4251. Robert Southey to Henry Taylor, 16 September 1824

 

Address: To/ Henry Taylor Esqre/ Witton le Wear/ Auckland/ Durham
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Endorsement: 1824
MS: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Eng. lett. d. 6. ALS; 4p. 
Unpublished.

Keswick. 16 Sept. 1824
My dear Sir

I am obliged to you for your letter, & if you can give me intelligence when any thing appears open which might be asked for for my brother with due fitness, you will do me no trifling kindness in pointing it out

I wish you had been here last week that you might have seen Clarkson, – one of the men in the world who is most worth seeing, & who in the course of nature will not be long to be seen. Whenever I take leave of him now it is with a sad apprehension that it may be for the last time.

The Quarterly

(1)

Quarterly Review, 30 (January 1824), published 28 August 1824. It contained (pp. 508–519), Henry Taylor’s review of Landor’s Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824).

has not been sent me yet. I learn that xx my article upon Hayley

(2)

Southey’s review of John Johnson (1769–1833; DNB), Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Hayley, Esq. the Friend and Biographer of Cowper, Written by Himself; with Extracts from his Private Correspondence, and Unpublished Poetry; and Memoirs of his Son Thomas Alphonso Hayley, the Young Sculptor (1823), no. 1179 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. It appeared in Quarterly Review, 31 (March 1825), 263–311, published 11 March 1825.

has been delayed, because it was thought too favourable. True it is that “I made no attempt at slaying the xxx dead, by either abusing him or his Memoirs but of any eulogy, except as relating to the worthiness of his pursuits when compared to those in which men of his station are usually engaged, the paper is altogether innocent. In a case where there were none who could be wounded by censure, & none to be gratified by praise, – I did as I should have done in any case, – that is – I treated him as a gentleman & a man of letters ought to be treated.

The New Times of Tuesday last has been sent me. It exposes in too courteous terms (for no courtesy ought to be used in such cases) a rascally misuse of Stephen’s authority in the last QR.

(3)

James Stephen (1758–1832; DNB), The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated as it Exists both in Law and Practice, as Compared with the Slavery of Other Countries, Antient and Modern (1824) was one of a number of books on the West Indies reviewed in Quarterly Review, 30 (January 1824), 560–587, by Robert Wilmot-Horton (1784–1841; DNB) and Charles Rose Ellis, 1st Baron Seaford (1771–1845; DNB) (amended by a number of others). The review was pro-slavery and was attacked in the New Times by a series of articles by ‘Anglus’. Southey is referring to the issue of 14 September 1824.

A passage in which he had reasoned as he supposed Buonaparte to have reasoned concerning St Domingo is giving given as his own view of the question.

(4)

Quarterly Review, 30 (January 1824), 576, had quoted selectively from James Stephen’s pamphlet, The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies; or, an Enquiry into the Objects and Probable Effects of the French Expedition to the West Indies; and their Connection with the Colonial Interests of the British Empire (London, 1802), pp. 28–29, to try to demonstrate that Stephen accepted that free labour in the West Indies would not be economically viable. In fact, Stephen had only been representing Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769–1821; Emperor of the French 1804–1814, 1815) reasoning in sending an expedition in 1802 t…

This is an act of flagrant dishonesty for which the writer should be branded.

Do not allow yourself to believe that habits of business such as yours, will change the mind, or contract it.

(5)

Taylor had just taken up a post as a Clerk in the Colonial Office.

It is a business well worthy to employ it, – for beyond all doubt it must ere long become the most important & most pressing concern of government, how to dispose of a population, already which has already outgrown its system of society. But you will find leisure & inclination for poetry & for prose, & pursue both with better heart & spirit than if they were your only pursuit.

Repeat I pray you to your father my earnest exhortation not to be turned aside from his subject because it has been preoccupied by a man who is very much his inferior in powers of mind.

(6)

George Taylor was planning to write on the end of the Roman Republic and the early history of the Roman Empire, but this was also the (unrealised) intention of the poet, writer and artist William Haygarth (1784–1825), who had reviewed Henry Bankes (1757–1834; DNB), A Civil and Constitutional History of Rome, from the Foundation to the Age of Augustus (1818) in Quarterly Review, 27 (July 1822), 273–308, published 23 October 1822.

– And with the best good wishes from all my household down to Cuthbert – believe me

Yrs very truly
Robert Southey

Notes

1. Quarterly Review, 30 (January 1824), published 28 August 1824. It contained (pp. 508–519), Henry Taylor’s review of Landor’s Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824).[back]
2. Southey’s review of John Johnson (1769–1833; DNB), Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Hayley, Esq. the Friend and Biographer of Cowper, Written by Himself; with Extracts from his Private Correspondence, and Unpublished Poetry; and Memoirs of his Son Thomas Alphonso Hayley, the Young Sculptor (1823), no. 1179 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. It appeared in Quarterly Review, 31 (March 1825), 263–311, published 11 March 1825.[back]
3. James Stephen (1758–1832; DNB), The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated as it Exists both in Law and Practice, as Compared with the Slavery of Other Countries, Antient and Modern (1824) was one of a number of books on the West Indies reviewed in Quarterly Review, 30 (January 1824), 560–587, by Robert Wilmot-Horton (1784–1841; DNB) and Charles Rose Ellis, 1st Baron Seaford (1771–1845; DNB) (amended by a number of others). The review was pro-slavery and was attacked in the New Times by a series of articles by ‘Anglus’. Southey is referring to the issue of 14 September 1824.[back]
4. Quarterly Review, 30 (January 1824), 576, had quoted selectively from James Stephen’s pamphlet, The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies; or, an Enquiry into the Objects and Probable Effects of the French Expedition to the West Indies; and their Connection with the Colonial Interests of the British Empire (London, 1802), pp. 28–29, to try to demonstrate that Stephen accepted that free labour in the West Indies would not be economically viable. In fact, Stephen had only been representing Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769–1821; Emperor of the French 1804–1814, 1815) reasoning in sending an expedition in 1802 to recover the French colony of St Domingue (Haiti) after a slave rebellion had made it effectively independent.[back]
5. Taylor had just taken up a post as a Clerk in the Colonial Office.[back]
6. George Taylor was planning to write on the end of the Roman Republic and the early history of the Roman Empire, but this was also the (unrealised) intention of the poet, writer and artist William Haygarth (1784–1825), who had reviewed Henry Bankes (1757–1834; DNB), A Civil and Constitutional History of Rome, from the Foundation to the Age of Augustus (1818) in Quarterly Review, 27 (July 1822), 273–308, published 23 October 1822.[back]
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