MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4813D. ALS; 3p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 392–394.
I thought to have seen you ere this; & now begin to fear that when I reach London you xxx may have taken wing for Wales, if Mrs Company can spare her husband.
(1)
As President of the Board of Control Wynn was responsible for the affairs of the East India Company, popularly known as ‘John Company’. Here Southey jokes that Wynn was so devoted to his job he was as good as married to the Company.
The turn of affairs in Spain would have pleased me better had it been under a better man than O Donnell.
(2)
Enrique O’Donnell, Count of La Bisbal (1769–1834), a Spanish general during the Peninsular War and member of the Council of Regency 1812–1813. He reluctantly supported the liberal regime in 1820–1823, despite his absolutist convictions.
If however it gives the French an excuse for marching back again, Europe will have reason to be thankful.
(3)
French forces had invaded Spain on 7 April 1823 to restore royal absolutism.
As for the restoration of order in Spain, I see no prospect of it. The habits of obedience & industry are destroyed, there must be a strong & settled government before they can be restored, & where is that government to find revenues for its support? – The French invasion has done some good, by giving the opposition so happy an opportunity of exposing themselves.
I have got the new edition of Burnet at your suggestion.
(4)
Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715; DNB), History of his own Time: from the Restoration of King Charles II, to the Conclusion of the Treaty of Peace at Utrecht, in the Reign of Queen Anne (1724–1734). A new critical edition by Martin Routh (1755–1854; DNB) appeared in 1823, which Southey reviewed in Quarterly Review, 29 (April 1823), 165–213, published 27–28 September 1823. The book was no. 498 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.
The book pleases me less than it did when I first read it some ten or twelve years ago. I know not whether it has been noticed that when Q Mary was thought to be pregnant,
(5)
Mary I (1516–1558; Queen of England 1553–1558; DNB). In November 1554 she confirmed that she was pregnant, though by August 1555 it was clear this was not the case. If Mary had produced an heir this would have ensured that England remained Catholic.
there was just the same readiness & disposition to believe that a suppositious child would be palmed upon the nation, as prevailed at the birth of James’s unhappy son.
(6)
James Francis Edward (1688–1766; DNB), son and heir of the Catholic James VII and II (1633–1701; King of Great Britain 1685–1688; DNB). The birth of James Francis Edward led to the ‘Glorious Revolution’ in 1688, the expulsion of his father and the maintenance of a Protestant succession to the Crown. As a justification for these events, it was widely rumoured that the new heir was not his father’s child but had been smuggled into the birth chamber in a warming pan.
It struck me forcibly in reading old John Fox
(7)
John Foxe (1516/17–1587; DNB), Actes and Monuments (1563), widely known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Southey owned an edition of 1684, no. 975 in the sale catalogue of his library. Southey refers here to the story of Isabel Malt (dates unknown) of Aldersgate Street in Horn Alley, first included in Actes and Monuments (London, 1570), Book 11, p. 1811. She gave birth to a boy on 11 June 1555. She was then allegedly visited by two men, including Edward North, 1st Baron North (c. 1504–1564; DNB), who offered various inducements if she would hand her son over to them. Presumably they planned to take …
(with whom I have been busy of late) – & I think something to the same purpose is in Holinshed also.
(8)
Foxe’s account was repeated in Raphael Holinshed (1529–1580; DNB), Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577). Southey consulted it in Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, 6 vols (London, 1807–1812), IV, p. 82, no. 654 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.
If a new Museum is to be built, – or a building for the Kings Library,
(9)
The King’s Library was donated to the nation by George IV in 1823. This required the British Museum to be rebuilt to house the 60,000 volumes. A 300-foot-long gallery, designed by Sir Robert Smirke (1781–1867; DNB), was completed in 1827.
pray use your influence that it may be made fire proof. A very trifling additional expence will effect this.
I am sorry Reginald H. accepted your bishoprick.
(10)
Reginald Heber had agreed to become Bishop of Calcutta – an appointment in the gift of Wynn as President of the Board of Control.
So I dare say are all his friends, – & probably he was in some degree influenced by feeling that he made a sacrifice of his inclinations in so doing. I think he is one of those men, who tho altogether fit for the situation, might yet have been <more> usefully employed at home. There is an account of the first transactions of the Portugueze in India, in one of the native languages; – which I wish he could persuade somebody to translate in the Asiatic Researches.
(11)
Asiatic Researches (1788–1835) was the journal of the Asiatic Society in Bengal, devoted to publishing research on India. Southey possessed the volumes for 1801–1811, no. 77 in the sale catalogue of his library.
The MSS. if I remember rightly is in possession of the Missionaries at Serampore.
(12)
The manuscript ‘History of the first Arrival of the Portuguese in India, by a contemporary Hindoo writer’, collected in Mysore by Francis Buchanan-Hamilton (1762–1829; DNB) and given to translate to William Carey (1761–1834; DNB), Baptist missionary at Serampore and Professor of Bengali and Sanskrit at Fort William College, Calcutta. This information was reported in the Calcutta Gazette, 29 July 1805, and widely re-printed, for example, in the Monthly Magazine, 21 (April 1806), 252.
God bless you
RS.
Your godson, thank God, goes on well. I am fighting against my annual catarrh, according to my brother Henrys prescriptions. But the Doctor is too far from his patient.
