1082. Robert Southey to John Rickman, [mid-July 1805]
1082. Robert Southey to John Rickman, [mid-July 1805] *
Dear Rickman
When you or any trustable person travel toward Blackfriars do drop this inclosed into Mr Phillips’s letter-box, or give it into his hands – if you have any inclination to see behold innate Beef. I have spent half a hour for the sake of advertising Amadis in a good way, & the 3rd proof does not appear in the Preface, being of later discovery. [1]
Danvers is arrived – so I am going to be idle. unhappily I have a cruel cold & my eyes continue to vex me. I shall write soon. your objections against my Welshmans preachings are not valid – because you will find that the argument of force is the one insisted upon at last. they are to worship images & their children to be taught Xtianity. this is the end of the second sermon. the first is reasonable & understandable even by [MS torn] ages. – But about the general worth of the poem, or rather its impressiveness, you are right. it is in an under-key. [2]
RS.
Danvers desires to be remembered.
Notes
* Address: To/ John Rickman Esqr
Endorsement: RS. – / [MS illegible] July 1805
MS: Huntington Library, RS 77. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.
Dating note: Dating from
Rickman’s endorsement and internal evidence referring to Danvers’s visit in Southey’s letter to Wynn of 12 July 1805 (Letter
1083). BACK
[1] Meaning that Southey had discovered a new, third, piece of evidence proving the author of Amadis of Gaul, which he had translated in 1803, to have been the Portuguese author Vasco Lobeira (d. 1403). This attribution had been made in his preface to Amadis but had been doubted by Walter Scott in reviews published in the Annual Review for 1803, 2 (1804), 600–603, and the Edinburgh Review, October (1803), 109–136. Southey therefore wrote to the editor of the Monthly Magazine in order to publicise this evidence. The letter appeared in the Monthly Magazine, 20.2 (September 1805), 100. See Letter 1082.1 of this edition. BACK
