The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 27 December 1799
“Geese were made to grow feathers, and farmers’
wives to pluck them. I suspect booksellers and
* There is no trace of this ballad to be found. Who
can tell the history of this mysterious rotundity? See p. 18. |
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| 36 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 25. |
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authors were made with something of the like first cause.
With Thalaba I must make
sure work and speedy, for abroad I must go. Complaints
of immediate danger I have none, but increased and increasing nervous
affections threaten much remote. I have rushes of feeling nightly, like
fainting or death, and induced, I believe, wholly by the dread of them. Even by
day they menace me, and an effort of mind is required to dispel them. . . . .
So I must go, and I will go. Now,
then, the sooner the better. Some progress is made in the sixth book of Thalaba; my notes are ready for the whole, at least
there is only the trouble of arranging and seasoning them. If the bargain were
made, it would be time to think of beginning to print, for the preliminaries
are usually full of delays, and time with me is of importance. I must have the
summer to travel in, and ought to be in Germany by the beginning of June.
Treaty therefore, with Longman, or any
man, for me.
“The W.’s*
are at Clifton: if they saw the probable advantages of a journey to
Italy,—of the possible reach to Constantinople,
the Greek Islands, and Egypt,—in a light as strong as I do, they would, I
think, wish to delay the new birth of Lessing: but this is, on your part, a matter of feeling; and
when I spoke of your joining us, it was with the conviction that it was a vain
wish, but it is a very earnest one. Together we might do so much; and we could
leave the women for excursions—now into Hungary, now
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| Ætat. 25. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 37 |
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into Poland, and see the Turks. Zounds! who knows but,
like Sir John Maundeville, we might have
gone where the Devil’s head is always above ground! Go I must, but it
would be a great satisfaction to have a companion. . . . .
“But Lessing’s life—and I half wish he had never
lived—how long after the first of April (an ominous day) will that
confine you? Or if you come here to do it, cannot I raise mortar and carry
bricks to the edifice? . . . . For Stuart I must make out another quarter.
I have huge drains, like the Pontic marshes—a leech hanging on every
limb. . . . .
“God bless you.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Germman playwright and critic who extolled Shakespeare in opposition to French models; he
was the author of
Emelia Galotti (1779) and
Nathan
der Weise (1779).
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
Sir John Mandeville (1357 fl.)
Pseudonym employed in a collection of travels to Jerusalem and the East, originally
composed in French.
Daniel Stuart (1766-1846)
Originally its printer, he was proprietor of the
Morning Post from
1795-1803; in about 1800 he became part-proprietor and editor of
The
Courier.
Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805)
Chemist and third son of Josiah Wedgewood; he was the patron of Godwin and Coleridge and
of his former tutor, Sir John Leslie.
