The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to C. W. W. Wynn, 18 January 1820
“I have two things to tell you, both sufficiently
remarkable. Lord Bathurst, supposing that I
had a son growing up, called on Croker
lately to offer me a writership for him. I never saw Lord
B., nor have I any indirect acquaintance with him. The intended
kindness therefore is the greater.
“A curious charge has been bequeathed me,—the papers of
a man who destroyed himself on the first day of this year, wholly, I believe,
from the misery occasioned by a state of utter unbelief. I never saw him but
once. Last year he wrote me two anonymous letters, soliciting me to accept this
charge. I ![]()
| 10 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 46. |
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supposed him, from what he said, to be in the
last stage of some mortal disease, and wrote to him under that persuasion. And
I rather imagined that the religious character of my second reply had offended
him, for I heard nothing more till last week, when there came a letter from an
acquaintance of mine telling me his name, his fate, and that the papers were
deposited by the suicide himself the day before he executed his fatal purpose,
to await my directions. I have reason to believe, that with all proper respect
to the dead as well as to the living, a most melancholy, but instructive lesson
may be deduced from them. His letters are beautiful compositions, and he was a
man of the strictest and most conscientious virtue!
“The jury pronounced him insane, which, perhaps, they
would not have done, had they seen the paper which he addressed to them. That
cruel law should be repealed, and I wish you would take the credit of repealing
it. It is in every point of view barbarous. A particular prayer for cases of
this kind should be added to our Burial Service, to be used in place of those
parts that express a sure and certain hope for the dead. God bless you!
Henry Bathurst, third earl Bathurst (1762-1834)
Tory statesman, the son of the second earl (d. 1794); he was master of the mint (1804),
president of the Board of Trade (1807-12), and secretary of state for war (1812-24).
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).
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).
