The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to C. W. W. Wynn, 23 July 1800
“You must, long ere this, have received my second
letter. I continue in comfortable health, and spirits that cast a sunshine upon
every thing. I pray you make peace, that I may return in the spring over ![]()
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 95 |
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the Pyrenees. The cause would certainly be good, and so
would the effects.
“Thalaba is finished, and I am correcting it; the concluding books
you shall shortly receive. Griantly is not a coinage, it is sterling English of
the old mint; I used it to avoid the sameness of sound in the Giant Tyrant as it stood at first. You object to ‘fowls of
the air,’ and do not remember the
elision. You object likewise to a licence which I claim as lawful, that of
making two short syllables stand for one long one. The eighth book explains
enough what Azrael had been doing. The
previous uncertainty is well. You will, I trust, find the Paradise a rich
poetical picture, a proof that I can employ magnificence and luxury of language
when I think them in place. The other faults you point out are removed. Thank
you for —— letters. I shall enclose one to him when next I write, the only mode
of conveyance with which I am acquainted. —— and I, both of us, were sent into the world with feelings
little likely to push us forward in it. One overwhelming propensity has formed
my destiny, and marred all prospects of rank or wealth; but it has made me
happy, and it will make me immortal. ——, when I was his
shadow, was almost my counterpart; but his talents and feelings found no
centre, and perforce thus have been scattered: he will probably succeed in
worldly prospects far better than I shall do, but he will not be so happy a
man, and his genius will bring forth no fruits. I love him dearly, and I
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know he never can lose the instinctive attachment which
led to our boyish intimacy. Yet —— shrunk from me in
London. I met him at your rooms; he was the same immutable character: I walked
home with him at night; our conversation was unreserved, and, in silence and
solitude, I rejoiced even with tears that I had found again the friend that was
lost. From that time, a hasty visit is all I saw of him: it was his
indolence,—I know he esteems me. Our former coolness I remember among my
follies; you were with me when I atoned for it by a voluntary letter, and you
saw an answer such as I had reason to expect. I wrote again to him, a common
young man’s letter; he never answered it: the fact was, I had the disease
of epistolising, and he had not. Our future intercourse cannot be much; by the
time he returns to London, I trust I shall have retired from it, and pitched my
tent near the churchyard in which I shall be buried. Of the East Indies I know
not enough to estimate the reason and reasonableness of his dislike. Were I
single, it is a country which would tempt me, as offering the shortest and most
certain way to wealth, and many curious subjects of literary pursuit. About the
language, —— is right; it is a baboon jargon not worth
learning; but were I there, I would get the Vedams and get them translated. It
is rather disgraceful that the most important acquisition of Oriental learning
should have been given us by a Frenchman; but Anquetil du Perron was certainly a far more useful and
meritorious orientalist than Sir Wm.
Jones, who disgraced himself by enviously abusing him. Latterly,
Sir ![]()
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 97 |
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William’s works are the dreams of dotage. I have
some distant view of manufacturing a Hindoo romance, wild as Thalaba; and a nearer one of a Persian story, of which see the germ
of vitality. I take the system of the Zendavesta for my mythology, and
introduce the powers of darkness persecuting a Persian, one of the hundred and
fifty sons of the great king; every evil they inflict, becomes the cause of
developing. in him some virtue which his prosperity had smothered: an Athenian
captive is a prominent character, and the whole warfare of the evil power ends
in exalting a Persian prince into a citizen of Athens. I pray you be Greek
enough to like that catastrophe, and forget France when you think of Attic
republicanism.
“I have written no line of poetry here, except the four
books of Thalaba, nor shall
I till they are corrected and sent off, and my mind completely delivered of
that subject. Some credit may be expected from the poem; and if the booksellers
will not give me 100l. for a 4to. edition of 500 copies,
or 140l. for a pocket one of 1000, why they shall not
have the poem.
“I long to see the face of a friend, and hunger after
the bread-and-butter comforts and green fields of England. Yet do I feel so
strongly the good effects of climate,—and I am now perspiring in my shirt
while I write, in the coolness of Cintra, a darkened room and a wet
floor,—that I certainly wish my lot could be cast somewhere in the south
of Europe. The spot I am in is the most beautiful I have ever seen or imagined.
I ride a jackass, a fine lazy way of travelling; you have even a boy to beat
old Dapple
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when he is slow. I eat oranges, figs, and delicious
pears,—drink Colares wine, a sort of half-way excellence between port and
claret,—read all I can lay my hands on,—dream of poem after poem, and
play after play,—take a siesta of two hours, and am as happy as if life
were but one everlasting to-day, and that to-morrow was not to be provided for.
“Here is a long letter about myself, and not a word
about Portugal. My next shall be a brimming sheet of anecdotes.
“I am sorry —— is so disgusted with India, though I cannot wish
he were otherwise. From all accounts, an English East-Indian is a very bad
animal; they have adopted by force the luxury of the country, and its tyranny
and pride by choice. A man who feels and thinks must be in solitude there. Yet
the comfort is, that your wages are certain; so many years of toil for such a
fortune at last. Is a young man wise who devotes the best years of his life to
such a speculation? Alas! if he is, then am I a pitiable blockhead. But to me,
the fable of the ant and grasshopper has long appeared a bad one: the ant
hoards and hoards for a season in which he is torpid; the
grasshopper—there is one singing merrily among the canes—God bless
him! I wish you could see one, with his wings and his vermilion legs.
“God bless you! Write often, and let me have a very
long letter upon short paper, as postage is by weight. Remember me to Elmsley; and pray pull Bedford’s ears, till I hear him bray: I wish my burro boy could get at him!”
Grosvenor Charles Bedford (1773-1839)
The son of Horace Walpole's correspondent Charles Bedford; he was auditor of the
Exchequer and a friend of Robert Southey who contributed to several of Southey's
publications.
Peter Elmsley (1774-1825)
Classical scholar educated at Christ Church, Oxford, who published in the
Edinburgh Review and
Quarterly Review.
Southey described him to W. S. Landor as “the fattest under-graduate in your time and
mine.”
Sir William Jones [Oriental Jones] (1746-1794)
English poet, jurist, and oriental philologist; he published
Poems,
consisting chiefly of Translations from the Asiatic Languages (1772).
George Strachey (1776-1849)
The son of John Strachey (d. 1818); educated at Westminster and Trinity College,
Cambridge, he pursued a legal and civil service career in the East India Company before his
retirement in 1824.
Charles Watkin Williams Wynn (1775-1850)
The son of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, fourth baronet; educated at Westminster and Christ
Church, Oxford, Robert Southey's friend and benefactor was a Whig MP for Old Sarum (1797)
and Montgomeryshire (1799-1850). He was president of the Board of Control (1822-28).
