The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John Miller, 16 November 1833
“Keswick, Nov. 16. 1833.
“My dear Sir,
“The ‘suggestions,’* which I have to thank
for your welcome letter, came to me about three weeks ago, from Mr. Charnock of Ripon, through Mrs. Hodson—the Margaret
Holford of former days.
* “The ‘Suggestions’ here spoken
of were entitled—‘Suggestions for the
Promotion of an Association of the Friends of the
Church;’ but the association never was formed. The
practical result was ‘The Oxford
Tracts;’ but the whole theory and management fell into
other (and exclusive) hands; so that any direct influence and work of
the ‘Suggestions’ must ever remain unknown and undefined.
Perceval’s and
Palmer’s Narratives of
the Theological Movement tell all that is to be told on the
subject.”—J. M.
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With whom they have originated I have not heard, nor do I
sufficiently understand what is hoped for from the proposed association, or how
it can act. But that any association formed on such principles will have my
cordial good wishes, and all the support that I can give it in my own way, you
need not be assured.
“Among the many ominous parallelisms between the
present times and those of Charles the
First, none has struck me more forcibly than those which are to
be found in the state of the Church; and of those, this circumstance
especially—that the Church of England at that time was better provided
with able and faithful ministers than it had ever been before, and is in like
manner better provided now than it has ever been since. I have been strongly
impressed by this consideration; it has made me more apprehensive that no human
means are likely to avert the threatened overthrow of the Establishment; but it
affords also more hope (looking to human causes) of its restoration.
“The Church will be assailed by popular clamour and
seditious combinations; it will be attacked in Parliament by unbelievers,
half-believers, and misbelievers, and feebly defended by such of the Ministers
as are not secretly or openly hostile to it. On our side we have God and the
right. Οίστέον καί έλπίστεον must be our motto, as it was Lauderdale’s in his prison. We, however,
are not condemned to inaction; and our hope rests upon a surer foundation than
his.
“He, no doubt, built his hopes upon the strange ![]()
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changes which take place in revolutionary times. Some of
those changes are likely to act in our favour. The time cannot be far distant
when the United States of America, instead of being held up to us for an
example, will be looked to as a warning. Portugal and Spain will show the
egregious incapacity and misconduct of the present administration. And
Louis Philippe, becoming a
conservative for his own sake, must also seek peace and ensue it;
‘because the liberal principles to which France would appeal in case of a
continental war would overthrow his throne. It cannot be his policy to excite
revolutionary movements in other countries, while all his efforts are required
for repressing them at home. Our revolutionary ministers, therefore, will not
find so ready an ally in him, as he might find in them, if it were his object
to bring on a general war. And if we get on without any financial
embarrassments (which we may do, as long as peace is maintained), there will be
no violent revolution here. We may have an easy descent; and when the State
machine has got to the bottom, and is there fast in the quagmire, the very
people who have made the inclined plane for it, and huzzaed as it went down
with accelerated speed,—when they see what the end of that way is, will
yoke themselves to it to drag it up again, if they can, with labour and with
pain.
“I am constitutionally cheerful, and, therefore,
hopeful. God has blest me with good health and buoyant spirits; and my boyish
hilarity has not forsaken me, though I am now in my sixtieth year.
“Of late I have been employed, profitably for ![]()
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myself, and, therefore, necessarily, in Messrs. Longman’s great Cabinet manufactory. I
am now preparing a friendly lecture to the Corn Law
Rhymer in the Quarterly. I taught him, as he says, the art of poetry, and I shall
now endeavour to teach him something better, and bring him to a sense of his
evil ways. I shall endeavour also to prepare for the same number, as a sort of
companion or counterpart to the lives of Oberlin and Neff, a life of the Methodist
blacksmith, Samuel Hick, who was born
without the sense of shame, and, nevertheless, was useful in his generation.
“But I am preparing for an undertaking of some
importance—the Lives of the English Divines,
upon a scale like that of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets—to accompany a selection from their works,
in monthly parts. An introductory part, or volume, will bring down the history
of religious instruction to the reign of Elizabeth. If this plan be executed as it is designed, it
cannot but be of great use. It has been long in my thoughts; but I have so much
to do that it cannot possibly be started till the commencement of the year
after next; and I do not look to so distant a date without a full sense of the
instability of human life. Meantime, however, I work on, and lay new
foundations, and form new schemes; and am not only eating and drinking and
buying books (the only ‘buying and selling’ with which I have any
concern), but, moreover, giving in marriage. . . . .
“And now that I have told you all that most ![]()
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concerns myself, dear Sir, farewell! Remember me to your
brother and sister; and believe me always,
Yours with sincere respect and regard,
Robert Southey.”
Joseph Charnock (1802 c.-1867)
Educated at Worcester College, Oxford, he was rector of Sawley, and of Winksley, near
Ripon (1836-56).
King Charles I of England (1600-1649)
The son of James VI and I; as king of England (1625-1649) he contended with Parliament;
he was revered as a martyr after his execution.
Samuel Hick (1758-1829)
Yorkshire blacksmith and Methodist preacher.
Margaret Hodson [née Holford] (1778-1852)
English poet popular in the interval between Anna Seward and Felicia Hemans; she
published
Wallace, or, The Fight of Falkirk (1809) and
Margaret of Anjou (1816). She married Septimus Hodson in
1826.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English man of letters, among many other works he edited
A Dictionary
of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote
Lives of the Poets (1779-81).
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
Louis Philippe, king of the French (1773-1850)
The son of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans; he was King of France 1830-48; he
abdicated following the February Revolution of 1848 and fled to England.
John Miller (1787-1858)
Educated at St. Paul's School and Worcester College, Oxford, he was Bampton Lecturer
(1817) and rector of Benefield in Northampton (1822-42) and Bockleton, Worcestershire
(1842-58).
William Patrick Palmer (1803-1885)
Educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Worcester College, Oxford, he was a protégé of
John Jebb and a Tractarian theologian.
Arthur Philip Perceval (1799-1853)
The son of Charles George Perceval, second Baron Arden; educated at Oriel College,
Oxford, he was a royal chaplain and prolific writer on religious topics.
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.
