The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John Miller, 21 July 1838
“Keswick, July 21. 1838.
“My dear Sir,
“I was very much pleased with Bishop Jebb’s first opinion of your Bampton Lectures, and not less
pleased with the greater part of his more elaborate critique. I did not agree
with him in any of his objections, nor has a fresh perusal of that critique,
after reading your Preface, altered or even modified my first impression in the
slightest degree. It appears to me that you were right in noticing his remarks
as fully as you have done, and that it could not have been done in a better
spirit nor in a more conclusive manner.
“The publication of Froude’s Remains is likely to do more harm than —— is
capable of doing. ‘The Oxford School’ has acted most unwisely in
giving its sanction to such a deplorable example of mistaken zeal. Of the two
extremes—the too little and the too much—the too little is that
which is likely to produce the worst consequence to the individual, but the too
much is more hurtful to the community; for it spreads, and rages too, like a
contagion. . . . .
“I hear, though I have not seen, that another volume
of The Doctor is announced.
You and I, therefore, may shortly expect it, if the masked author keeps his
good custom of sending it to us. Some letters, published in the Sheffield Mercury, have been ![]()
| 372 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 64. |
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collected into two small volumes, entitled ‘The Tour of the Don.’ They
contain a chapter which is headed ‘Doncaster and the
Doctor,’ The writer reminds the Doncasterians of the visit,
‘not a clandestine one,’ of the worthy Laureate to their
good town, some ten years agone, accompanied, as some may recollect, by his
lovely daughter, ‘the dark-ey’d Bertha;’ and this he mentions as one of the facts
which ‘appear indubitably to identify the author of The Doctor with the author of Thalaba.’ The conclusion
would not have followed, even if the premises had been true. But the truth upon
which he has built a fallacious argument is, that about ten years ago I passed
a night at Sheffield on the way to London. My daughter Edith was one of our traveling party; and
certainly there was nothing clandestine in the visit; for I wrote notes to
Montgomery and to Ebenezer Elliott, to come to me at the
inn—the only time I ever saw either of those remarkable men. James Everett, a Methodist preacher, and also
a remarkable man, heard from one of them where I was, and volunteered a visit.
So it was soon known that I was in Sheffield. It is not often that a mistake of
this kind can so plainly be explained. ‘Well,’ Latimer used to say, ‘there is
nothing hid, but it shall be opened.’
“Farewell, my dear Sir; and believe me always.
Yours with sincere regard and respect,
Robert Southey.”
James Everett (1784-1872)
Born in Alnwick, he was a bookseller and Methodist preacher in Sheffield and Manchester;
he was a friend and biographer of the poet James Montgomery.
Richard Hurrell Froude (1803-1836)
The elder brother of James Anthony Froude; educated at Eton and Oriel College, Oxford, he
was a Tractarian divine aligned with John Henry Newman.
John Jebb, bishop of Limerick (1775-1833)
Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he was an associate of the theological writer
Alexander Knox and bishop of Limerick (1822-33).
James Montgomery (1771-1854)
English poet and editor of the
Sheffield Iris (1795-1825); author
of
The Wanderer of Switzerland (1806) and
The
World before the Flood (1813).
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
The Doctor &c.. 7 vols (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1834-1847). A rambling biographical satire that contains the first publication of the story of The
Three Bears.
