For the delay which has taken place in bringing forth this Work I am not responsible, as it has chiefly arisen from the circumstance that no literary executor was expressly named in my father’s latest will; and in consequence of the difficulties which thus arose, it was not until the spring of 1848 that the materials, as far as they had then been collected, were put into my hands. I have since then made what speed I might in the preparation of them for the press, amid the engagements of other business, and with my hand often palsied by causes over which I had no control.
It were useless to endeavour to refute the various objections often made to a son’s undertaking such a task; yet one remark may be permitted, that although a son may not be a fit person to pass judgment upon a father’s character, he yet may faithfully chronicle his life; and is undoubtedly, by a natural right, the most proper person to have all private letters submitted to his eye, and all family affairs intrusted to his judgment.
| vi | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE |
With this feeling, and with the full conviction that I am acting in accordance with what would have been my father’s own wish, I have not thought it right to shrink from an undertaking, for which I cannot claim to have in other respects any peculiar qualifications. Accordingly, my object has been, not to compose a regular biography, but rather to lay before the reader such a selection from my father’s letters, as will give, in his own words, the history of his life; and I have only added such remarks as I judged necessary for connection or explanation; indeed the even tenor of his life, during its greater portion, affords but little matter for pure biography, and the course of his literary pursuits, his opinions on passing events, and the few incidents of his own career, will all be found narrated by himself in a much more natural manner than if his letters had been worked up into a regular narrative.
My father has long been before the public, and has obtained a large share of
praise, as well as of censure and misrepresentation; he has yet, however, to be fully known; and this I have a good hope will be accomplished by the
publication of these volumes;—that in them all his mind will appear; in its
playfulness as well as its gravity, in its joys and its sorrows, and the gradual progress
of his opinions be fairly traced, from the visionary views of his early youth, up to the
fixed and settled convictions of his riper years; and if I have inserted any letters, or
passages, which re-
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | vii |
I must now make my acknowledgements generally to those friends and correspondents of my father who have most kindly placed their letters at my disposal. And in particular to Mrs. Henry Bedford for those addressed to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, Esq., from which I have drawn my chief materials for this volume and which I have used largely throughout the work; to William Rickman, Esq., for those addressed to his father, the late John Rickman, Esq.; to the Right Hon. Charles W. W. Wynn; to John May, Esq.; to J. G. Lockhart, Esq., for those addressed to Sir Walter Scott; to Joseph Cottle, Esq.; to Mrs. Neville White and the Rev. James White; to the family of the late Sharon Turner, Esq.; to Walter Savage Landor, Esq.; to the family of the late Dr. Gooch; to the family of the late Rev. Nicholas Lightfoot; to Mr. Ebenezer Elliott; to Mr. Ticknor, of Boston; to Miss Elizabeth Charter; to Mrs. Hodson; to John Kenyon, Esq.; to Mrs. H. N. Coleridge; to William Wordsworth, Esq., Poet Laureat; and to Henry Taylor, Esq.
| viii | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE |
Other communications have been promised to me which I shall take a future opportunity of acknowledging.
While, however, my materials from these sources have been most extensive, there must still be many individuals with whom I have not been able to communicate, who have corresponded with my father upon literary subjects; and, should this meet the eye of any of these gentlemen, they would confer a great obligation upon me by permitting me the use of any of his letters to them, which are likely sometimes to possess an interest different from those addressed to intimate friends and frequent correspondents.
I may say, in conclusion, that whatever defects these volumes may possess, I have the satisfaction of feeling that they will verify my father’s own words,—words not uttered boastingly, but simply as the answer of a conscience void of offence both towards God and man,—“I have this conviction, that, die when I may, my memory is one of those which will smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.”
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