3846. Robert Southey to Walter Savage Landor, 27 May 1822

Address: To/ Walter Savage Landor Esq^re/ Florence/ Italy
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298; ANGLETERRE; CHAMBERY; CORRISP^ZA ESTERA DA GENOA
Postmarks: F/ 9/ 22; [illegible]
MS: National Art Library, London, MS Forster 48 D.32 MS 38. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 311–313.

Keswick. 27 May. 1822

I shall rejoice to see your Dialogues.

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Mine

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are consecutive, & will have nothing of that dramatic variety which you will make the most. My plan grew out of Boethius,

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tho it has since been so modified, that the origin would not be suspected. The personage who visits me is Sir Thomas More,

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as one who recognizes in me some dispathies but more points of agreement. This age is as climacteric as that in which he lived, – in fact we are beginning now to perceive the whole effects of the three great events of his age, – the discovery <invention> of printing, the Reformation, & the discovery of America. You see what a canvas I have taken, if I can but fill up the sketch. By way of relief I introduce some of the dialogues with local scenery, & perhaps I may insert some verses. –

The first volume of my history

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is delayed by the printer,

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– my part is so nearly done, that it will be finished before this reaches you. Give me in your next a direction whither to send it; by that time I hope the printer will nearly have done his work: the Vision

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& some smaller things will go with it,

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Humboldts Travels

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(which you will read with great interest) & two little volumes which Wordsworth sends you, – the one a series of sonnets Ecclesiastical Sketches

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he calls them, the other poems which he produced during a short tour on the continent.

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The complaint in Wordsworths eyes is a serious inconvenience to him, but it threatens nothing worse. I have been greatly alarmed about him, this week, by hearing that he had a dreadful fall from a horse; but to day we learn that he is well. The horse ran away with him, & threw him against a wall. His head was cut, & bled profusely, which possibly prevented worse consequences. – Chantry has made a noble bust of him.

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[note to self: code some ampersandnbsp; here x 10] Augustus Hare

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showed me yesterday what you had written of Wordsworth in a letter to his brother. – It is a great pleasure to me when I meet with a person who knows your writings, & can talk with me about them & about you.

You have I suppose seen or heard of the decorous manner in which Lord Byron resented my comments upon the Satanic school of poetry, – & of the manner in which he introduced your name.

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I believe he will take the advice which I gave him in reply, & not meddle with me again in prose.

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We are going on in this country fast & quietly toward Catholic emancipation & Parl: reform; – both I think must at no distant time be carried, & either one will suffice for the overthrow of our institutions. The only question is whether the Church or the State goes first; – the trunk will not remain long upon one leg when the other is lopt. The end of course must be a stronger government, – but God only knows thro what evils it will be reached, & atx <by> what sacrifices it must be purchased. In the days of Charles I.

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there was some consolation in falling before the mighty; such men as Pym Hampden, Milton

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&c. – But to see the work of ruin effected by such people as Brougham & Hume,

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Cam Hobhouse

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& the house of Russel

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– it is like seeing a temple destroyed pulled down by wretches who would not have been thought worthy to carry a hod for the masons at the building.

Would that the means for raising a fallen nation were as efficacious & as sure, as those which are employed for overthrowing the fabric of our greatness! – We might then look with more hope toward Spain Portugal & the far more degraded Italians, – for in the two former countries the degradation has been of the state not of the people. One day I hope you will give us your recollections of Italy.

The French have not yet had enough of S^t Domingo:

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they have actually made an attempt to establish themselves in the Spanish part of the island; & it is said that they intend to restore the slave trade openly, which they have always carried on in an underhand way.

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This is quite worthy of them. If they send an army from Europe against the island, I obxxxxly hope it will be numerous enough to give the Pestilence full scope. They are an incorrigible people, incapable of xx shame.

I am going on myself quietly & contentedly, with no other disquietude than what arises from the occasional illness of one or other of my children, more especially my little boy, – xxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxxxx abjxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx. He has just recovered from a bilious attack, – which is the disease in this country most incident to children. But he is a fine joyous creature, – an object of the greatest hope, – if I could look upon him without fear. – Yours

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will have the advantage of acquiring two languages at once with equal facility.

God bless you
RS.

Notes

1. Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824).[back]

2. Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (1829).[back]

3. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480–525), De Consolatione Philosophiae, a dialogue between the author and the character of Lady Philosophy.[back]

4. Sir Thomas More (1478–1535; DNB), Lord Chancellor 1529–1532.[back]

5. Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

6. Thomas Davison (1766–1831).[back]

7. Southey’s A Vision of Judgement (1821).[back]

8. The Expedition of Orsua; and the Crimes of Aguirre (1821), originally intended to be part of the History of Brazil and first printed in Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1810, 3.2 (1812), i–l; and a combined second edition of Carmen Triumphale (1814) and Congratulatory Odes. Odes to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Russia, and His Majesty the King of Prussia (1814), published as Carmen Triumphale, for the Commencement of the Year 1814: Carmen Aulica, Written in 1814, on the Arrival of the Allied Sovereigns in England (1821).[back]

9. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years 1799–1804 (1814–1826), no. 1463 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library; and Researches Concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants of America, with Descriptions and Views of Some of the Most Striking Scenes in the Cordilleras (1814).[back]

10. William Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822).[back]

11. William Wordsworth, Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820 (1822) contained 35 shorter poems and the longer ‘To Enterprise’ and ‘Desultory Stanzas’.[back]

12. Sir Francis Chantrey’s bust of Wordsworth, completed in 1820.[back]

13. Augustus William Hare (1792–1834; DNB), a clergyman and writer.[back]

14. A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), ‘Preface’, pp. xvii–xxii, where Southey denounced ‘the Satanic School’ of modern poetry, without naming any one poet. 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 during his continental tour of May–August 1817. Byron believed that Southey had subsequently spread rumours that Byron and Shelley engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. Byron continued: ‘One of his [Southey’s] consolations appears to be a Latin note from a work of a Mr. Landor, the author of “Gebir”, whose friendship for Robert Southey will, it seems, “be an honour to him when the ephemeral disputes and ephemeral reputations of the day are forgotten.” [Vision of Judgement, pp. xix–xx] I for one neither envy him “the friendship”, nor the glory in reversion which is to accrue from it, like Mr. Thelusson’s fortune in the third and fourth generation. [Peter Thellusson (1735–1797) left his fortune in trust for his descendants, but nothing to his living relatives] This friendship will probably be as memorable as his own epics, which (as I quoted to him ten or twelve years ago in “English Bards”) Porson said “would be remembered when Homer and Virgil are forgotten, and not till then.” [Byron, English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers; A Satire (London, 1809), p. 9] For the present I leave him.’ (p. 329).[back]

15. Southey had responded with a letter to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776. This was published in the Courier on 11 January 1822. In the conclusion to his letter, Southey had advised Byron: ‘When he attacks me again let it be in rhyme. For one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep to tune.’ Unfortunately for Southey, Byron responded with The Vision of Judgment, a parody of A Vision of Judgement (1821), published in The Liberal, 1 (October 1822), 3–39.[back]

16. Charles I (1600–1649; King of Great Britain 1625–1649; DNB), who was defeated in the Civil War of 1642–1651.[back]

17. John Pym (1584–1643; DNB) and John Hampden (c. 1594–1643; DNB), leading critics of Charles I in the House of Commons; and John Milton (1608–1674; DNB), poet and Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State 1649–1660 under the English Republic.[back]

18. Joseph Hume (1777–1855; DNB), Scottish radical MP, much disliked by Southey for his campaigns against government expenditure.[back]

19. John Cam Hobhouse (1786–1869; DNB), friend of Byron and radical MP for Westminster 1820–1833, who later became a Whig Cabinet Minister.[back]

20. The political family and grouping headed by John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford (1766–1839; DNB), Whig politician and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1806–1807.[back]

21. The French colony of St Domingue on Hispaniola had become the independent State of Haiti in 1804 after a slave rebellion. The French government did not accept this situation and was attempting to persuade or coerce the Haitian leaders into renewing the country’s link to France. Haitian forces had invaded the Spanish section of Hispaniola on 9 February 1822, partly in order to stop it being used as a basis for French pressure on Haiti.[back]

22. France had formally abolished the slave trade in 1815, but this decree was not being enforced effectually. Southey’s information came from William Wilberforce; see Southey to Herbert Hill, 20 April 1822, Letter 3828.[back]

23. Landor’s children: Arnold Savage Landor (1818–1871); Julia Elizabeth Savage Landor (1820–1884); Walter Savage Landor (1822–1899). They were followed by Charles Savage Landor (1825–1917).[back]

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The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven