The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John May, 16 November 1818
“Keswick, Nov. 16. 1818.
“My dear Friend,
“. . . . . I know something of rebellions, and
generally suspect that there has been some fault in the master as well as in
the boys, just as a mutiny in a man of war affords a strong presumption of
tyranny against the captain. Without understanding the merits of this case, it
is easy to perceive that the boys believed their privileges were invaded, and
fancied that the ![]()
| Ætat. 44. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 319 |
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Magna Charta of Eton was in danger (the
Habeas Corpus in schools is in favour of the governors—a writ issued
against the subject, and affecting him in tail),
—— took the patriotic side, acting upon Whig
principles. They are very good principles in their time and place, and youth is
a good time and school a good place for them. When he grows older, he will see
the necessity of subordination, and learn that it is only by means of order
that liberty can be secured. . . . . I have a fellow-feeling for
——, because I was myself expelled from Westminster,
not for a rebellion (though in that too I had my share), but for an act of
authorship. Wynn and Bedford and Strachey (who is now chief secretary at Madras), and myself,
planned a periodical paper in
emulation of the Microcosm. It was not begun
before the two former had left school, and Bedford and I were the only persons actually engaged in it. I
well remember my feelings when the first number appeared on Saturday, March 1.
1792. It was Bedford’s writing, but that
circumstance did not prevent me from feeling that I was that day borne into the
world as an author; and if ever my head touched the stars while I walked upon
the earth it was then. It seemed as if I had overleapt a barrier, which till
then had kept me from the fields of immortality, wherein my career was to be
run. In all London there was not so vain, so happy, so elated a creature as I
was that day; and, in truth, it was an important day in my life; far more so
than I, or than any one else could have anticipated, for I was expelled for the
fifth number. ![]()
| 320 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 44. |
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The subject of that number was flogging, and Heaven knows I thought as little of giving
offence by it, as of causing an eclipse or an earthquake. I treated it in a
strange, whimsical, and ironical sort of manner, because it had formed a part
of the religious ceremonies of the heathens, and the Fathers had held that the
gods of the heathens were our devils, and so I proved it to be an invention of
the Devil, and therefore unfit to be practised in schools; and though this was
done with very little respect for the Devil, or the Fathers, or the heathen
gods, or the schoolmasters, yet I as little expected to offend one as the
other. I was full of Gibbon at the time,
and had caught something of Voltaire’s manner. And for this I was privately expelled
from Westminster, and for this I was refused admission at Christ Church, where
Randolph, from the friendship which
he professed for my uncle, could not else
have decently refused to provide for me by a studentship: and so I went to
Balliol instead, in a blessed hour; for there I found a man of sterling virtue
(Edmund Seward), who led me right,
when it might have been easy to have led me wrong. I used to call him Talus for his unbending
morals and iron rectitude, and his strength of body also justified the name.
His death in the year 1795 was the first severe affliction that I ever
experienced; and sometimes even now I dream of him, and wake myself by weeping,
because even in my dreams I remember that he is dead. I loved him with my whole
heart, and shall remember him with gratitude and affection as one who was my
moral father, to the last moment of my life; and to meet him again will ![]()
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at that moment be one of the joys to which I shall look
forward in eternity. My dear John May, I
have got into a strain which I neither intended nor foresaw. Misfortunes, as
the story says, are good for something. The stream of my life would certainly
have taken a different direction, if I had not been expelled, and I am
satisfied that it could never have held a better course. . . .
“God bless you, my dear friend!
Believe me,
Most truly and affectionately yours,
Robert Southey.”
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.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Author of
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-1788).
Herbert Hill (1750-1828)
Educated at St. Mary Hall, and Christ Church, Oxford; he was Chancellor of the Choir of
Hereford Cathedral, chaplain to the English factory at Lisbon (1792-1807) and rector of
Streatham (1810-28). He was Robert Southey's uncle.
John May (1775-1856)
Wine merchant and close friend of Robert Southey; after the failure of the family
business in Portuguese wines he was a bank manager in the 1820s.
John Randolph, bishop of London (1749-1813)
Educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, he was professor of poetry (1776-83),
regius professor of Greek (1782-83), regius professor of divinity (1783–1807), and bishop
of London (1809).
Edmund Seward (1771 c.-1795)
The son of John Seward of Sapey, Worcestershire; he was educated at Balliol College,
Oxford where he befriended Robert Southey.
George Strachey (1776-1849)
The son of John Strachey (d. 1818); educated at Westminster and Trinity College,
Cambridge, he pursued a legal and civil service career in the East India Company before his
retirement in 1824.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
French historian and man of letters; author of, among many other works,
The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and
Candide (1759).
Charles Watkin Williams Wynn (1775-1850)
The son of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, fourth baronet; educated at Westminster and Christ
Church, Oxford, Robert Southey's friend and benefactor was a Whig MP for Old Sarum (1797)
and Montgomeryshire (1799-1850). He was president of the Board of Control (1822-28).
