4014. Robert Southey to Ebenezer Elliott, 9 May 1823

 

Address: [deletion and readdress in another hand] To/ Mr E Elliott Junr-/ Rotherham 61 Burgess Street/ Sheffield
Seal: [trace] red wax
MS: Beinecke Library, Osborn MSS File ‘S’, Folder 14119. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 9 May. 1823
My dear Sir

Thank you for your new volume

(1)

Ebenezer Elliott, Love: a Poem, in Three Parts; to which is added The Giaour, a Satirical Poem (1823).

which I received the day before yesterday. There came with it copies (as I suppose) – directed for Mr Wordsworth & Mr Coleridge. That for the latter, must wait till an opportunity occurs of sending it to him at Highgate, which is his place of abode. Wordsworth’s will go tomorrow to his house, but he himself is at present in the Netherlands, or on the way thither.

I have not read thro the volume, – & of what I have read the tribute to your schoolmaster

(2)

Love: a Poem, in Three Parts; to which is added The Giaour, a Satirical Poem (London, 1823), pp. 129–130. In the ‘Notes’ to ‘Love: a Poem, in Three Parts’, Book 2, Elliott paid tribute to Joseph Ramsbottom (c. 1756–1820), Master of Hollis’s Charity School, Rotherham 1778–1820, his teacher and ‘the gentlest and most benevolent of living creatures.’

has pleased me most. You write xx sweetly upon grateful subjects & worthy affections. These are worthier themes for poetry than crimes & horrors can be made; – & as for satire, I am afraid it is more likely to do some injury to him who writes it, than ever to xxx amend the person against whom it is directed. Not that I would proscribe it in the spirit of a Quaker; for it is necessary sometimes to show oneself capable of resentment. Peter Bells ass

(3)

William Wordsworth, Peter Bell: a Tale in Verse (1819), in which Peter Bell encounters an ass, which refuses to move, despite the beating he gives the animal.

patient as he was, used I have no doubt to fling out his heels sometimes upon just provocation.

Xxxx You have given me that sort of praise which is truly gratifying, because I am conscious that it is just.

(4)

In his ‘Address to the Right Honourable Lord Byron’ that preceded ‘The Giaour, a Satirical Poem’, Elliott had criticised Byron for his attacks on the ‘Lake Poets’ and argued they had ‘pointed out the long-forgotten road to truth and nature’, which Byron had merely followed (Love: a Poem, in Three Parts; to which is added The Giaour, a Satirical Poem (London, 1823), p. 136).

I wish you had touched upon a part of the Giaours conduct,

(5)

Here Southey names Byron by reference to his The Giaour, a Fragment of a Turkish Tale (1813). Byron had married Anne Isabella Milbanke (1792–1860; DNB) in 1815, though the couple separated the following year. Byron was supposed to receive £20,000 from the Milbanke family as a marriage settlement but received only £6,200. However, Lady Bryon inherited a substantial fortune on her mother Judith Noel’s (1751–1822) death; after that had occurred Byron and his wife shared equally in the income from Lady Byron’s estates, under the terms of their marriage settlement.

which if I have ever occasion to grapple with him again I xxx will certainly bring forward, – his taking half his wifes fortune, by virtue of those marriage laws, in the xxx open breach of which he lives, & which he avowedly holds in contempt!

It is long since I have written any poetry. I shall endeavour to finish those poems which were begun many years ago,

(6)

A Tale of Paraguay (1825); and Southey’s unfinished ‘Oliver Newman’, set in New England. A fragment was published posthumously in Oliver Newman: a New-England Tale (Unfinished): with Other Poetical Remains by the Late Robert Southey (London, 1845), pp. 1–90.

& then leave the field to younger spirits. It has become long since more congenial to my inclinations to be following historical pursuits. In eight or ten weeks my Book of the Church

(7)

Southey’s The Book of the Church (1824).

will appear, under which title a view of our ecclesiastical history is comprized As soon as it is compleated I set out for a two months absence in the south & west of England. I wish any propitious circumstances might lead you into these parts before I depart, or after I return, – for it would give me real pleasure to shake you by the hand.

Farewell & believe me
Yrs truly
Robert Southey

Notes

1. Ebenezer Elliott, Love: a Poem, in Three Parts; to which is added The Giaour, a Satirical Poem (1823).[back]
2. Love: a Poem, in Three Parts; to which is added The Giaour, a Satirical Poem (London, 1823), pp. 129–130. In the ‘Notes’ to ‘Love: a Poem, in Three Parts’, Book 2, Elliott paid tribute to Joseph Ramsbottom (c. 1756–1820), Master of Hollis’s Charity School, Rotherham 1778–1820, his teacher and ‘the gentlest and most benevolent of living creatures.’[back]
3. William Wordsworth, Peter Bell: a Tale in Verse (1819), in which Peter Bell encounters an ass which refuses to move, despite the beating he gives the animal.[back]
4. In his ‘Address to the Right Honourable Lord Byron’ that preceded ‘The Giaour, a Satirical Poem’, Elliott had criticised Byron for his attacks on the ‘Lake Poets’ and argued they had ‘pointed out the long-forgotten road to truth and nature’, which Byron had merely followed (Love: a Poem, in Three Parts; to which is added The Giaour, a Satirical Poem (London, 1823), p. 136).[back]
5. Here Southey names Byron by reference to his The Giaour, a Fragment of a Turkish Tale (1813). Byron had married Anne Isabella Milbanke (1792–1860; DNB) in 1815, though the couple separated the following year. Byron was supposed to receive £20,000 from the Milbanke family as a marriage settlement but received only £6,200. However, Lady Bryon inherited a substantial fortune on her mother Judith Noel’s (1751–1822) death; after that had occurred Byron and his wife shared equally in the income from Lady Byron’s estates, under the terms of their marriage settlement.[back]
6. A Tale of Paraguay (1825); and Southey’s unfinished epic, ‘Oliver Newman’, set in New England. A fragment was published posthumously in Oliver Newman: a New-England Tale (Unfinished): with Other Poetical Remains by the Late Robert Southey (London, 1845), pp. 1–90.[back]
7. Southey’s The Book of the Church (1824).[back]
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