichfield acquaintance of Samuel
Johnson.
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.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English man of letters, among many other works he edited
A Dictionary
of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote
Lives of the Poets (1779-81).
Richard Sharp [Conversation Sharp] (1759-1835)
English merchant, Whig MP, and member of the Holland House set; he published
Letters and Essays in Poetry and Prose (1834).
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.
