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The Vision of
Judgment was now, at last, published, and my father had not overrated the
measure of opposition and abuse with which its appearance would be hailed. Nor was this at
all to be wondered at; for besides the unfriendly criticisms of his avowed enemies and
opponents, the poem, both in its plan and execution, could not fail to give offence to many
of those persons most disposed to receive favourably the productions of his pen. The Editor
hopes he will not be thought chargeable with any want of filial respect, if he thinks it
right here to express his own regret that such a subject should have been chosen,
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 67 |
My father adopted, as we have seen, his leading thoughts from Dante’s great poem; not reflecting that Dante himself, if it were not for the halo thrown around him by his antiquity and the established fame of his transcendant genius combined, would in these days be very offensive to many sincerely religious minds.
But while undoubtedly the Vision of Judgment had the effect of shocking the feelings of many excellent persons, the storm of abuse which greeted its author did not come from them; nor did it arise from any regret that spiritual matters should be thus handled. It was the preface and not the poem which called them forth.
Now whatever may be the opinion which any person may form of my father’s writings, one thing has always been conceded—that in none of them did he appeal to the darker passions of human nature, or seek to administer pernicious stimulants to a depraved taste; that in none did he paint vice in alluring colours, calling evil good and good evil; and that in all of them there is a constant recognition of the duties, the privileges, and the hopes derived from revealed religion.
There was, therefore, a perfect contrast between
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These things would naturally create a bitter enmity against him, in the minds of all who either by their own acts or by sympathy were implicated in such proceedings; and the more definite and pointed remarks which he took occasion to make in his preface to the Vision of Judgment, upon the principles and tendencies of these writers, wound up his offences to a climax in their estimation, and set in motion the array of opposition and invective to which I have just alluded. Before, however, noticing more particularly the remarks themselves, and the rejoinder and counter-rejoinder they called forth, we will look a little at the relative position of the parties with respect to their writings.
Lord Byron, as is well known, in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, had satirised my father
in common with many others, but not in any peculiarly objectionable manner; and when, as
has been noticed, they met once or twice in London society in the year 1813, it was with
all outward courtesy. From that time Lord Byron became year after year
more notorious, and his writings more objectionable in their tendency. But while my father
could not but greatly disapprove of many portions of them, he had been far too busily
employed to trouble himself much about Lord Byron. He rarely alludes
to him in
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 69 |
Lord Byron, on the other hand, appears to have regarded my father with the most intense dislike, which he veiled under an affectation of scorn and contempt which it is impossible to believe he could really feel. He had pronounced* his talents to be “of the first order,” his prose to be “perfect,” his Roderick “the first poem of the time,” and therefore he could not think meanly of his abilities; and widely as he differed from him on political subjects, that could be no reason for the bitter personal animosity he displayed towards him. This is sufficiently shown in many passages of his published letters, and more particularly in his Don Juan; which, in addition to the allusions in the poem itself, came over for publication with a Dedication to him prefixed to it, couched in coarse and insulting terms. This was suppressed at the time, (the editor states with Lord Byron’s reluctant consent); but its existence was well known, and it is now prefixed to the poem in the collected edition of his works.
But the feelings with which Lord Byron regarded my father were still more plainly shown in some observations upon an article in Blackwood’s Magazine,
* See Byron’s Life and Works, vol. ii. p. 268., and vol. vii. p. 239. |
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The writer in Blackwood, it appears, had alluded to Lord Byron having “vented his spleen” against certain “lofty-minded and virtuous men,” which he interprets to mean “the notorious triumvirate known by the name of the Lake Poets;” and he then goes on to make various charges against my father, which it is impossible to characterise by any other epithet than false and calumnious. These were based upon the assumed fact, that on his return from the Continent, in 1817, my father had circulated slanderous reports respecting Lord Byron’s mode of life*; and upon this supposition, which was wholly without foundation, he proceeds in a strain of abuse which I will not sully these pages by quoting; suffice it to say, that when, at a later period, Lord Byron, in a letter to Sir Walter Scott, declares his intention of “working the Laureate,” as soon as he could muster Billingsgate enough†,” he had a plentiful supply of it in those then
* With reference to this accusation, which was made through some other medium during Lord Byron’s life, my father says, in a letter to the editor of the Courier, “I reply to it with a direct and positive denial;” and he continues, “If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk or monk of La Trappe, that he had furnished a harem or endowed a hospital, I might have thought the account, whichever it had been, possible, and repeated it accordingly, passing it, as it had been taken, in the small change of conversation for no more than it was worth. But making no inquiry concerning him when I was abroad, because I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat.”—See Appendix. I may add that there is no allusion to Lord Byron, either in my father’s letters written during that tour or in his journal † See Life and Works of Byron, vol. v. p. 300. |
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 71 |
Now I have made these observations solely to show upon which of the two (if upon either) the blame of a malicious or contentious temper must rest, not because I assume these calumnies to have been the reason why my father censured Lord Byron’s writings.* The worst of these insults he certainly never saw; the other he was acquainted with; but while the effect of it must undoubtedly have been to remove any delicacy with regard to hurting Lord Byron’s feelings, I am perfectly justified in asserting, that if there had not existed a great public cause,—a question of the most vital principles,—my father would never, upon that provocation, have gone out of his way to lift his hand against him.† He conceived it to be his duty, as one who had some influence over the opinions of others, to condemn as strongly as possible, works, the perusal of which he conscientiously believed was calculated to weaken the principles, corrupt the morals, and harden the heart.
With respect to the remarks in the preface to
* See Appendix. † Had he seen the other attack, he could not have remained silent under it. |
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It was natural, then, that my father should meet with a large share both of abuse and blame, for daring thus to attack the enemy in his stronghold; and while some marvelled at his imprudence, there was one great writer who said more than that with strange inconsistency. Mr. Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, suppressing the remarks themselves, attributed them wholly to envy; and it is not a little
* Mr. Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, says, “Lord Byron complains bitterly of the detraction by which he has been assailed, and intimates that his works have been received by the public with far less cordiality and favour than he was entitled to expect. We are constrained to say that this appears to us a very extraordinary mistake. In the whole course of our experience we cannot recollect a single author who has so little reason to complain of his reception; to whose genius the public has been so early and constantly just; to whose faults they have been so long and so signally indulgent”—Edinburgh Review, No. 72. |
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 73 |
After various remarks, levelled apparently at my father, concerning “the base and the bigoted venting their puny malice in silly nicknames,” he goes on to say,
“He has no priest-like cant, or priest-like reviling to apprehend from us; we do not charge him with being either a disciple or an apostle of Satan, nor do we describe his poetry to be a mere compound of blasphemy and obscenity. On the contrary, we believe he wishes well to the happiness of mankind.”
After speaking of the immoral passages and profligate representations in his writings, which, he says, are not worse than Dryden or Prior or Fielding, justly adding, however, that “it is a wretched apology for the indecencies of a man of genius, that equal indecencies have been forgiven to his predecessors,”—he proceeds,—
“It might not have been so easy to get over his dogmatic scepticism, his hard-hearted maxims of misanthropy, his cold-blooded and eager expositions of the non-existence of virtue and honour. Even this, however, might have been comparatively harmless, if it had not been accompanied with that which may look at first sight like a palliation,—the frequent presentment of the most touching pictures of tenderness, generosity, and faith.
“The charge we bring against Lord Byron, in short, is, that his writings have a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue, and to make all enthusiasm and constancy of affection ridiculous; and this is effected, not merely by direct maxims and examples of an imposing or seducing kind, but by the constant exhibition of the most profligate heartlessness in the persons of those who have been transiently represented as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions, and the lessons of that very teacher who had been but a moment before so beautifully pathetic in the expression of the loftiest conceptions.
“This is the charge which we
bring against Lord Byron. We say that, under some
strange misapprehension of the truth and the duty of proclaiming it, he has exerted all
the powers of his powerful mind to convince his readers, directly and indirectly, that
all ennobling pur-
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‘Whoe’er was edified, himself was not.’”* |
It is difficult to imagine how anything more severe, and at the same time more just, than these remarks could have been penned; but I may fairly ask, with what consistency could the writer of them reckon my father as among the base and the bigoted, for his remarks on the “Satanic School?” He does not, he says, charge Lord Byron with being either a disciple or an apostle of Satan; but had he striven to picture forth the office of such a character, could he have done it better? What method more subtle or more certain could the Enemy of Mankind use to enlarge the limits of his empire than “to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue”—to convince men that all that is good, noble, virtuous, or sacred is “to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and despised?” Consciously or unconsciously, the reviewer in these passages has embodied the very system which those, whose philosophy is based upon Holy Scripture, believe that the Evil
* Edinburgh Review, No. 72. |
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 75 |
These remarks, including the quotation, have extended further than I could have wished; but the clergyman who finds cheap editions of Don Juan and Shelley’s Queen Mab lying in the cottages of his rural flock, who knows that they are sold by every hawker of books throughout the country, and that they are handed about from one to the other by schoolboys and artisans to supply shafts for the quiver of ribald wit and scoffing blasphemy, can hardly be thought out of season, if, when this subject is forced upon him, he allows his own feeling concerning such works to appear; and it is not unimportant, while doing so, to have pointed out the strong coincidence, upon this question in real opinion, which existed between two writers, in general so opposed to each other as my father and the editor of the Edinburgh Review.
As may well be imagined, the passage alluded to concerning the Satanic
School roused Lord Byron’s anger to the uttermost;
and he replied to it in a strain which compelled a rejoinder from my father, in a letter addressed to the Editor of the Courier, the effect of which was to make his
lordship immediately sit down and indite a cartel, challenging my father to mortal combat,
for which purpose both parties were to repair to the Continent. This challenge, however,
never reached its destination, Lord Byron’s
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The passage itself, Lord Byron’s reply, and the rejoinder, together with a letter written in 1824, on the appearance of Capt. Medwin’s work, the reader will find in an Appendix to this volume.
“I heartily give you joy of your dear wife’s safe deliverance, and of the birth of your first child,—an event which, of all others in the course of human life, produces the deepest and most permanent impression.
“Who hath not proved it, ill can estimate The feeling of that stirring hour,—the weight Of that new sense; the thoughtful, pensive bliss. In all the changes of our changeful state, Even from the cradle to the grave, I wis The heart doth undergo no change so great as this. |
“So I have written in that poem which will be the next that I hope to send you; but I transcribe the lines here because you will feel their truth at this time. Parental love, however, is of slower growth in a father’s than in a mother’s heart: the child, at its birth, continues, as it were, to be a part of its mother’s life; but, upon the father’s heart it is a graft, and some little time elapses before he feels that it has united and is become inseparable. God bless the babe and its parents, and spare it and them, each for the other’s sake, amen!
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 77 |
“Tilbrook wrote to tell me his disapprobation of my hexameters. His reasons were founded upon some musical theory, which I did not understand farther than to perceive that it was not applicable. His opinion is the only unfavourable one that has reached me; that of my friend Wynn, from whom I expected the most decided displeasure, was, that he ‘disliked them less than he expected.’ Women, as far as I can learn, feel and like the metre universally, without attempting to understand its construction. My brethren of the art approve it, and those whom I acknowledge for my peers are decidedly in its favour. Many persons have thanked me for that part of the preface in which Lord Byron and his infamous works are alluded to. . . . .
“I am going on steadily with many things, the foremost of which is the History of the War. The first volume will be printed in the course of September next. Whether it will be published before the other two, depends upon the booksellers, and is a matter in which I have no concern. I am proceeding also with my Dialogues, and with the Book of the Church,—two works by which I shall deserve well of posterity, whatever treatment they may provoke now from the bigoted, the irreligious, and the factious. But you know how perfectly regardless I am of obloquy and insult. Your brother Henry gave me that kind of praise which is thoroughly gratifying, because I know that I deserve it, when he described me as fearlessly pursuing that course which my own sense of propriety points out, without reference to the humour of the public.
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“In the last Quarterly Review you would recognise me in the account of Huntington. I am preparing a life of Oliver Cromwell for the next. . . . .
“I received your little parcel this afternoon, and thank you for the book, for the dedication, and for the sonnet. As yet I have only had time to recognise several pieces which pleased me formerly, and to read a few others which please me now.
“The stages of your life have passed regularly and happily, so that you have had leisure to mark them with precision, and to feel them, and reflect upon them. With me these transitions were of a very different character; they came abruptly, and, when I left the University, it was to cast myself upon the world, with a heart full of romance, and a head full of enthusiasm. No young man could have gone more widely astray, according to all human judgment; and yet the soundest judgment could not have led me into any other way of life in which I should have had such full cause to be contented and thankful.
“The world is now before you; but you have neither
difficulties to struggle with, nor dangers to
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 79 |
“Your Cambridge wit is excellent of its kind. I am not acquainted with Coleridge of King’s; but somewhat intimately so with one of his brothers*, now at the bar, and likely to rise very high in his profession. I know no man of whose judgment and principles I have a higher opinion. They are a remarkably gifted family, and may be expected to distinguish themselves in many ways.
“The Wordsworths spoke of you with great pleasure upon their return from Cambridge. He was with me lately. His thoughts and mine have for some time unconsciously been travelling in the same direction; for while I have been sketching a brief history of the English Church, and the systems which it has subdued or struggled with, he has been pursuing precisely the same subject in a series of sonnets, to which my volume will serve for a commentary, as completely as if it had been written with that intent. I have reason to hope that this work will be permanently useful. And I have the same hope of the series of Dialogues with which I am proceeding. Two of the scenes in which these are laid are noticed in your sonnets,—the Tarn of Blencathra and the Ruined Village. Wm. Westall has made a very fine drawing of the former, which
* Now Mr. Justice Coleridge. |
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“Are you going abroad? Or do you wait till the political atmosphere seems to promise settled weather? God knows when that will be! For myself I know not what to wish for, when on the one side the old Governments will not attempt to amend anything, and on the other the Revolutionists are for destroying every thing. Spain is in a deplorable state, which must lead to utter anarchy. If other powers do not interfere (which I rather hope than think they will not), the natural course of such a revolution will serve as an example in terrorem to other nations. True statesmen are wanted there, and not there alone, but everywhere else; why it is that there has not been a single man in Europe worthy of the name for the last century, is a question which it might be of some use to consider. Burke would have been one, had he not been always led away by passion and party, and an Irish imagination. It is something in the very constitution of our politics which dwarfs the breed; for we have had statesmen in India. . . . .
“God bless you!
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 81 |
“The present Oliver Cromwell, whose book serves me for a heading in the Quarterly Review, has led me into an interesting course of reading, and I am surrounded with memoirs of that age. Among other books, I have been reading the Εικον Βασιλικη, which never fell in my way before. The evidence concerning its authenticity is more curiously balanced than in any other case, except perhaps that of the two Alexander Cunninghams; but the internal evidence is strongly in its favour, and I very much doubt whether any man could have written it in a fictitious character,—the character is so perfectly observed. If it be genuine (which I believe it to be as much as a man can believe the authenticity of any thing which has been boldly impugned) it is one of the most interesting books connected with English history. I have been reading also Hobbes’s Behemoth; it is worth reading, but has less of his characteristic strength and felicity of thought and expression than the Leviathan. There is one great point on which he dwells with unanswerable wisdom—the necessity that public opinion should be directed by Government, by means of education and public instruction.
“The course of the revolution in Portugal and Brazil
will be to separate the two countries, and then I fear, to break up Brazil into
as many separate
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“God bless you!
“Your letter brings to my mind how it happened that the
last which I received from you remained unanswered. I began a reply
immediately, but having expressed a hope that business might probably soon lead
me into the west country, and intimated a little too confidently the likelihood
of my succeeding to some good family estates there in consequence of Lord Somerville’s death, the letter was
laid aside, till I could be more certain. Shortly afterwards I went to London,
and the result of my legal inquiries there was, that owing to the clumsy manner
in which a will was drawn up, estates to the value of a thousand a year in
Somersetshire, which according to the clear intention of the testator, ought
now to have devolved upon me, had been adjudged to Lord
Somerville to be at his full disposal, and were by him
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 83 |
“God knows how truly it would have rejoiced me to have
seen you at Oxford. My heart was never heavier than during the only whole day
which I passed in that city. There was not a single contemporary whom I knew;
the only person with whom I spoke, whose face was familiar to me, was Dr. Tatham! except poor
Adams and his wife, now both old and infirm. I went in
the morning to look at Balliol, and as I was coming out he knew me, and then I
recognised him, which otherwise I could not have done. I dined there in the hall, at ten o’clock at night, and the poor
old woman would sit up till midnight that she might speak to me when I went
out. After the business of the theatre was over I walked for some hours alone
about the walks and gardens, where you and I have so often walked together,
thinking of the days that are gone, the friends that are departed (Seward, and C.
Collins, and Allen and
poor Burnet), time, and change, and
mortality. Very few things would have gratified me so much as to have met you
there. I had applause enough in the theatre to be somewhat overpowering, and my
feelings would have been very different if you
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“My lodging was at Oriel, in the rooms of an under-graduate, whose aunt is married to my uncle. Coplestone introduced himself to me and asked me to dinner the next day, but I was engaged to return to London and dine with Bedford. There is no one of our remembrance left at Balliol except Powell, and him I did not see. The master and the fellows there showed me every possible attention; I had not been two hours in Oxford before their invitation found me out.
“The King sent me word that he had read the Vision of Judgment twice and was well pleased with it; and he afterwards told my brother (Dr. S.) at the drawing-room, that I had sent him a very beautiful poem, which he had read with great pleasure.
“You will be pleased to hear that the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Durham, and Lord Liverpool told me when I was in town last year, that the Life of Wesley was a book which in their judgment could not fail of doing a great deal of good.
Among the great variety of strangers who found their way to Greta Hall
with letters of introduction, there were a considerable proportion from America,—travellers
from thence, as my father humorously observes in one of the letters in the last volume,
inquiring as naturally for a real live poet in England,
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 85 |
The gentleman (Mr. Ticknor of Boston), to whom the two following letters are addressed, was one of the most literary of his American visitors; and a feeling of mutual respect and good-will quickly sprang up between them, kept up by an occasional correspondence.
In the course of one of the evenings he passed at
* “I returned to the post-office the other day three half crowns worth of abuse sent from New Orleans in the shape of extracts from Yankee newspapers. Every disrespectful thing said of America in the Q. R. is imputed to me in that country, while I heartily disapprove of the temper in which America is treated. Such things, however, are not worth notice; and lies of this kind for many years past have been far too numerous to be noticed, unless I gave up half my time to the task.”—To G. C. B., Jan. 5. 1820. |
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“That I intended to thank you for the books you sent me
from London in 1819, the unfinished letter which I have now fished up from the
bottom of my desk will show; and it is better to say peccavi than to apologise for the old and besetting sin
of procrastination. That I had received them, you would probably infer from the
mention of Fisher Ames in the Quarterly Review. This omission has
been attended with frequent self-reproaches, for I am sure you will not suppose
that you were forgotten; but I looked forward to an honourable amends in
sending
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 87 |
“I found your parcel last night, on my return home, after a fortnight’s absence. Its contents will be of the greatest use to me. I have already looked through Callender and the Archaiology, and find in the former applicable information not in my other authorities; and in the latter many curious facts. Our old divine, Dr. Hammond, used to say, that whatever his course of study might be in the first part of the week, something always occurred in it which was convertible to use in his next sermon. My experience is of the same kind, and you will perceive that these books will assist me in many ways.
“My little girls have not forgotten you. The infant whom you saw sleeping in a basket here in this library, where he was born three weeks before, is now, God be thanked, a thriving and hopeful child. Kenyon will be here in the course of the week, and we shall talk of you, and drink to our friends in New England. This is less picturesque than the votive sacrifices of ancient times, but there is as much feeling connected with it.
“Mr. Everett
sent me the two first numbers of his quarterly journal, telling me that I should not need an apology for
the sentiments which it expresses towards England. I am sorry that those
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“I am collecting materials for a Life of George Fox, and the Rise and Progress of Quakerism. Perhaps some documents of American growth may fall in your way. We are never likely to meet again in this world; let us keep up this kind of intercourse till we meet in a better.
“God bless you!
The following is the letter referred to as inclosed in the preceding one. I place it here as containing some interesting remarks upon American literature.
“I did not receive your friendly letter, and the books
which you sent to Murray’s, till
the last week in May, at which time I supposed you would be on your voyage
homeward. Long ere this I trust you
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 89 |
“You have sent me a good specimen of American divinity.
I very much doubt whether we have any contemporary sermons so good. For though
our pulpits are better filled than they were in the last generation, we do not
hear from them such sound reasoning, such clear logic, and such manly and
vigorous composition as in the days of South and Barrow. What
is said in the memoir of Mr. Buckminster
of the unimpassioned character of our printed sermons is certainly true; the
cause of it is to be found in the general character of the congregations for
which they were composed, always regular church-going people, persons of wealth
and rank, the really good part of the community, and the Formalists and the
Pharisees, none of whom would like to be addressed by their parish priest as
miserable sinners standing in need of repentance. Sermons of country growth
seldom find their way to the press; in towns the ruder classes seldom attend
the Church service, in large towns because there is no room for them; and
indeed, in country as well as town, the subjects who are in the worst state of
mind and morals never enter the Church doors. Wesley and Whitfield got
at them by preaching in the open air, and they administered drastics with
prodigious effect. Since their days a more impassioned style has been used in
the pulpit, and with considerable success. But the pith and the sound
philosophy of the elder divines are wanting. Your
Buckminster was taking
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“You have sent me also a good specimen of American politics in the works of Fisher Ames. I perused them with great pleasure, and have seldom met with a more sagacious writer. A great proportion of the words in the American vocabulary are as common in England as in America. But provided a word be good, it is no matter from what mint it comes. Neologisms must always be arising in every living language; and the business of criticism should be not to reprobate them because they are new, but to censure such as are not formed according to analogy, or which are merely superfluous. The authority of an English reviewer passes on your side of the Atlantic for more than it is worth; with us the Review of the last month or the last quarter is as little thought of as the last week’s newspaper. You must have learnt enough of the constitution of such works to know that upon questions of philology they are quite unworthy of being noticed. The manner in which they are referred to in the vocabulary led me to this, and this leads me to the criticisms upon Bristed and Fearon’s books in the Quarterly Review. I know not from whom they came, but they are not in a good spirit.
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 91 |
“How little are our lots in life to be foreseen! It might reasonably have been thought that, if any man could have been secured against ill fortune in his mercantile concerns by prudence, punctuality, method, and the virtues and habits which the mercantile profession requires, you, above all men, would have been uniformly and steadily prosperous; and yet to what a series of anxieties and losses have you been exposed, without any fault, or even anything which can justly be called incaution on your part! This, however, is both consolatory and certain, that no good man is ever the worse for the trials with which Providence may visit him, and the way in which you regard these afflictions exemplifies this.
“Since I received your letter I made my proposed visit
to the sea-coast with the two Ediths and Cuthbert. We were at Netherhall, the solar of my friend and
fellow-traveller, Senhouse, where his
ancestors have uninterruptedly resided since the days of Edward II. (when part of the present building is
known to have been standing), and how long before that no one knows. Some of
his deeds are of Edward I.’s reign,
some of Henry III.’s; and one is as far
back as King John. We slept in the tower, the
walls of which are nine feet thick. In the time of the great Rebellion the
second of the two sons of this house went to serve the King, the elder brother
(whom ill-
| 92 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“Netherhall stands upon the little river Ellen, about
half a mile from the sea, but completely sheltered from the sea-wind by a long
high hill, under cover of which some fine old trees have grown up. The Ellen
rises on Skiddaw, forms the little and unpicturesque lake or rather pool which
is called Overwater, near the foot of that mountain, and, though a very small
stream, makes a port, where a
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 93 |
“Old as Netherhall is, the stones of which it is built were hewn from the quarry more than a thousand years before it was begun. They were taken from a Roman station on the hill between it and the sea, where a great number of Roman altars, &c. have been found. Some of them are described by Camden, who praises the Mr. Senhouse of his time for the hospitality with which he received him, and the care with which he preserved these remains of antiquity. . . . . It was a bishop of this family who preached Charles I.’s coronation sermon, and the text which he took was afterwards noted as ominous;—‘I will give him a crown of glory.’ The gold signet which he wore as a ring is now at Netherhall. God bless you!
| 94 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“I wish to possess a castle in Bohemia. My good aunt Mary has the like desire; and as there are two castles to be had there, together with twelve villages (enough to qualify me in all conscience for a baron of the holy Roman empire), I beseech you, with as little loss of time as may be, to transmit, in such manner as Herries may best direct, the sum of two pounds to W. H. Reinganum, Banquier, No. 13. Rue Zeil, Frankfort sur Maine, to purchase one ticket in my name, and one in my aunt Mary’s, in the lottery for the seven estates in Bohemia, which are to be played for at Vienna on the 1st of next month; and I invite you, Grosvenor, to purchase a ticket also, and let us go shares in the adventure; and if we get the prize, we will make a merry and memorable journey to Prague, and you shall take your choice of seven titles for your baronship, to wit, Zieken, Wolschow, Koyschitz, Shunkau, Libietitz, Prytanitz, and Oberstankau.
“Just suppose, Grosvenor, that Fortune, in one of her freaks, was to give us
this prize, and we were to set out for the purpose of taking possession of
twelve villages, two chateaux, seven farms, and several mills and manufactures,
and valued judicially at 894,755 florins of Vienna. I suppose the inhabitants
are included. The notion, I think, will amuse you as much as it does us. So buy
the tickets, Grosvenor.
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 95 |
“So God bless you, Grosvenor! and make us both barons, and my aunt a Bohemian baroness.
“. . . . . You form a just opinion of the character and
tendency of William Taylor’s
conversation. A most unfortunate perversion of mind has made him always
desirous of supporting strange and paradoxical opinions by ingenious arguments,
and showing what may be said on the wrong side of a question. He likes to be in
a state of doubt upon all subjects where doubt is possible, and has often said,
‘I begin to be too sure of that, and must see what reasons I can
find against it.’ But when this is applied to great and momentous
truths, the consequences are of the most fatal kind. I believe no man ever
carried Pyr-
| 96 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“What is more remarkable is, that this habitual and excessive scepticism has weakened none of the sectarian prejudices in which he was brought up. He sympathises as cordially with the Unitarians in their animosity to the Church and State, as if he agreed with them in belief, and finds as strong a bond of union in party-spirit as he could do in principle.
“With regard to his talents, they arc very great. No man can exceed him in ingenuity, nor in the readiness with which he adorns a subject by apt and lively illustrations. His knowledge is extensive, but not deep. When first I saw him, three-and-twenty years ago, I thought him the best informed man with whom I had ever conversed. When I visited him last, after a lapse of eight years, I discovered the limits of his information, and that upon all subjects it was very incomplete.
“Of his heart and disposition I cannot speak more
highly than I think. It is my belief that no man ever brought a kindlier nature
into this world. His great talents have been sadly wasted; and, what is worse,
they have sometimes been sadly misemployed. He has unsettled the faith of many,
and he has prepared for his own old age a pillow of thorns. To all
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 97 |
“Thank you for the copy of Cromwell’s Letters. The transcriber has tasked his own eyes, and mine also, by copying them in the very form of the writing. I cannot attempt to read them by candle-light. You will by this time have seen my sketch of Cromwell’s Life. It is the only article of mine which was ever printed in the Quarterly Review without mutilation. Gifford has made only one alteration; that, however, is a very improper one. I had said that Hampden might have left behind him a name scarcely inferior to Washington’s; and he has chosen to alter this to a memorable name, not calling to mind that his name is memorable. The sentence is thus made nonsensical. Pray restore the proper reading in your copy of the Review. Murray wishes me to fill up the sketch for separate publication. I am fond of biography, and shall probably one day publish a series of English lives. I spent a week lately at Lowther Castle, and employed all my mornings in reading and extracting from a most extensive collection of pamphlets of Cromwell’s age. . . . .
“God bless you, my dear friend!
| 98 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“Lakers and visitors have now disappeared for the season, like the swallows and other birds who are lucky enough to have better winter quarters allotted to them than this island affords them. The woodcocks and snipes have arrived, by this token, that my bookbinder here sent me a brace of the latter last week; and this reminds me to tell you, that if you ever have an owl dressed for dinner, you had better have it boiled, and smothered with onions, for it is not good roasted. Experto crede Roberto.
“Two or three weeks ago, calling at Calvert’s I learnt that Raisley C. had committed the great sin of
shooting an owl. The criminality of the act was qualified by an ingenuous
confession, that he did not know what it was when he fired at it: the bird was
brought in to show us, and then given me that I might show it to your godson,
owls and monkeys being of all created things those for which he has acquired
the greatest liking from his graphic studies. Home I came with the owl in my
hand, and in the morning you would have been well pleased had you seen
Cuthbert’s joy at recognising,
for the first time, the reality of what he sees daily in Bewick or in some
other of his books. Wordsworth and his
wife were here, and as there was no sin in eating the owl, I ordered it to be
dressed and brought in, in the place of game that day at dinner. It was served
up with-
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 99 |
“I asked your opinion, a good while since, concerning a dedication for the Peninsular War, and hitherto you have not opined upon the subject in reply. It has this moment, while I am writing, occurred to me, that I could, with sincere satisfaction in so doing, inscribe it to Lord Sidmouth. I have always felt thankful to him for the peace of Amiens, and should like to tell him so in public, as I once did vivâ voce. And I should do it the more willingly if he is going out of office, which I rather think he is.
“Gifford will have a paper upon Dobrizhoffer from me for this next number. Will you tell him that in a volume of tracts at Lowther, of Charles I.’s time, I found a Life of Sejanus by P. M., by which initials some hand, apparently as old as the book, had written Philip Massinger. I did not read the tract, being too keenly in pursuit of other game; but I believe it had a covert aim at Buckingham. I have not his Massinger, and therefore do not know whether he is aware that this was ever ascribed to that author; if he is not, he will be interested in the circumstance, and may think it worthy of farther inquiry.
| 100 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“My History is in good progress. I am finishing the longest chapter in the volume, and one of the most interesting. It contains the events in Portugal from the commencement of the insurrection in Spain till the arrival of our expedition.
“God bless you!
“. . . . . What you relate of William Taylor is quite characteristic of the manner in which he abuses his own powers, playing the mere sophist, and disregarding the opinions and feelings of others; careless how he offends and hurts them, though as incapable as man can be of giving intentional pain, or doing intentional wrong. He was not serious, for he knows very well that to call for proof of a negative is an absurdity, and that reason and discourse of reason are very different things. If he misleads some, his example operates as a warning upon others. They see how he has squandered his abilities, and that the hereditary blindness which he has some cause to apprehend, and of which he lives in fear, is not the darkest evil in his prospect. There is no rest but in religious faith, and none know this more feelingly than they who are without it.
“It would not surprise me if an expert Roman
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 101 |
“What a state is Ireland in at this time! The horrors of the Irish massacres may be credited in their whole extent, because we see that the same temper is exhibited at this time, and the same atrocities perpetrated in retail, opportunity being all that is wanted for committing them upon the great scale. The state of things in that country is a reproach to human nature, and our Government has much to answer for. They must know that such a people ought to be kept under military law till they are fit for anything better; that they stand in need of Roman civilisation, and that no weaker remedy can possibly suffice. Cromwell’s government, if it had lasted twenty years longer, would have civilised that island. His tyranny was as useful there and in Scotland as it was injurious in England, because they were barbarous countries, and he introduced order and despotic justice into both. But in England we had order and justice before his time. The rebellion dislocated both, and it was not possible for him to repair the evil in which he had been so great an agent. . . . .
“God bless you, my dear Neville!
| 102 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
The reader will have observed in his later letters to Mr. May, frequent allusion to Brazilian affairs as affecting his fortunes, and in the following one, my father speaks of his having transferred to him for his present use what little money he had at command, and expressing a regret at not being able more effectually to assist him in his difficulties. These passages, though relating to matters of a private nature, I am glad to have the opportunity of publishing, with Mr. May’s approval, as illustrative of the kindness of my father’s heart, the warmth and stability of his friendships, and his grateful remembrance of many similar services rendered to him by his friend in past years.
“It is not often that I allow myself to wish the accidents of fortune had been more in my favour, and that I were in possession of that property which, in the just ordinary course of things, ought to have devolved upon me; but I cannot help feeling that wish now.
“By this post I write to Bedford, desiring that he will transfer to you 625l. in the three-per-cents. I wish it was more, and that
I had more at command in any way. I shall in the spring, if I am paid for the
first volume of my history as soon as it is finished. One hundred I should, at
all events,
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 103 |
“One word more. I entreat you break away from business if it be possible, as early in the spring as you can, and put yourself in the mail for this place. Though you cannot leave your anxieties behind you, yet you may, by means of change of air and scene, be assisted in bearing them, and lay in here a store of pleasant recollections, which in all moods of mind are wholesome.
“I cannot write to you about indifferent things, troubled as you needs must be, and sympathising as I must do with you. Yet I trust that you now know the extent of the evil; and that when this storm is weathered, there may be prosperity and comfort in store for one who so eminently deserves them.
“God bless you, my dear friend!
“When the Life is reprinted, I can modify the passage which expresses an
essential difference of opinion upon religious subjects with Henry. That difference is certainly not now
what it was then, but it is still a wide one; though, had
Henry lived till this time, I believe there would
scarcely have been a shade of difference between us. I am perfectly sure
| 104 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“You wrong the Government with regard to Ireland. They
neither now have, nor ever have had, a wish to keep the savages in that country
in their state of ignorance and barbarity; and it would surprise you to know
what funds have been established for their education. I know Dr. Bell was surprised at finding how large the
endowments were, and felt that on that score it was not means that were
wanting, but the just direction of them. How to set about enlightening such a
people as the wild Irish is one of the most difficult duties any government was
ever called upon to perform, obstructed as it is by such a body of priests, who
can effectually prevent any better instruction than they themselves bestow. I
want more information concerning certain parts of Irish history than I possess
at present; but in one or more of the works which I have in hand I shall trace
the evils of Ireland to their source. Meantime, this I may safely assert, as a
general deduction from all that I have learnt in the course of history, that
the more we know of preceding and coexisting circumstances and difficulties,
the more excuse we shall find for those men and measures which, with little
knowledge of those circumstances, we should condemn absolutely. This feeling
leads not to any thing like indifference concerning right and wrong, nor to any
lukewarmness or indecision in opinion; but certainly to a more
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 105 |
“God bless you, my dear Neville!
“At last I have received the books*,—a rich cargo, in which I shall find much to amuse, and not a little to profit by. As yet, I have only had time to catalogue them, and look into them as this was done. In so doing, I saw that you had given a Jesuit the lie, for what he said of the cause of the first rebellion. A lying Jesuit he is; but in this instance the falsehood is merely chronological. The Long Parliament passed a decree, forbidding all persons to bow at the name of Jesus; Sir Edward Dering made a very eloquent speech upon the occasion, which I shall send you ere long in the little sketch of our Church history which I am preparing. This decree was subsequent to the Irish massacre. The fact which the Jesuit might have dwelt upon with advantage is, that the intolerance of the Parliament seeking to enforce the penalty of death against recusant priests, when Charles, like his father, was inclined to toleration, gave a pretext for the rebellion, and furnished those who instigated it with means for alarming and enraging the populace.
|
* A present of various foreign books from Mr. Landor. |
| 106 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“I shall send your letter to Wordsworth, who will, I am sure, be much gratified at seeing what you say of him. His merits are every day more widely acknowledged, in spite of the duncery, in spite of the personal malignity with which he is assailed, and in spite of his injudicious imitators, who are the worst of all enemies.
“Nothing can be more mournful than the course of
events abroad. All that the Spanish-Americans wanted they would have obtained
now, in the course of events, without a struggle, if they had waited quietly. A
free trade could not, from the first, have been refused them, nor any internal
regulations which they thought good; and now the separation would have taken
place unavoidably. As it is, it has cost twelve years of crime and misery. It
is a most interesting part of the world for its natural features, for what we
know of its history, and for what we do not,—how some parts should have
attained to so high and curious a state of civilisation, and how the greater
part of its inhabitants should have sunk so completely into savages. I will
send you, in the next package, Humboldt’s Travels, as far as they are published. He
is among travellers what Wordsworth is
among poets. Of Italian nobility I would take your opinion without hesitation,
knowing nothing of them myself; but in Spain and Portugal I would have had a
house of peers, were it only in respect to great names, and those heroic
remembrances which are the strength and glory of a nation. The nobles were, for
the most part, deplorably degenerate; but as a bad spirit had degraded, a
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 107 |
“Since the disappearance of the Queen’s fever this country has been unusually calm: little is heard of distress, and less of disaffection. Of the latter we shall hear plentifully when the bills of restriction are expired, and of the former also, when it shall be found (as it will be) that the renewed activity of our manufacturers will have again glutted the South American markets.
“God bless you!
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