The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Edith Southey, 5 September 1813
“Streatham, Sunday, Sept. 5. 1813.
One of the letters which you forwarded was from James Ballantyne; my business in that quarter
seems likely to terminate rather better than might have been expected. I wish
you had opened the other, which was from Scott. It will be easier to transcribe it than to give its
contents; and it does him so much honour that you ought to see it without
delay.—‘My dear Southey,—On my return home I found, to my no small
surprise, a letter tendering me the laurel vacant by the death of the
poetical Pye. I have declined the
appointment as being incompetent to the task of annual commemoration; but
chiefly as being provided for in my professional department, and unwilling
to incur the censure of en-![]()
| Ætat. 39. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 39 |
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grossing the emolument*
attached to one of the few appointments which seems proper to be filled by
a man of literature who has no other views in life. Will you forgive me, my
dear friend, if I own I had you in my recollection? I have given Croker the hint, and otherwise endeavoured
to throw the office into your choice (this is not
Scott’s word, but I cannot decypher the
right one). I am uncertain if you will like it, for the laurel has
certainly been tarnished by some of its wearers, and, as at present
managed, its duties are inconvenient and somewhat liable to ridicule. But
the latter matter might be amended, and I should think the Regent’s good sense would lead him to
lay aside these biennial commemorations; and as to the former point, it has
been worn by Dryden of old, and by
Warton in modern days. If you
quote my own refusal against me, I reply, 1st, I have been luckier than you
in holding two offices not usually conjoined. 2dly, I did not refuse it
from any foolish prejudice against the situation, otherwise how durst I
mention it to you my elder brother in the muse? but from a sort of internal
hope that they would give it to you, upon whom it would be so much more
worthily conferred. For I am not such an ass as not to know that you are my
better in poetry, though I have had (probably but for a time) the tide of
popularity in my favour. I have not time to add ten thousand other reasons,
but I only wished to tell you how the matter was, and to beg you to think
before
* Sir Walter
Scott seems to have been under the impression that
the emoluments of the Laureateship amounted to 300l. or 400l. a year,—See
Life of Scott, vol. iv. p. 118. |
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| 40 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 39. |
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you reject the offer which I flatter myself will be
made you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with two gowns already, I should have
jumped at it like a cock at a gooseberry. Ever yours most truly,
W. S.’
“I thought this was so likely to happen, that I had
turned the thing over in my mind in expectation. So as soon as this letter
reached me, I wrote a note to Croker to
this effect,—that I would not write odes as boys write exercises, at
stated times and upon stated subjects; but that if it were understood that upon
great public events I might either write or be silent as the spirit moved, I
should now accept the office as an honourable distinction, which under those
circumstances it would become. To-morrow I shall see him. The salary is but a
nominal 120l.; and, as you see, I shall either reject
it, or make the title honourable by accepting it upon my own terms. The latter
is the most probable result. . . . .
“No doubt I shall be the better on my return for this
course of full exercise and full feeding, which follows in natural order. By
good fortune this is the oyster season, and when in town I devour about a dozen
in the middle of the day; so that in the history of my life this year ought to
be designated as the year of the oysters, inasmuch as I shall have feasted on
them more than in any other year of my life. I shall work off the old flesh
from my bones, and lay on a new layer in its place,—a sort of renovation
which makes meat better, and therefore will not make me the worse. Harry complains of me as a ![]()
| Ætat. 39. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 41 |
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general disturber of all families. I am up first In the house here and at
his quarters; and the other morning when I walked from hence to breakfast with
Grosvenor, I arrived before anybody
except the servants were up. This is as it should be. . . . .
“God bless you!
James Ballantyne (1772-1833)
Edinburgh printer in partnership with his younger brother John; the company failed in the
financial collapse of 1826.
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.
John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the
Quarterly
Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's
Life of
Johnson (1831).
John Dryden (1631-1700)
English poet laureate, dramatist, and critic; author of
Of Dramatick
Poesie (1667),
Absalom and Achitophel (1681),
Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique (1697),
The Works of Virgil translated into English Verse (1697), and
Fables (1700).
Henry James Pye (1745-1813)
Succeeded William Whitehead as Poet Laureate in 1790; Pye first attracted attention with
Elegies on Different Occasions (1768); author of
The Progress of Refinement: a Poem (1783).
Edith Southey [née Fricker] (1774-1837)
The daughter of Stephen Fricker, she was the first wife of Robert Southey and the mother
of his children; they married in secret in 1795.
Henry Herbert Southey (1783-1865)
The younger brother of Robert Southey; educated at Edinburgh University, he was physician
to George IV, Gresham Professor of Medicine, and friend of Sir Walter Scott.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
Thomas Warton (1728-1790)
English scholar and poet; author of
The Pleasures of Melancholy
(1747),
Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser (1754),
The History of English Poetry, 3 vols (1774-78). He succeeded
William Whitehead as poet laureate in 1785.
