3696. Robert Southey to
[Neville
White](people.html#WhiteNeville),
21 June 1821MS: MS untraced; text is taken from
John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert
Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856)
Previously published: John Wood
Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols
(London, 1856), III, pp. 258–260.[Keswick](places.html#Keswick),June 21. 1821. My dear Neville, The copyright act as it now stands certainly applies to the
“Remains;” the alteration in that act having been intended as a favour to authors,
and partly also as a set-off against the hardship of exacting the eleven copies.The Copyright Act (1814) provided that
copyright would last for 28 years from the time of publication, or the lifetime of
the author, if that was longer. It also confirmed that 11 public and university
libraries were entitled to copies of all published works. Southey’s Remains
of Henry Kirke White, of Nottingham was first published in 1807.
The “Remains” are your property as long as you live, or either of your sisters,Frances Moriah White (1791–1854) and
Catherine Bailey White (1795–1889). Southey’s allocation of the literary property
in the Remains misses out the other surviving sibling, the
clergyman James White. considering the work as your joint property.
You have now to consider what materials there are which may be
published with the Illustrations.As early
as 1812 Neville White seems to have proposed a volume of prints of places
celebrated in his brother’s poems. This was intended to complement and capitalise
on the popularity of Henry Kirke White’s Remains; see Southey to
Neville White, 12 April 1812, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part
Four, Letter 2076. We acted imprudently in adding anything
after the first edition;For example,
corrected, expanded fourth and fifth editions of the Remains of Henry Kirke
White, of Nottingham had appeared in 1810 and 1811. nothing was
gained by it, and the only effect was to lessen the worth of the first edition, and
expend materials which might now have been turned to account. Did I not some years
ago examine the MS. volume in my possession with this view, and send you what could
be gleaned from it? I seem to recollect so, but am not certain.See Southey to Neville White, 20 September 1812,
The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Four, Letter
2147.
With regard to the portrait of your excellent mother,Mary White, née Neville (1755–1833). there
will come a time when both her portrait and yours ought to accompany these “Remains.”
The objection which you feel in one instance applies to both, and long may it be
before that objection shall cease to exist.
It is a long while since I heard of [Wm. Westall](people.html#WestallWilliam); but if he moves northward
this year, he is very likely to take Nottingham in his way, certainly could make it
so without any inconvenience.
Your weather, it seems, has been like ours, cold and ungenial. I see
by the papers that the season has been equally unfavourable in France; unless there
be a speedy change, the agriculturalists will not have cause to complain of a
plentiful harvest this year as an aggravation of their distresses.The Times, 15 June 1821, printed a
letter from Paris of 11 June, reporting: ‘The weather here is really dreadful:
constant rain, and at the same time as cold as in the month of February’. The
weather in England had been as bad, with snow falling in London in late
May. Here we are in great want of rain. We had a few warm days last week,
which I made the most of, and took a delicious bath every day up the River Greta,
about a mile and a half distant.
I am now closely employed upon the “History of the Peninsular War,”
of which the thirty-second sheet is now before me. It is a singularly interesting
occupation thus to record a series of events the progress of which I watched so
earnestly and anxiously; and now, with the whole before me, to observe wherein I
judged rightly at the time, and wherein the opinions which I then formed were
erroneous.Southey’s History of
the Peninsular War (1823–1832), for which he was able to reuse a good
deal of the historical material he had produced for the Edinburgh Annual
Register, for 1808–1811 (1810–1813). I do not find that I was
mistaken upon any point of importance, except in expecting good from assembling the
Cortes.The Cortes elected in 1810 to
rule those parts of Spain not occupied by France. Southey regarded it as
impractical and divisive in its actions. The subject is a noble one, and
remarkably complete. With the second part of the tragedy I have nothing to do, and
God knows what the end will be, or who will live to see it.An army revolt in 1820 had led to the restoration of the
liberal Constitution of 1812, but Spain was torn by divisions between
reactionaries and liberals.
[Chauncey Townsend](people.html#TownshendChauncyHare) wrote
to me for your direction, when he published his volume of poems,Townshend’s Poems (1821).
meaning, I believe, to send you a copy. You will be pleased with many of them. They
breathe a sweet strain of natural feeling. There is a tale in Crabbe’s manner, which
is very well told, but the story is of a kind which excites nothing but pain in the
perusal.Southey has in mind ‘The
Weaver’s Boy. A Tale’ from Townshend’s Poems (London, 1821), pp.
58–76. The comparison is with the poet and clergyman George Crabbe (1754–1832;
DNB), whose Tales had appeared in 1812 and
Tales of the Hall in 1819. Southey probably found ‘nothing but
pain’ in ‘The Weaver’s Boy. A Tale’ as it dealt with the death of a child, and he
was still grieving for his son, Herbert Southey, who had died in 1816.
You will doubtless form by degrees a clerical library. They are
reprinting “Strype’s Lives” at the Clarendon Press.The Anglican clergyman and historian John Strype (1643–1737;
DNB), whose lives of sixteenth-century divines were important
sources for the study of Church history. Southey took his own advice, acquiring
the twenty-three-volume Clarendon Press edition of Strype’s Works
(1816–1824), no. 2753 in the sale catalogue of his library. The writings of
this very useful and laborious man contain the fullest account of whatever concerns
the Church of England from the commencement of the Reformation to the beginning of
James the First’s reign.i.e. a period
covering the early 1530s to 1603, when James VI (of Scotland) and I (1566–1625;
King of Great Britain 1603–1625) succeeded to the English throne. We are
promised also from the same press a collection of South’s works – a man of
incomparable powers of reasoning and strength of mind, and whom I do not like the
worse for his honest acrimony against those who had stirred up these kingdoms to
rebellion.The Anglican clergyman and
theologian Robert South (1634–1716; DNB), whose High Church,
mystical view of religion led him to dislike Dissenters intensely; he also blamed
them for the civil wars of 1642–1651. The Clarendon Press issued a seven-volume
edition of his Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions in 1823.
Southey owned a copy, no. 2574 in the sale catalogue of his library.[Reginald Heber](people.html#HeberReginald) is publishing
Jeremy Taylor’s works,The Church of
Ireland bishop and religious writer, Jeremy Taylor (c. 1613–1667;
DNB). Heber’s fifteen-volume Whole Works of the Right
Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D.: Lord Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, with a Life
of the Author and a Critical Examination of His Writings was published
in 1822. Southey’s copy was no. 2782 in the sale catalogue of his
library. the most eloquent of our divines, perhaps of
all our writers, – wise, and gentle, and amiable; but as liable to be led astray by
the warmth of his fancy, as South was by the heat of his temper, though in a
different direction. They are, however, both safe guides, and sound pillars of our
Church; for Taylor errs only in accrediting too easily suspicious legends of the
early Romish church, and in admitting, what is and must be mere supposition to
assume, in his own mind something like the consistency of belief. You know what the
late King said of the divines of that age, – “There were giants in
those days.”A paraphrase of
Genesis 4: 4 attributed to George III (1738–1820; King of Great
Britain 1760–1820; DNB); see Joseph Taylor (1761/2–1844),
Relics of Royalty; or Remarks, Anecdotes & Conversations of His late
Majesty George the Third (London, 1820), p. 87: ‘His Majesty was
accustomed after hearing a sermon, to walk and discourse with the preacher. On
such an occasion speaking to a fashionable preacher, he asked him whether he had
had read Bishops, Andrews, Sanderson, Sherlock, &c. The pigmy divine replied,
“No, please your Majesty, my reading is all modern. The writers, of whom your
Majesty speaks, are now obsolete; though I doubt not they might have been very
well for those days.” – The King, turning upon his heel, rejoined with pointed
emphasis, “There were giants on earth in those days.”’
God bless you,
My dear Neville, Yours most affectionately, ROBERT SOUTHEY.