“. . . . . I write now to propose a scheme, or rather a rude outline of a scheme, of your grand work. What harm can a proposal do? If it be no pain to you to reject it, it will be none to me to have it rejected. I would have the work entitled Bibliotheca Britannica,
Afterwards Sir Anthony Carlisle. |
| 218 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 28. |
“Let the next volume contain the history of English poetry and poets, in which I would include all
prose truly poetical. The first half of the second volume should be dedicated
to great single names, Chaucer and
Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and
Taylor, Dryden and Pope; the
poetry of witty logic,—Swift,
Fielding, Richardson, Sterne: I write par
hazard, but I mean to say all great names as have either
formed epochs in our taste, or such, at least, as are representative; and the
great object to be in each instance to determine, first, the true merits and
demerits of the books; secondly, what of these belong to
the age—what to the author quasi
peculium. The second half of the second volume should be a
history of poetry and romances, everywhere interspersed with biography, but
more flowing, more consecutive, more bibliographical, chronological, and
complete. The third volume I would have
| Ætat. 28. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 219 |
“These three volumes would be so generally interesting,
so exceedingly entertaining, that you might bid fair for a sale of the work at
large. Then let the fourth volume take up the history of metaphysics, theology,
medicine, alchemy, common, canon, and Roman law, from Alfred to Henry VII.; in
other words, a history of the dark ages in Great Britain. The fifth
volume—carry on metaphysics and ethics to the present day in the first
half; the second half, comprise the theology of all the reformers. In the
fourth volume there would be a grand article on the philosophy of the theology
of the Roman Catholic religion. In this (fifth volume), under different
names,—Hooker, Baxter, Biddle, and Fox,—the spirit of the theology of all the other parts of
Christianity. The sixth and seventh volumes must comprise all the articles you
can get, on all the separate arts and sciences that have been treated of in
books since the Reformation; and, by this time, the book, if it answered at
all, would have gained so high a reputation, that you need not fear having whom
you liked to write the different articles —medicine, surgery, chemistry,
&c. &c., navigation, travellers, voyagers, &c. &c. If I go into
Scotland, shall I engage Walter Scott to
write the history of Scottish poets? Tell me, however, what you think of the
plan. It would have one prodigious advantage: whatever accident stopped the
work, would only prevent the future good, not
| 220 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 28. |
