3745. Robert Southey to
[John Murray](people.html#MurrayJohn),
6 November
1821Address: To/ John Murray Esqre/ Albemarle Street/
London.
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 9 NO 9/ 1821
Seal: red wax; arm raising aloft cross of
Lorraine
Watermark: G PAINE/ 1816
Endorsement: Nov 6. 1821/ R Southey Esq
MS: National Library of Scotland, MS 42552.
ALS; 4p.
Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York,
1965), II, pp. 226–228. [Keswick](places.html#Keswick). 6 Nov. 1821 My dear Sir I thank you for [D’Israeli’s](people.html#DIsraeliIsaac) note, & am well pleased to find
that other opinions accord with that which he, in his abundant good nature, has been pleased to express. It is the first of my papers
which has ever been printed without mutilation. One alteration only has been made to it. I had said that Hampden might have left a name
scarcely inferior to that of Washington, & this has been altered to a memorable name.This paragraph deals with Southey’s ‘Life of Cromwell’, Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821), 279–347
(293). Southey’s comparison was between George Washington (1732–1799; President of the United States 1789–1797) and John Hampden
(1594–1643; DNB), Parliamentarian and opponent of Charles I (1600–1649; King of Great Britain 1625–1649;
DNB). The meaning of the sentence is thus destroyed, for his name is memorable, but it
is not, like Washingtons, deservedly held in reverence.
To enlarge this sketch into a popular history of Cromwells life might be a useful task, & would be a pleasant
one.Southey did not write a fuller biographical account of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord
Protector 1653–1658; DNB). But it could not be done in less compass than the life of Nelson,Southey’s Life of Nelson (1813), an expansion of his article in Quarterly
Review, 3 (February 1810), 218–262. & I could not make use of more of the sketch than was done in that
instance. A moments reflection will convince you of this. I am willing to do it as soon as the Book of the ChurchSouthey’s The Book of the Church (1824). is finished, – & this will go to the
press when the review of Dobrizhoffer is off my hands.Southey reviewed Sara Coleridge’s
An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay (1822) in Quarterly Review, 26
(January 1822), 277–323. Her book was a translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer (1717–1791), Historia de Abiponibus Equestri,
Bellicosaque Paraquariae Natione (1784). If you will offer me a price for it, according with my reputation, &
with your character for liberality in such transactions, I shall be glad to accept it. Otherwise I will share the eventual profits. –
Provision for my family there will be, whenever I may be removed to a better world; my copy-rights, my papers, & a life
insuranceSouthey used the salary he received as Poet Laureate to pay for a life assurance
policy, which he had arranged through John May, a Director of the Equitable Assurance Company. will secure this; but it is
time that I should make some provision for declining years.
The two Articles which I like best in your last number are those upon Martyn,William Gilly’s (1761/2–1837) review of Memoir of the Rev. Henry Martyn, B.D., Late Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge,
and Chaplain to the Honourable East India Company (1819), Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821),
437–453. & upon [Hones](people.html#HoneWilliam) villainous publication.William Hone, The Apocryphal New Testament, being all the Gospels, Epistles, and Other Pieces Now
Extant, Attributed in the First Four Centuries to Jesus Christ, His Apostles, and Their Companions, and not included in the New
Testament by its Compilers. Translated from the Original Tongues, and Now First Collected into One Volume (1820),
Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821), 347–65. Hone’s volume challenged scriptural authority and the reviewer, Hugh
James Rose (1795–1838; DNB), had assured readers that ‘Nothing but the execution of a public duty would have tempted
us to defile one line of our Journal with the notice of a wretch [Hone] as contemptible as he is wicked’ (348). That
T upon Hunts Tasso, is like every paper you have ever had upon Italian literature, shallow & superficial, written
with little knowledge & less judgement.John Higgs Hunt (1780–1859; DNB),
Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, a Heroic Poem, with Notes and Occasional Illustrations (1818),
Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821), 426–437. The review’s authors were [Reginald Heber](people.html#HeberReginald) and an unknown collaborator, with contributions by [William Gifford](people.html#GiffordWilliam). Barrow’s papers are, as they always are, valuable.John Barrow’s (1764–1848; DNB) ‘Humboldt’s Personal Narrative’, Quarterly
Review, 25 (July 1821), 365–392, a review of the fifth volume (1821) of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859),
Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years 1799–1804
(1814–1826). He will not indeed believe in cannibals till he gets eaten himself,Barrow had, not for the first time, expressed scepticism about the stories of cannibalism related by Humboldt and others,
Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821), 382–383. & I wish he had not spoken with gratuitous incivility of
[Miss Williams](people.html#WilliamsHelenMaria), in a case too where censure was neither provoked nor
deserved.Barrow had criticised Williams’s translation of Humboldt as ‘verbose and languid’,
Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821), 367. His African articles have from time to time prevented me from giving
you one upon the Portugueze settlements, & that intermediate country concerning which he is not accurate in saying that the
“Faithful nation”The phrase used by Barrow, in his review essay ‘Notes on the Cape of Good
Hope’, to describe the Portuguese, Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821), 466. Portuguese monarchs had been awarded the
title ‘Most Faithful Majesty’ by Benedict XIV (1675–1758; Pope 1740–1758) in 1748. have suffered no information to
transpire.‘Very little is known of any part of the eastern coast of Africa beyond the
present limits of the Cape; and nothing at all of those portions of it which have the misfortune of falling into the hands of the
Portugueze … if they really have any information concerning the interior, not a syllable of it is suffered to transpire’, Barrow’s
‘Notes on the Cape of Good Hope’, Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821), 466. If I live to bring out my own history
of Portugal, – (it will go to press immediately when that of the War is concluded)Southey’s
History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832). He neither completed nor published the ‘History of Portugal’. –
I am very much deceived if there will not appear finer examples of heroic virtue in that Faithful nation, than can be parallelled in
the annals of any other people. – But he may abuse them as much as he pleases about the Slave Trade.Barrow had noted that ‘Slaves and gold dust are the only objects’ that the Portuguese in Africa were interested in,
Quarterly Review, 25 (July 1821), 466.
About the Collection of Memoirs you should have some conversation with [M](people.html#WynnCharlesWW)r Wynn. Your Collection should contain whatever of this kind is not included in <the> proposed Corpus
which Government intends to print & he can give you some information as to the extent of their plan; & there are few men whose
opinion would be worth more upon your own, thoroughly versed as he is in English history. By the by, who is to publish this
Corpus?Wynn was one of the Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom, a body
periodically appointed since 1800 to look into the nation’s archives. He actively supported plans to publish collections of medieval
records, as well as series like Statutes of the Realm (1810–1825). The plans for a government-sponsored ‘Corpus’ of
historical documents did not come to fruition; neither did Murray’s plan for a collection of historical memoirs.
Farewell my dear Sir, & believe me Yrs very truly Robert Southey.I had nearly forgotten to request that you would send a copy of DobrizhofferSara Coleridge’s An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay (1822), a translation of Martin
Dobrizhoffer (1717–1791), Historia de Abiponibus Equestri, Bellicosaque Paraquariae Natione (1784).in
the T “from [the Translator](people.html#ColeridgeSaraSTCdaughter) – ” to [M](people.html#RickmanJohn)r Rickman, – in New Palace Yard.