The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Grosvenor C. Bedford, 29 January 1814
“I hope you have secured the manuscript of my article on the
Dissenters, in which I suspect Gifford
has done more mischief than usual. Merely in cutting open the leaves, I
perceived some omissions which one would think the very demon of stupidity had
prompted. You may remember the manner in which I had illustrated Messrs.
Bogue and Bennet’s mention of
Paul and Timothy. He has retained
the quotation, and cut out the comment upon it. I believe the article has lost
about two pages in this way. The only other instances which caught my eye will
show you the spirit in which he has gone to work. Bogue
and Bennet claim Milton, Defoe, &c.
as Dissenters. I called them blockheads for not perceiving that it was
‘to their catholic and cosmopolite intellect’ that these men owed their
immortality, not to ![]()
| Ætat. 40. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 59 |
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their sectarian
opinions, and the exterminating pen has gone through the words catholic and
cosmopolite. There is also a foolish insertion stuck in, to introduce the last
paragraph, which at once alters it, and says, ‘Now I am going to say
something fine,’ instead of letting the feeling rise at once from
the subject. It is well, perhaps, that the convenience of this quarterly
incoming makes me placable, or I should some day tell
Gifford, that though I have nothing to say against any
omission which may be made for political or prudential motives, yet when the
question comes to be a mere matter of opinion in regard to the wording of a
sentence, my judgment is quite as likely to be right as his. You will really
render me a great service by preserving my manuscript reviewals: for some of
these articles may most probably be reprinted whenever my operas come to be
printed in a collected form after I am gone, and these rejected passages will
then be thought of most value.
“I wish you would, as soon as you can, call on
Gifford, and tell him,—not
what I have been saying, for I have got rid of my gall in thus letting you know
what I feel upon the subject,—but that I will review Duppa’s pamphlet about Junius, and the Memoirs, for his next number.
Perhaps I may succeed in this, as, in approaching Junius, I shall take rather a wider view of political morality
than he and his admirers have done.
“Some unknown
author has sent me a poem called the Missionary, not well arranged, but
written with great feeling and beauty. I shall very likely do him ![]()
| 60 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 40. |
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a good turn in the Quarterly. It is Ercilla’s groundwork, with a new story made to fit the
leading facts.
“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.
James Bennet (1774-1862)
After education at Gosport under David Bogue he became a Congregational minister and
founding member of the London Missionary Society; he contributed to the
Eclectic Review and the
Evangelical Magazine.
David Bogue (1750-1825)
Presbyterian schoolmaster and divine educated at Edinburgh University; he was a founder
of the London Missionary Society.
William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850)
English poet and critic; author of
Fourteen Sonnets, elegiac and
descriptive, written during a Tour (1789), editor of the
Works
of Alexander Pope, 10 vols (1806), and writer of pamphlets contributing to the
subsequent Pope controversy.
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
English novelist and miscellaneous writer; author of
Robinson
Crusoe (1719),
Moll Flanders (1722) and
Roxanna (1724).
Richard Duppa (1768-1831)
Writer and antiquary; a contributor to the
Literary Gazette; he
published
A Journal of the most remarkable Occurrences that took place in
Rome (1799) and other works.
William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published
The Baviad (1794),
The Maeviad
(1795), and
The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the
Quarterly Review (1809-24).
Junius (1773 fl.)
Anonymous political writer who attacked the king and Tory party in the
Public Advertiser, 1769-1772. There is persuasive evidence that he was Sir Philip
Francis (1740-1818).
John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of
Comus (1634),
Lycidas (1638),
Areopagitica (1644),
Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.
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.
Robert Southey (1774-1843) “History of Dissenters, &c.” in Quarterly Review. Vol. 10 (October 1813): 90-139. A review of David Bogue and James Bennett's
History of Dissenters from
the Revolution in 1688 to the Year 1808 (1813)
