4232. Robert Southey to Walter Savage Landor, 14 August 1824

 

Address: To/ Walter Savage Landor Esqre-/ Florence/ Italy
Stamped: ANGLETERRE; CHAMBERY; CORRISPZA ESTERA DA GENOA 
Postmarks: F/ 54/ 24; 2/ SETTEMBRE
MS: National Art Library, London, MS Forster 48 D.32 MS 41. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 437–439.

Keswick. 14 Aug. 1824.

I am so compleatly removed from what is called literary society (which is at this time about the worst society in the world) that not a breath of opinion concerning your book

(1)

Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824).

has reached me, nor have I seen any thing which has been written concerning it, except Julius Hare’s paper in the London Magazine.

(2)

‘On Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations’, London Magazine, 9 (May 1824), 523–541.

A more striking book never issued from the press in these Kingdoms, nor one more certain of surviving the wreck of its generation; & this not from the adventitious xxx xxxxx importance of the subject, but from the excellence of the workmanship; – – for your prose is always, what the most felicitous passages of your poetry are, as excellent in the expression as in the conception.

My own Colloquies

(3)

Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (1829).

are now so far advanced, that it will soon become my primary object to compleat them. They will contain a connected & extensive view of our existing state of society, & with all its enormous evils, – & I hope the statement will be startling enough to make some of our political men (I will not call them statesmen) rub their eyes. You will feel in the perusal, as I do, that where there is most difference in our views, it is to be explained by the difference of latitude between Tuscany & Cumberland. I should agree more nearly with you in Florence, & at Keswick you would find yourself more in sympathy with me.

By way of relieving the Dialogues I introduce some of them x with descriptions of the scenery which lies within the circuit of my usual walks; half a dozen views of it, admirably drawn by William Westall, are now in the engravers hands.

(4)

Westall produced six illustrations: ‘Druidical Stones near Keswick’; ‘Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite-water and Skiddaw, from Walla Crag’; ‘Derwentwater from Strandshagg’; ‘Crosthwaite Church and Skiddaw’; ‘Greta Hall, Derwentwater and Newlands’; and ‘Tarn of Blencathra’.

The book will command notice, & provoke hostility. One edition will sell, some of the rising generation will be leavened by it, & in the third & fourth generations its foresight will be proved, & perhaps some of its effects may be seen.

The books you sent me were lucky enough to escape all injury. I have been reading Casaubons letters.

(5)

Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), Epistolae (1656), no. 453 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.

If my Book of the Church

(6)

Southey’s The Book of the Church (1824).

has reached you (as I trust it has, with its companions) you will see that I ought to have read these letters before: you will perceive also that the view which you they have led you to take of James’s character,

(7)

Dialogue VIII in Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, 2 vols (London, 1824), I, pp. [93]–112, where Casaubon converses with James I and VI (1567–1625; King of Scotland 1567–1603, King of Great Britain 1603–1625; DNB). Southey had expressed his views on the King in The Book of the Church, 2 vols (London, 1824), II, pp. 303–335; especially pp. 328–330. Southey was generally favourable to James, emphasising his tolerant and moderate views on religious controversies.

very much accords with the opinion that I have expressed concerning him.

My family, thank God, is going on well. The two eldest girls

(8)

Edith May and Bertha Southey.

are in the south, & greatly do I miss them. My little boy is old enough to have begun upon the Latin grammar; – & a happier creature does not at this hour exist upon the wide earth. It is in our power to make cxxx children happy while they are children; – & yet how generally is their happiness curtailed; & as far as nature will per[MS torn]stroyed, by unwise restrictions, & the miserable discipline of our great schools in which the boys are bred up to be x <to> the abuse of power. If Cuthbert lives, & I live to instruct him, he will escape these evils; but how uncertain this must needs be I am fully sensible. Last week <Thursday> I compleated the fiftieth year of my age. Ix xxxxx xxxx fifty xxxx xxxxxxxxxxx My little boy is only in his sixth. I may put him in the way which he should go, & direct him in it when I can accompany him no farther but it is not likely that I should see much of his progress.

Here in England we are in an extraordinary state of quiescence, – not a grievance is afloat; & few persons ask themselves what is to become of the rising generation of educated men who can find no room in the three professions,

(9)

Medicine, law and the Church of England.

& for whose lives there is no demand nor what are to be consequences of an unlimited & illimitable increase of capital, which even the bubble of foreign loans does not appear to check, nor where the manufacturing system is to end, which breeds Yahoos

(10)

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745; DNB), Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part 4 described a race of beings called the Yahoos who were ignorant, violent and coarse. Here Southey uses the term to refer to workers in the new industrial districts.

as fast as they can be bred, & invents machinery to throw them out of employ. One remarkable effect of general education is beginning to show itself. Above fifty weekly miscellanies are published in London at two pence & three pence each, – & it is much the smaller portion that deal either in irreligion or in discontent

(11)

The most successful and best-known of these publishers was John Limbird (c. 1796–1883), whose 2d. weekly miscellany, the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction (1822–1847), may well have sold 15,000 copies a week. Limbird had entered publishing as an employee of the radical, Thomas Dolby (1782–1836), but had turned away from political journalism from 1819 onwards.

– The rest are useful & amusing, & the sale is prodigious. This is a good symptom – among many evil ones.

– I have been getting on with my Tale of Paraguay,

(12)

Southey’s A Tale of Paraguay (1825).

& when I have once escaped from that most difficult of all stanzas, I shall feel like a racer let loose.

God bless you
RS.

Notes

1. Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824).[back]
2. ‘On Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations’, London Magazine, 9 (May 1824), 523–541.[back]
3. Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (1829).[back]
4. Westall produced six illustrations: ‘Druidical Stones near Keswick’; ‘Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite-water and Skiddaw, from Walla Crag’; ‘Derwentwater from Strandshagg’; ‘Crosthwaite Church and Skiddaw’; ‘Greta Hall, Derwentwater and Newlands’; and ‘Tarn of Blencathra’.[back]
5. Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), Epistolae (1656), no. 453 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.[back]
6. Southey’s The Book of the Church (1824).[back]
7. Dialogue VIII in Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, 2 vols (London, 1824), I, pp. [93]–112, where Casaubon converses with James I and VI (1567–1625; King of Scotland 1567–1603, King of Great Britain 1603–1625; DNB). Southey had expressed his views on the King in The Book of the Church, 2 vols (London, 1824), II, pp. 303–335; especially pp. 328–330. Southey was generally favourable to James, emphasising his tolerant and moderate views on religious controversies.[back]
9. Medicine, law and the Church of England.[back]
10. Jonathan Swift (1667–1745; DNB), Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part 4 described a race of beings called the Yahoos who were ignorant, violent and coarse. Here Southey uses the term to refer to workers in the new industrial districts.[back]
11. The most successful and best-known of these publishers was John Limbird (c. 1796–1883), whose 2d. weekly miscellany, the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction (1822–1847), may well have sold 15,000 copies a week. Limbird had entered publishing as an employee of the radical, Thomas Dolby (1782–1836), but had turned away from political journalism from 1819 onwards.[back]
12. Southey’s A Tale of Paraguay (1825).[back]
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