4039. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 7 July [1823]

 

Endorsement: RS to JR 7 July
MS: Huntington Library, RS 440. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.

My dear R.

I have altered the obnoxious word – & send you the three – subject to as much revision as you please.

(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. The ‘obnoxious word’ was ‘inlet’ in ‘At Fort Augustus’, line 20. Southey changed the word to ‘intake’.

You will perceive I think that as each has its distinct subject, they cannot well be grafted one into another. But the beginning of the second might be so altered that they might go upon three sides of the same monument:

(2)

Rickman was Secretary to the Commissioners for the Caledonian Canal and had suggested that Southey’s poems should be engraved on stone tablets at suitable points along the canal’s course. Only ‘Inscription for a Tablet at Banavie, on the Caledonian Canal’ was carved on a large white marble slab, and it was not publicly displayed until it was placed in its current location, in the boundary wall of the canal offices, Clachnaharry Road, Inverness, in 1922, on the canal’s centenary.

& the fourth in that case ought to contain J R posuit

(3)

‘J R raised’.

in such phrase as you may think good

They were written without dreaming that they would ever come into the lapi stone cutters hands. But I do not see how they could have been comprized in fewer lines, even if I had not reckoned upon the license which types allow to this form of composition –

RS.

Keswick. 7 July.

Notes

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. The ‘obnoxious word’ was ‘inlet’ in ‘At Fort Augustus’, line 20. Southey changed the word to ‘intake’.[back]
2. Rickman was Secretary to the Commissioners for the Caledonian Canal and had suggested that Southey’s poems should be engraved on stone tablets at suitable points along the canal’s course. Only ‘Inscription for a Tablet at Banavie, on the Caledonian Canal’ was carved on a large white marble slab, and it was not publicly displayed until it was placed in its current location, in the boundary wall of the canal offices, Clachnaharry Road, Inverness, in 1922, on the canal’s centenary.[back]
3. ‘J R raised’.[back]
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