3779. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 6 January 1822

Address: To/ J Rickman Esq^re
Endorsement: RS to JR 6 Janry/ 1822
MS: Huntington Library, RS 419. ALS; 3p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, p. 293.
Note on MS: This letter originally enclosed Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 6 January 1822, Letter 3778. This was left unsealed to allow Rickman to read Southey’s letter to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776, which was itself enclosed in the letter to Bedford.

My dear R.

I send the inclosure open,

⁽¹⁾

that you may see in what manner I have dealt with Lord Byron, – who may now properly be called the Avenger of Abel.

⁽²⁾

You have I hope seen his attack. If he returns to it, I have more stones from the brook, & my aim is sure.

⁽³⁾

There are works of his come over for publication which are so bad (even after D Juan) that Murray will not touch them.

⁽⁴⁾

This I hear from Gifford. If need be I shall have a grand opportunity of attacking the rascally press in his person.

Many new years & happy ones to you & yours God bless you

RS.

6 Jan^y. 1822.

This will follow you I suppose into Sussex – but time is of no consequence. His attack has been published in our Broughamite papers.

⁽⁵⁾

They I suppose will not insert my reply, – but I will take care that his attack shall appear in the opposite paper with it, having as much to gain by bringing them together as he has to lose.

⁽⁶⁾

Notes

1. i.e. Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 6 January 1822, Letter 3778, and its enclosure Southey to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776. [back]

2. In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 328, Byron had cautioned: ‘I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey’s calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.’ Southey had visited Switzerland in his continental tour of May–August 1817. The ‘calumnies’ Byron believed Southey to have later spread were rumours that Byron and Shelley had engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. For Southey’s response, see Southey to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776. The letter appeared in the Courier on 11 January 1822. In Genesis 4: 1–16, Abel was murdered by his brother, Cain. Southey probably means that Byron had tried to justify Cain by writing Cain, A Mystery, but the poem was so disreputable it had instead avenged Abel. [back]

3. In 1 Samuel 17: 40, David chose ‘five smooth stones out of the brook’ to hurl from the sling which he used to kill Goliath, the giant Philistine warrior. [back]

4. Byron’s Don Juan (1819–1824), the first two cantos of which were published anonymously by Murray on 15 July 1819. The ‘Dedication’, which attacked Southey and others, was suppressed, though it soon became well-known. Murray had, however, declined to publish Byron’s play ‘Heaven and Earth’ with Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821). He was also hesitating over whether to publish Byron’s The Vision of Judgment (1822), a parody of Southey’s A Vision of Judgement (1821); eventually, it was published by John Hunt (1775–1848; DNB) in The Liberal, 1 (October 1822), 3–39. [back]

5. Byron’s criticism of Southey in his ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’ had been widely published in opposition newspapers, including the Morning Chronicle, 19 December 1821 and the Examiner, 726 (23 December 1821), 810. Southey had first seen it in his local Whig paper, Westmorland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle, 29 December 1821. [back]

6. By ‘opposite paper’ Southey means the pro-government Westmorland Gazette, the main local rival to the Whiggish Westmorland Advertiser. On 12 January 1822, the Westmorland Gazette printed both Southey’s denunciation of ‘the Satanic School’ of modern poetry from A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), ‘Preface’, pp. xvii–xxii, and an extract from Byron’s attack on Southey in the ‘Appendix’ to the ‘Two Foscari’. Southey’s response to the latter, his letter to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776, was then printed in the Westmorland Gazette on 19 January 1822. This was done after a direct request from Southey to the newspaper; see Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 6 January 1822, Letter 3778. [back]

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Notes

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven