The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
William Gifford to Robert Southey, 21 November 1823
“E. I. H., Nov. 21. 1823.
“The kindness of your note has melted away the mist
that was upon me. I have been fighting against a shadow. That accursed Quarterly Review had vexed me by a
gratuitous speaking of its own knowledge*, that the Confessions of a Drunkard
was a genuine description of the state of the writer. Little things that are
not ill meant may produce much ill. That might have injured me alive and dead.
I am in a public office and my life is insured. I was prepared for anger, and I
thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition directed
against me.
* This was one of the passages before referred to, as
wrongfully ascribed to my father. |
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| Ætat. 48. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 153 |
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I wish both magazine and review were at the bottom of the
sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so, for this folly
was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian
angel was absent at that time.
“I will make up courage to see you, however, any day
next week (Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you. That will be a second
mortification; she will hate to see us; but come and heap embers; we deserve
it, I for what I have done, and she for being my sister.
“Do come early in the day, by sunlight, that you may
see my Milton. I am at Colebrook
Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington. A detached whitish house, close to the New
River, end of Colebrook Terrace, left hand from Sadler’s Wells.
“Will you let us know the day before?
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847)
Sister of Charles Lamb with whom she wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807). She lived with
her brother, having killed their mother in a temporary fit of insanity.
John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of
Comus (1634),
Lycidas (1638),
Areopagitica (1644),
Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.
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.
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).
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.
