4175. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 24 April 1824

 

Address: [in another hand] London Thirtieth April 1824/ Miss Bowles/ Buckland/ Lymington/ Hants/ Fm/ JRickman
Postmark: FREE/ AP 30 AP/ 1824
MS: British Library, Add MS 47889. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 58–59 [in part].

Keswick. 24 Apr. 1824

If I were to wait some ten days or a fortnight, I should convince you in a very effectual manner that the grand alliance is not at an end, – by sending you back the substance of your own lines in another form.

(1)

Southey and Bowles were beginning work on ‘Robin Hood’. The resulting incomplete poem was published in Robin Hood: a Fragment. By the Late Robert Southey, and Caroline Southey. With Other Fragments and Poems By R.S. and C.S. (London, 1847), pp. [1]–36.

You shall see them taken up & recast when the first canto is finished, – but I will not delay telling you that you must not be disheartened, because you have failed to satisfy yourself with your first lesson in a new stile of art. It is what would happen to you in music, or in painting. That it is difficult to fall into this mode of versification I believe because you find it so, & because one other person who tho not like yourself a poet in heart & soul, rhymes with sufficient ease & dexterity, made an attempt & failed in it.

(2)

It is not clear which poem Southey is referring to here.

But that it of all modes the easiest when once acquired I am perfectly certain & so you will find it. But rather than break the alliance, we would turn it into rhyme. This will not be required.

You have only to learn what the simple principles are upon which these lines are constructed, – perhaps they may be reduced to their simple & single one, that every line should in itself be a compleat verse, – a rule which, in the ordinary heroic cadence, would admit lines of four, six eight & ten syllables. That cadence (the Iambic, – that is to say the short syllable followed by the long – for example

What heart is firm, what nature so severe

should not be mixed with a different one (the trochaic, which is long & short, – nor the galloping ones of three syllable with one accent in three syllables) – in the same sentence, unless for the sake of producing a peculiar & designed effect. And there they must <be> blended, – as you shade colours into each other in your landscapes. Look at some of my Minor Poems, & at parts of Thalaba,

(3)

Southey’s Minor Poems (1815 and 1823) and Thalaba the Destroyer (1801).

& you will see what experiments I have made in this way. – I wish I were with you. I would teach you as boys are taught to compose Latin verses, by making them write mere nonsense till they learn the tune & the mechanism of the metre.

I write to tell you this & put you in good humour with yourself & the alliance: otherwise I would have waited, – in the hope – & almost with the expectation that tomorrow I might have sent you the Inscription upon your noble cousin.

(4)

Paul Henry Durell Burrard (1790–1809), an Ensign in the 1st Foot Guards, was mortally wounded at the Battle of Corunna (1809). He was Caroline Bowles’s first cousin. Southey composed ‘Lines. To the Memory of a Young Officer, Who was Mortally Wounded in the Battle of Coruña. By Robert Southey, Esq. Poet Laureate’, The Literary Souvenir; Or, Cabinet of Poetry and Romance (London, 1826), pp. [341]–344.

After twice beginning I am now in a fair way of finishing it, & it shall be sent you as soon as it is in a fit state for transcription, – tho it may probably receive many corrections before it goes abroad.

But I must break off, – for I have letters of business to write. So dear Caroline – farewell for the present. This weather I hope will bring health to you as it does enjoyment to birds brutes & vegetables. Once more farewell.

RS.

I shall use your franker

(5)

Bowles’s ‘franker’ was William Manning (1763–1835), MP for Lymington 1818–1820 and 1821–1826.

another time – At present I have occasion to send a cover to Rickman.

Notes

1. Southey and Bowles were beginning work on ‘Robin Hood’. The resulting incomplete poem was published in Robin Hood: a Fragment. By the Late Robert Southey, and Caroline Southey. With Other Fragments and Poems By R.S. and C.S. (London, 1847), pp. [1]–36.[back]
2. It is not clear which poem Southey is referring to here.[back]
3. Southey’s Minor Poems (1815 and 1823) and Thalaba the Destroyer (1801).[back]
4. Paul Henry Durell Burrard (1790–1809), an Ensign in the 1st Foot Guards, was mortally wounded at the Battle of Corunna (1809). He was Caroline Bowles’s first cousin. Southey composed ‘Lines. To the Memory of a Young Officer, Who was Mortally Wounded in the Battle of Coruña. By Robert Southey, Esq. Poet Laureate’, The Literary Souvenir; Or, Cabinet of Poetry and Romance (London, 1826), pp. [341]–344.[back]
5. Bowles’s ‘franker’ was William Manning (1763–1835), MP for Lymington 1818–1820 and 1821–1826.[back]
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