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Huntington Library, RS 73. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 385–386.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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Heaven knows in what humour the inclosed
Sir I have just been led by mere accident to look into the Annual Review for 1803. Two or three articles in that
volume, in which I am treated with a low & despicable scurrility worthy of the times of bishop Gardiner & bishop Bonner,
I recognise for yours. I know not well to what feelings the mind of the man who penned them is accessible, but I would willingly
carry some feelings of moral compunction & moral confusion home to that mind. There were several reasons why you ought not to have written those articles. 1.You must be conscious of the intellectual abilities of the man against whom you have thus written, however in
these articles you bely that consciousness. Several parts of my Enquiry concerning Political Justice have been praised for
uncommon acuteness & depth of reasoning by the most determined enemies of its doctrines; you cannot be blind to these
qualities in that book. To the novel of Caleb Williams vigour of conception & strength of delineation have never been denied;
I do not believe that you differ from all the world in these admissions. If you differ from me in some of my opinions, if you
think that, being both of us engaged in one cause (as you profess in these articles), & I at least engaged in it with no
common ardour, I have failed to serve it judiciously, that can be no reason for your affirming of a man, whom you know to be of
uncommon powers of mind, that he is a blockhead. No cause that is worth serving, can be served by such falshoods. 2.You are not less fully convinced of my integrity, than of my intellectual powers. My private life, my conduct
to my wife, my children, & my connections, is beyond exception. You feel, more deeply than most men, the sincere devotedness
of heart with which, however you may suppose me to be mistaken, I gave myself up to the cause of truth & public interest. If
ability, united with integrity, do not demand the respect of every one who sets up the slightest pretensions to either, I am then
at a loss to conceive what foundations for respect can exist in the world. 3.You were, at the first appearance of the Enquiry concerning Political Justice, the most devoted advocate of the
doctrines of the book. If you have since seen reason to alter your opinion, or if I have forfeited your approbation by what you
may deem my injudicious management of th[e] controversy since, still you owed something to your former good opinion. An apostate,
who immediately becomes the bitter & scurrilous enemy of the party he has deserted, is a character which the common sense of
mankind has agreed to reprobate. 4.You were my personal acquaintance. Some decency, by all the laws of civilised society, was due to this
circumstance. A few weeks after the publication of this volume, we dined together at the house of a common friend. With what
sensations, if you were accessible to any ingenuous feelings, must you have sat down with a man, against whom you had asserted
such gross falshoods, whose character, the result of honest & unwearied exertions in what he conceived to be the public
cause, you had endeavoured to destroy, whose family you had done your best to starve, & against whose indignant eye you had
no protection except the cloak of anonymous publication you had assumed? 5.You must have known that the scribblers of reviewers & periodical pamphlets had entered into a combination
by the silliest & most impudent misrepresentations to write me down. You must have seen how the leaders of the church, &
the fawning slaves of priestcraft & tyranny, w[ere] united against me. We were engaged by your own statement in one cause,
the cause of human improveableness, of liberty, equality & mankind. What ought you to have thought of yourself, when you
joined the vulgar & artful cry of the enemies of this cause against me? While no one as yet openly opposed my work, while it
& its author appeared to possess an extensive popularity, you were its friend. When the refuse of every tyrannical &
aristocratical party joined against me, & gave my book the appearance of being hunted out of the world, then you thought it
prudent, & you thought it magnanim[ous], to stand up against me, to repeat the words of these hirelings, & to echo their
sentences. I have too much singleness of heart, to endeavour to form to myself a party, or by the ordinary & accustomed means
to curry favour with the drudges of literature, & to this is owing the proceedings of a crew, in the train of which you are
the last volunteer. It may seem strange that, in writing this letter, I pay you an attention which I never dreamed of paying to your
brother reviewers & magazine-writers. But I have heard you so repeatedly represented by men of honour as an honourable man,
that, against all hope & argument I cling to the idea; &, though I am satisfied that the writer of these articles, can
have neither honesty nor worth, I render this oblation to your departed good name. It is in vain for you to answer this letter. Between me & the person I address there can be nothing
reciprocal. I address you as a judge addresses himself to a convicted criminal. If you think you can prove that you are not the
author of these articles, we have common friends, Mr. Lamb, Mr. Rickman & Mr.
Carlisle; &, though I have no idea of the possibility of overturning the evidence I possess, I shall listen to every
thing they can allege with patience & respect. W Godwin Polygon, Somers Town, May 15, 1805.To Robert Southey, 15 May 1805
xxxxx <reply>, – & if he should inquire of you
concerning it – as he refers to you as a common friend, you may tell him so in what phrase you please – which may
perhaps best be done by saying that I perfectly agree with him in opinion that his letter requires no answer. – It is probable that he
attributes other articles to me besides those which are mine <(i.e. his own Chaucer & Malthus
I pray you preserve xx xxxxxx <his letter>. it is too precious to be lost – or I should have returned
it to the Author in a black cover. You can send it in the next frankum magnum.
Can you send me an old report about a whimsical prison which Jeremy Bentham obtained an act of Parliament to erect –
It was called a Panopticon – or some such heathenish name.