3925. Robert Southey to [Bernard Barton], 26 November 1822

MS untraced; text is taken from Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965)
Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), II, pp. 239–240.

Keswick. 26 Nov. 1822.

My dear Sir

Thank you for your portrait, which I am glad to see and glad to think that it probably indicates another edition of your poems.

⁽¹⁾

I should guess that the painter has not done his part so well as the engraver. It would have been more characteristic if he had taken you with your hat on – the costume as it now is might be mistaken for that of a Methodist preacher.

Your verses upon Shelley (for which I thank you also) are either at Longmans, or on their way from him.

⁽²⁾

I knew that miserable man and am well acquainted with his dreadful history. He resided here for some months

⁽³⁾

with his wife, soon after their marriage – that wife whom he perverted to atheism, and abandoned when he went to live with Godwins daughter – his present widow.

⁽⁴⁾

She was thoroughly corrupted by him, followed the example which he had set her, and then in shame at the consequences, threw herself into the Thames.

⁽⁵⁾

Two years ago Shelley wrote to me, demanding whether I were the author of a paper concerning him in the Quarterly Review.

⁽⁶⁾

I took the opportunity which my denial afforded of reading him a lecture.

⁽⁷⁾

This produced a sort of controversial reply, and then I read him a second, bringing home to him the fatal effects of his principles.

⁽⁸⁾

His story, taking it altogether, is the most flagitious and the most tragic which I have known in real life. You will probably see some of my household

⁽⁹⁾

ere long at Clarksons, and they will tell you more of him. By the bye he was remarkably like Mr Clarkson, tho upon a small scale. His eyes were set in the same manner, and the resemblance between son and father could not be stronger.

Shelley was not, like Lord Byron, wicked by disposition. His actual feelings I believe to have been kind and generous. But he adopted the Devils own philosophy that nothing ought to stand in the way of his gratifications, and to this he acted up.

What a dreadful thought of his wife’s fate must have come upon him, when he saw himself about to perish by water!

⁽¹⁰⁾

His body was much mutilated when it was cast ashore.

⁽¹¹⁾

The fish had half devoured it.

He was the least mischievous of the three “Liberals”.

⁽¹²⁾

His writings were not bad enough in some respects to do much harm, and far too bad in others. What merit they had was of too high a kind to be attractive, and their obscurity and extravagance served in some degree to sheath the poison which they contained. Farewell, and believe me Yrs truly

Robert Southey.

Notes

1. Barton had sent Southey an engraving of a portrait of himself, probably that made by Robert Cooper (d. 1828). The artist is unknown. There was indeed a third edition of Barton’s Poems in 1822.[back]

2. Barton’s Verses on the Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1822).[back]

3. The Shelleys had lodged in Keswick from November 1811 to February 1812, during which they met Southey a number of times.[back]

4. Mary Shelley (1797–1851; DNB), with whom Shelley had eloped to the continent in July 1814. They married on 30 December 1816, after the death of Harriet Shelley.[back]

5. Harriet Shelley had drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park in late 1816. Her body was recovered on 10 December, and an inquest into the death of ‘Harriet Smith’ the following day returned an inconclusive verdict of ‘found dead’. Harriet Shelley was pregnant when she died, and the circumstances surrounding her death were soon common knowledge in literary circles.[back]

6. In a letter of 26 June 1820, Shelley had accused Southey of writing a hostile review of Laon and Cythna, or the Revolution of the Golden City (1818; published late 1817) and The Revolt of Islam. A Poem, in Twelve Cantos (1818); see Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 358–359. The offending article had appeared in the Quarterly Review, 21 (April 1819), 460–471. It concluded with an ad hominem attack that suggested the reviewer knew a great deal about Shelley’s personal affairs: ‘if we might withdraw the veil of private life, and tell what we now know about him, it would be indeed a disgusting picture that we should exhibit, but it would be an unanswerable comment on our text; it is not easy for those who read only, to conceive how much low pride, how much cold selfishness, how much unmanly cruelty are consistent with the laws of this “universal” and “lawless love.” But we must only use our knowledge to check the groundless hopes which we were once prone to entertain of him’ (471). The article had, moreover, described Shelley as ‘an unsparing imitator’ and The Revolt’s language and versification as a ‘copy’ of Southey’s, though ‘altogether more luxuriant and ornate than the original’ (461). Shelley had been mistaken in attributing the review to Southey, who had a policy of not reviewing contemporary poetry. Its author was John Taylor Coleridge.[back]

7. Southey’s ‘lecture’ was Southey to Percy Shelley [c. 29 July 1820], The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3517.[back]

8. Shelley had replied to Southey on 17 August 1820. This elicited a further response, Southey to Percy Shelley, 12 October 1820, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3538.[back]

9. Sara Coleridge and her daughter.[back]

10. Shelley had drowned in the Bay of Naples on 8 July 1822 when his boat, the Don Juan, sank in a squall.[back]

11. Shelley’s corpse was washed ashore on 18 July near Viareggio.[back]

12. The other two were Byron and Leigh Hunt. All had been associated with the short-lived journal The Liberal (1822–1823).[back]

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Ian Packer

3925. Robert Southey to [Bernard Barton], 26 November 1822

3925. Robert Southey to [Bernard Barton], 26 November 1822

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer