4179. Robert Southey to Caroline [Bowles], 28 April 1824

 

MS: Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. suppl. 367, f. 85–86. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 28 Apr. 1824

What I send you will require a great deal of improvement, – but I dispatch it without delay, that you may see I am not unmindful of the subject.

(1)

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. In his memory, 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.

Tell me if there is any thing omitted which you wish to be noticed, – or ought said that should be omitted.

Wynn has just sent me an extract from a letter of the Bp of Calcuttas. – I think it will amuse you. “By the way what a vast deal of foolish prejudice exists about Southey & his writings. Of the party on board some had been taught to think him a Jacobin, some an Ultra-Tory, some a Methodist, some an enemy to all religions, & some a Madman. None had read a line of his works, but all were inclined to criticise him. And yet all, when they really tried the formidable volumes, were delighted both with the man & his poetry.”

(2)

Reginald Heber to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 23 October 1823, published in Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825. (With Notes upon Ceylon,) An Account of a Journey to Madras and the Southern Provinces, 1826, and Letters Written in India, 3rd edn, 3 vols (London, 1828), III, p. 224.

– Let me add to this another character of myself, which has lately been repeated to me, – that I am “very wealthy, – hand & glove with Mr Canning, – & a man of such influence with government that I can have any thing I please to ask for.”

(3)

Southey’s source is unidentified.

God bless you dear friend – <dear Caroline>
R Southey –

Notes

1. 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. In his memory, 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]
2. Reginald Heber to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 23 October 1823, published in Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, from Calcutta to Bombay, 1824–1825. (With Notes upon Ceylon,) An Account of a Journey to Madras and the Southern Provinces, 1826, and Letters Written in India, 3rd edn, 3 vols (London, 1828), III, p. 224.[back]
3. Southey’s source is unidentified.[back]
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