The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, [1799?]
” Christ Church. [No date.]
“. . . . . I went to the Chapter Coffee-house Club. A
man read an essay upon the comparative evils of savage and civilised society;
and he preferred the first because it had not the curses of government and
religion! He had never read Rousseau.
What amused me was to find him mistaken in every fact he adduced respecting
savage manners. I was going to attack him, but perceived that a visitor was
expected to be silent. They elected me a member of one of these meetings, which
I declined. . . . .
“A friend of Wordsworth’s has been uncommonly kind to
me—Basil Montague. He offered
me his assistance as a special pleader, and said, if he could save me 100
guineas, it would give him more than 100 guineas’ worth of pleasure. I
did thank him, which was no easy matter; but I have been told that I never
thank anybody for a civility, and there are very few in this world who can
understand silence. However, I do not expect to use his offer: his papers which
he offered me to copy will be of high service. Tell
Wordsworth this.
“I commit wilful murder on my own intellect by ![]()
| 30 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 25. |
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drudging at law; but trust the guilt is partly expiated by
the candle-light hours allotted to Madoc. That poem advances very slowly. I am convinced that the best
way of writing is, to write rapidly, and correct at leisure. Madoc would be a better poem if written in six months, than if six
years were devoted to it. However, I am satisfied with what is done, and my
outline for the whole is good. . . . .
Basil Montagu (1770-1851)
An illegitimate son of the fourth earl of Sandwich, he was educated at Charterhouse and
Christ's College, Cambridge, and afterwards was a lawyer, editor, and friend of Samuel
Romilly, William Godwin, and William Wordsworth.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Swiss-born man of letters; author of, among others,
Julie ou la
Nouvelle Heloïse (1761),
Émile (1762) and
Les Confessions (1782).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
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.
