4111. Robert Southey to [John Abraham Heraud], 29 December 1823

 

MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Edith Heraud, Memoirs of John A. Heraud (London, 1898)
Previously published: Edith Heraud, Memoirs of John A. Heraud (London, 1898), pp. 38–39.

LITANE STREET, (1)

29th Dec. 1823.

For reasons which you may easily divine, I found it necessary some years ago to form a resolution that I would neither review the poems of any living writer in my own country, nor give a public recommendation of them before they were published.

(2)

Southey disapproved of the Quarterly Review’s habit of controversial and combative reviewing; but a general rule of not reviewing contemporary works also allowed him to turn down applications like Heraud’s without causing too much offence.

Of your power for poetry no person can think more highly than I do. But it is with the human mind as it is with generous vines – the best require the longest time for ripening. It will be to your own sure disappointment and injury if you gather the green fruit.

It is not in my power to read your second book,

(3)

Heraud was planning an epic poem, eventually published as The Judgement of the Flood (1834).

every hour being fully and pressingly engaged till the afternoon of Friday, when I leave town.

I heartily wish you well, and as the best proof of it beseech you to bear in mind that nothing can be so injurious to your future success as precipitation. No man ever published prematurely without repenting it. There is even a danger (and no slight one) that disappointment may excite disgust, and act upon your own mind like a dead palsy. And disappointed you will be if you hastily send forth what ought to be the work of years. God bless you. – Yours very truly,

R. SOUTHEY.

Notes

1. ‘LITANE’ probably a mistranscription of ‘Queen Anne’ Street, London.[back]
2. Southey disapproved of the Quarterly Review’s habit of controversial and combative reviewing; but a general rule of not reviewing contemporary works also allowed him to turn down applications like Heraud’s without causing too much offence.[back]
3. Heraud was planning an epic poem, eventually published as The Judgement of the Flood (1834).[back]
TEI Link
TEI
Volume Editor(s)
Lynda Pratt
Ian Packer