The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Edith Southey, 9 May 1799
“Your letter, my dear Edith, reached me not till late last evening, and it could
hardly have arrived more opportunely, for it was on my return from a visit to
Mr. ——, that I found it. We had dined there;
B., and C., and I, with fourteen
people, all of whom were completely strange to me, and most of whom I hope and
trust will remain so. There were some blockheads there, one of whom chose to be
exposed, by engaging in some classical and historical disputes with me; another
gave as a toast General Suwarrow, the
man who massacred men, women and children for three successive days at Warsaw,
who slew at Ockzakow thirty thousand persons in cold blood, and thirty thousand
at Ismael. I was so astonished at hearing this demon’s name, as only to
repeat it in the tone of wonder; but, before I had time to think or to reply,
C. turned to the man who gave the toast, and said he
would not drink General Suwarrow, and off we set,
describing the man’s actions till they gave up all defence, and asked for
some substituted ![]()
| 16 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 25. |
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name; and Carlisle changed him for Count
Rumford. It was a hateful day; the fellows would talk politics,
of which they knew nothing. . . . . After being so put to the torture for five
hours, your letter was doubly welcome.
“G. Dyer is
foraging for my Almanac, and
promises pieces from Mrs. Opie, Mr. Mott of Cambridge, and Miss Christall. I then went to Arch’s, a pleasant place for half an
hour’s book news: you know he purchased the edition of the Lyrical Ballads; he told me
he believed he should lose by them, as they sold very heavily. . . . . My books
sell very well. Other book news have I none, except, indeed, that John Thelwall is writing an epic poem, and
Samuel Rogers is also writing an
epic poem; George Dyer, also, hath similar thoughts. . . .
. William Taylor has written to me from
Norwich, and sent me Bodmer’s Noah, the book that I wanted to poke through and learn German by.
He tempts me to write upon the subject, and take my seat with Milton and Klopstock; and in my to-day’s walk so many noble thoughts
for such a poem presented themselves, that I am half tempted, and have the
Deluge floating in my brain with the Dom Daniel and the rest of my unborn
family.
“. . . . . As we went to dinner yesterday a coachful of
women drew up to the door at the moment we arrived there; it rained merrily,
and Carlisle offered his umbrella, but
the prim gentry were somewhat rudely shy of him and me too, for his hair was a
little ragged, and ![]()
| Ætat. 25. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 17 |
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I had not silk stockings on. He made
them ashamed of this at dinner. Never did you see anything so hideous as their
dresses; they were pink muslin, with round little white spots, waists ever so
far down, and buttoned from the neck down to the end of the waist. . . . .
Horne Tooke’s letter to the
Income Commissioners has amused me very much: he had stated his under sixty
pounds a year; they said they were not satisfied; and his reply begins by
saying he has much more reason to be dissatisfied with the smallness of his
income than they have. . . . .
“God bless you.
Yours affectionately,
Robert Southey.”
John Arch (1838 fl.)
London bookseller, trading with Arthur Arch at Gracechurch St (1794-1804) and 61 Cornhill
(1805-39).
Johann Jakob Bodmer (1530-1596)
Swiss critic and poet who published two religious epics in the manner of Klopstock's
Messias.
Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840)
English surgeon and professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy (1808).
Ann Batten Cristall (1769-1848)
English poet and friend of Mary Wollstonecraft and George Dyer; she published
Poetical Sketches (1795). She was the sister of the artist Joseph
Cristall.
George Dyer (1755-1841)
English poet, antiquary, and friend of Charles Lamb; author of
Poems
and Critical Essays (1802),
Poetics: or a Series of Poems and
Disquisitions on Poetry, 2 vols (1812),
History of the
University and Colleges of Cambridge, 2 vols (1814) and other works.
John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of
Comus (1634),
Lycidas (1638),
Areopagitica (1644),
Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.
Thomas Vertue Mott (1761 c.-1824 fl.)
The son of Thomas Vertue, of Burnham Market, Norfolk; educated at Caius College,
Cambridge, and the Inner Temple, he was a Cambridge solicitor who published two volumes of
poetry and contributed to the
Monthly Magazine.
Amelia Opie [née Alderson] (1769-1853)
Quaker poet and novelist; in 1798 she married the painter John Opie (1761-1807); author
of
Father and Daughter (1801) and other novels and moral
fables.
Samuel Rogers (1763-1855)
English poet, banker, and aesthete, author of the ever-popular
Pleasures of Memory (1792),
Columbus (1810),
Jaqueline (1814), and
Italy (1822-28).
Edith Southey [née Fricker] (1774-1837)
The daughter of Stephen Fricker, she was the first wife of Robert Southey and the mother
of his children; they married in secret in 1795.
Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov (1729-1800)
Russian general who fought against the Ottomans in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792 and
in 1794 violently suppressed the Polish uprising led by Tadeusz Kościuszko.
William Taylor of Norwich (1765-1836)
Translator, poet, and essayist; he was a pupil of Anna Letitia Barbauld and correspondent
of Robert Southey who contributed to the
Monthly Magazine, the
Monthly Review, the
Critical Review, and
other periodicals.
John Thelwall (1764-1834)
English poet and radical acquitted of treason in the famous trial of 1794; he was
afterwards a lecturer on elocution.
Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753-1814)
American-born natural philosopher; a loyalist in the War of Independence he worked as a
civil servant in Britain and later in Bavaria.
John Horne Tooke (1736-1812)
Philologist and political radical; member of the Society for Constitutional Information
(1780); tried for high treason and acquitted (1794).
The Annual Anthology. 2 vols (Bristol: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799-1800). A poetical miscellany edited by Robert Southey.
