The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Thomas Southey, 31 March 1797
“I have stolen time to write to you, though uncertain
whether you may still be at Plymouth; but, if the letter should have to follow
you, well and good; if lost, it matters little. I have a bookseller’s job
on my hands; it is to translate a
volume from the French—about a month’s work*; and the
pay will be not less than five-and-twenty guineas, an employment more
profitable than pleasant; but I should like plenty such. Three or four such
jobs would furnish me a house. . . . . Your description of the Spanish coast
about St. Sebastian has very highly delighted me. I intend to versify it, put
the lines in Madoc, and give
your account below in the note. To me, who had never seen any other but the
tame shores of this island, the giant rocks of Galicia ap-
* The work was tolerably hard. “I am running
a race with the printers again,” he writes to Mr. Cottle, April 5.,
“translating a work from the French (Necker on the Revolution, vol.
ii.,—Dr. Aiken and
his son translate the first
vol.). My time is now wholly engrossed by the race, for I run at
the rate of sixteen pages a day, as hard going as sixteen miles for
a hack horse.” |
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| 308 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 23. |
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peared stupendously sublime. They even derived a grandeur
from their barrenness: it gives them a majestic simplicity that fills the
undistracted mind. I have in contemplation another work upon my
journey,—a series of poems, the subjects occasioned by the scenes I
passed, and the meditations which those scenes excited. Do you perceive the
range this plan includes? History, imagination, philosophy, all would be
pressed into my service. . . . . A noble design! and it has met with some
encouragement. But time is scarce, and I must be a lawyer—a sort of
animal that might be made of worse materials than those with which nature
tempered my clay. . . . . Should I publish the series of poems I mentioned, it
is my intention to annex prints from the sketches my uncle took upon our road. I sometimes regret that, after
leaving the College Green, I have never had encouragement to go on with
drawing. The evening when Shad and I
were so employed, was then the pleasantest part of the day, and I began at last
to know something about it. I would gladly get those drawings, but my aunt never lets any thing go; and the greater
part of my books, and all those drawings, and my coins; with a number of
things, of little intrinsic value, but which I should highly prize, are all
locked up in the Green.
“The poor old theatre* is going to ruin, for which I
have worked so many hours, and which so deeply interested me once. Such are the
revolutions of private life, and such strange alterations do a few years
produce!
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| Ætat. 23. |
OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. |
309 |
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“My aunt told
Peggy* it was pretty well in me to
write a book about
Portugal who had not been there six months: for her part, she had
been there twelve months, and yet she could not write a book about it—so
apt are we to measure knowledge by time. I employed my time there in constant
attention, seeing everything and asking questions,—and never went to bed
without writing down the information I had acquired during the day. I am now
tolerably versed in Spanish and Portuguese poetry, and am writing a series of
essays upon the subject, in the ‘Monthly Magazine’—a work which, probably, you do not
see.
“Farewell! I hope you may soon come to Portsmouth, that
we may see you.
Yours affectionately,
Robert Southey.”
Arthur Aikin (1773-1854)
English chemist and geologist, the son of Dr. John Aikin and brother of Lucy Aikin; he
edited the
Annual Review (1803-08).
John Aikin (1747-1822)
English physician, critic, and biographer, the brother of Anna Laetitia Barbauld; he
edited the
Monthly Magazine (1796-1806).
Joseph Cottle (1770-1853)
Bristol bookseller and poet; he published the
Lyrical Ballads,
several heroic poems that attracted Byron's derision, and
Early
Recollections, chiefly relating to the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2 vols
(1837).
Herbert Hill (1750-1828)
Educated at St. Mary Hall, and Christ Church, Oxford; he was Chancellor of the Choir of
Hereford Cathedral, chaplain to the English factory at Lisbon (1792-1807) and rector of
Streatham (1810-28). He was Robert Southey's uncle.
Margaret Hill [Peggy] (d. 1801)
A cousin of Robert Southey who lived with his Aunt Tyler and then with his mother (also a
Margaret Hill) and died of consumption in 1801.
Elizabeth Tyler (1739-1821)
Robert Southey's aunt, his mother's elder half-sister, with whom he spent much time as a
child.
Shadrach Weeks (1774 c.-1795 fl.)
The boyhood friend of Robert Southey; he was the servant of Southey's Aunt Tyler,
afterwards recruited for the Pantisocracy project.
The Monthly Magazine. (1796-1843). The original editor of this liberal-leaning periodical was John Aikin (1747-1822); later
editors included Sir Richard Phillips (1767-1840), the poet John Abraham Heraud
(1779-1887), and Benson Earle Hill (1795-45).
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Madoc. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805). A verse romance relating the legendary adventures of a Welsh prince in Wales and
pre-Columbian America.
