MS: Huntington Library, RS 439. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 396–398.
The inclosed Inscription
(1)
Southey had visited the Caledonian Canal with Rickman and Thomas Telford on their tour of Scotland in August–September 1819. He wrote three ‘Inscriptions for the Caledonian Canal’: ‘Inscription for a Tablet at Banavie, on the Caledonian Canal’, Friendship’s Offering. A Literary Album (London, 1826), pp. [167]–168; and ‘At Clachnacharry’ and ‘At Fort Augustus’, The Anniversary; or, Poetry and Prose for MDCCCXXIX (London, 1829), pp. 194–197. Southey enclosed the last of these inscriptions with this letter.
is but too long without noticing any localities; – nor are they needful as its place on the summit level is sufficiently designated. I have mentioned the number of locks, – the aqueducts, culverts, inlets & overfalls; the deepening of Loch Oich,
(2)
‘The ancient bottom of the lake scooped out’ of Loch Oich was in the first draft of ‘At Fort Augustus’, but was later removed; see the manuscript held in the Huntington Library, San Marino, HM 2733.
the ejectment served upon the rivers, & the great difficulty at the eastern sea loch, – these I think are all the principal features & works, – except the raising the level of Loch Lochy.
(3)
‘Loch Lochy raised’ was mentioned in the initial notes for the first draft of ‘At Fort Augustus’ but did not survive into the poem.
Inlet is the word I have used, because I observe it in the Reports;
(4)
‘At Fort Augustus’, line 20. Southey later changed the word to ‘intake’. He had seen the word ‘inlet’ in the Annual Reports of the Commissioners for the Caledonian Canal that Rickman sent him, for example, Fifteenth Report of the Commissioners for Making and Maintaining the Caledonian Canal (London, 1818), p. 7.
otherwise I think intake rather to be preferred, as more peculiar, & bearing in its honest Dutch form of composition a good family resemblance to overfall.
(5)
‘At Fort Augustus’, line 21.
But do you point out any thing which either for alteration, omission, or insertion, & I will spare no pains in the correction. – I perceive that the words ‘mighty work” have found their way into all three inscriptions.
(6)
The phrase did not survive beyond the first draft of ‘At Fort Augustus’. In ‘At Clachnacarry’ it remained at line 10.
In the Banavie one therefore it is altered to great attempt & because of that alteration, in the line but one above instead of ‘the name of the great architect’ I have substituted ‘the architects immortal name.”
(7)
‘Inscription for a Tablet at Banavie, on the Caledonian Canal’, lines 8 and 6. In line 8 Southey finally settled on the phrase ‘great work’.
But find you fault wherever you can, & I also will very watchfully examine & amend.
If you stumble at the word gyre,
(8)
‘At Fort Augustus’, line 3, ‘his gyre’.
– it is an authorized word, & a Scotchman has no right to know that it is not in common use in England. The main reason for preferring it, to sweep – which would express the meaning sufficiently well (tho not so peculiarly,) is that the word preceding ends with s, & would occasion too marked a sibilance to be admitted without necessity.
The application of poetry to such subjects as this is recognized you know in the Triads, as one of its Three Utilities.
(9)
‘The three utilities of Poetry: the praise of Virtue and Goodness, the memory of things remarkable, and to invigorate the affections’. Southey quoted these lines in his Poems (Bristol, 1797), p. [54], as the epigraph to his series of eight inscriptions in the volume. His source was Edward Williams (1747–1826; DNB), Poems: Lyrical and Pastoral, 2 vols (London, 1794), II, p. 256. Triads are a rhetorical form found in medieval Welsh manuscripts; they group objects together in threes.
I began long since a series upon the events of the Peninsular War (that is those in which our army was concerned) & the British Officers of distinction who fell in them.
(10)
Southey’s Peninsular War inscriptions were advertised as ‘nearly ready for publication’ in European Magazine, 65 (January 1814), 77, but the planned series of thirty poems was never completed. The eighteen poems that were finished were grouped together in Poetical Works, 10 vols (London, 1837–1838), III, pp. 122–156.
– About half the series is written, & I shall publish them when the History is compleated.
(11)
Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).
I send you also an Ode to the praise & glory of Scotland, – for the sake of the sixth stanza.
(12)
‘Scotland, an Ode, Written after the King’s Visit to that Country. By Robert Southey, Esq. Poet Laureat’, The Bijou: Or Annual of Literature and the Arts (London, 1828), pp. 81–88. John Rennie (1761–1821; DNB) was a Scottish civil engineer and architect. He and Telford were praised in the sixth stanza of ‘Scotland, an Ode’, lines 48–77. The poem was Southey’s New Year’s ode for 1823, in fulfilment of his duty as Poet Laureate.
It needs some <farther> amendment before it sees the light. There is a companion to it concerning Ireland,
(13)
‘Ireland’, Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 2 vols (London, 1829), I, pp. [295]–302. The poem was Southey’s New Year’s ode for 1822, fulfilling his obligation as Poet Laureate.
which contains some wholesome truth; but it ends lamely, because a just foresight prevented me from winding it <up> with any vaticination in praise of Marquis Wellesley.
(14)
Wellesley had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on 8 December 1821, just as Southey was beginning to write his poem. Southey had hoped that Wellesley would be able to suppress rural disorder in Ireland, though there was little sign of this by July 1823.
My brother Henry’s appointment is owing to Sir Wm Knighton.
(15)
Henry Herbert Southey had been elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians on 25 June 1823; the London Gazette, 1 July 1823 announced he had been appointed a Physician in Ordinary to George IV.
They were intimate at Edinburgh. He is now in the fair way to fortune.
Does Peel know what he is doing in admitting the Catholicks to vote?
(16)
The English Catholics Elective Franchise Bill was being debated in Parliament. It would have allowed English Catholics to vote in parliamentary elections (as Irish Catholics had been able to do since 1793). The Bill was defeated 80–73 in the House of Lords on 9 July 1823. Peel had supported the Bill in the House of Commons on 18 June 1823.
That wherever the scale is doubtful here in the North, they will turn it in favour of the Opps? – that in England they have increased seven fold in the last 30 years,
(17)
Southey made this claim in his review of Henri Grégoire (1750–1831), Histoire des Sectes Religieuse, qui, Depuis de Commencement du Siecle Dernier Jusqu’a l’Epoque Actuelle, sont Nées, se sont Modifiées, se sont Éteintes dans le Quatre Parties du Monde (1814), Quarterly Review, 28 (October 1822), 43, published 15 February 1823. His source was probably Evangelical Magazine, 29 (January 1821), 23, no. 1014 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library, which claimed there were 500,000 Catholics in England, a figure that would have represented more than twice the number of Methodists, if it was corr…
being at this time more numerous than the Methodists? & that in the Gen: Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, their rapid increase in the Highlands has been represented as the most imminent evil?
(18)
Southey’s source for this assertion is unidentified.
God bless you
RS.
Keswick. 5 July. 1823.
