The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John Wood Warter, 20 June 1832
“. . . . . Oxford or Cambridge are good places of
residence ![]()
| Ætat. 58. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 191 |
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for men who having stored their minds well want
well-stored libraries which may enable them to pursue their researches and
bring forth the fruits of them. But the plant which roots itself there will
never attain any vigorous growth. The mind must be a very strong and a very
active one which does not stand still while it is engaged in tutoring, and both
universities now are little more than manufactories in which men are brought up
to a certain point in a certain branch of knowledge; and when they have reached
that point, they are kept there.
“But, after all, knowledge is not the first thing
needful. Provided we can get contentedly through the world, and (be the ways
rough or smooth) to heaven at last, the sum of knowledge that we may collect on
the way is more infinitely insignificant than I like to acknowledge in my own
heart. Indeed, it is not easy for me always to bear sufficiently in mind that
the pursuits in which I find constant interest and increasing enjoyment, must
appear of no interest whatever to the greater part not merely of mankind, but
of the educated part even of our own countrymen. I forget this sometimes when I
am wishing for others, opportunities by which perhaps they would not be
disposed to profit. . . . .
“I wish I could answer
Sarmento’s question to my own satisfaction. If I
could follow my inclinations, a week would not elapse before the History of Portugal would be in the press. But this
work can only have that time allotted to it which can be won from works of
necessity, and that not yet. I ![]()
| 192 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 58. |
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hope my affairs are in
such a train that next year it will become my chief object in those subsecive hours, for which I can find no English word.
Once in the press it would go on steadily; for the subject has been
two-and-thirty years in my mind. So long is it since I began not merely to
collect materials, but to digest them, and for at least two thirds of the
history, I have only to recompose in the process of transcribing what has long
been written. I believe no history has ever yet been composed that presents
such a continuous interest of one kind or another, as this would do, if I
should live to complete it. The chivalrous portion is of the very highest
beauty, much of what succeeds has a deep tragic interest; and then comes the
gradual destruction of a noble national character brought on by the cancer of
Romish superstition.
“But I have other letters to write by this post, and
therefore must conclude. God bless you!
John Wood Warter (1806-1878)
Educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford, he was a clergyman, antiquary,
and the friend and editor of Robert Southey, whose daughter Edith he married in
1834.
