1474. Robert Southey to Mary Matilda Betham, 2 July 1808 ⁠* 

Keswick. July 2. 1808

Your letter, my dear Madam, has just prevented some arrangements which I was making for the conveyance of the picture to Cumberland, & <also> for what, I perceive, must not now be mentioned. [1]  Edith desires me to express her thanks at present, & hopes you will one day give her an opportunity of expressing them herself at Keswick. We have heard of the miniature from a friend who saw it unexpectedly in the Exhibition, & was much struck with the likeness. – I thank you likewise for your intentions with respect to Coleridge. You would have found him the most wonderful man living in conversation, – but the most impracticable one for a painter, & had you begun the picture, it is ten thousand to one that you must have finished it from memory. His countenance is the most variable that I have ever seen; sometimes it is kindled with the brightest expression, & sometimes all its light goes out & is utterly extinguished. Nothing can convey stronger indications of power than his eye, eye brow & fore head, – nothing can be more imbecil than all the rest of the face; – look at them seperately you would hardly think it possible that they could belong to one head, – look at them together you wonder how they came so, & are puzzled what to expect from a character whose outward & visible signs are so contradictory.

I am sorry I should have expressed my sense of Lady Bedingfields [2]  kindness so lamely that you were not certain I was gratified, & that in a very high degree. It has been my lot, Miss Betham, to meet with much injustice in the world – both as an individual & an author, & the effect it has had upon me has been to make me more sensible of any act of kindness. I have taken up a comfortable opinion that evil tongues speak only for themselves, but that favourable ones may be considered as speaking for posterity; & this opinion is likely to be true, because they who abuse me do it in their vocation & have therefore an obvious motive for so doing, whereas on the other hand no person can have any other motive for praising me – than the belief x that I deserve praise. We who write poetry have a double object in view, to please ourselves, & to please others; it is very gratifying to succeed in either. –Besides the general reason why I am greatly gratified in this particular instance, it will given me particular pleasure to see my own conceptions embodied, & set before me in a visible & permanent form. It has been always my wish to have my long p long poems accompanied with xxx prints, because so many pictures are lost to those readers who are not familiar with the costume: I particularly desired this for Madoc, [3]  but the difficulty of getting designs was such that it was better to give up the attempt, – & what little was done had better have been left undone. – I got a ship copied from the Bayeux tapestry, [4]  & sent to Pococke [5]  to make a drawing from it, – he, hearing that the subject of the poem was the discovery of America by Madoc, chose to think of Columbus, – & accordingly laid the right ship aside & put in its place one of Columbus’s age, – that is, three hundred years more modern than it ought to have been.

It gives me much pleasure to hear that you are able to set foot to the ground; – I should like also to hear that you were taking wing, – & that you do not let painting xxxxxx take up so much of your time as to prevent you from [MS ends]