Endorsement: Dec 13th. 1824
MS: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Don. d. 86. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.
I ought, & meant long ago to have returned the inclosed letter;
(1)
This letter cannot be identified with certainty. A strong possibility, though, is Southey to Gooch, 14 April 1813, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Five, Letter 2247. This contained a great deal of criticism of Hunt’s radical political views and the attacks on individuals in his paper, the Examiner. In his letter, Southey told Gooch that ‘if you think fit [you might] show him [Hunt] what I have written’.
& I have merely delayed it from time to time, till that convenient season for writing therewith should arrive, which, alas, it is as vain for the busy, as for the idle man to look for. Here however you now have it, & at no unfit time, when the King of Cockaigne,
(2)
Tory critics had identified Leigh Hunt as the leader of the ‘Cockney School’ of poetry. For example, in ‘To Mr. Leigh Hunt, King of the Cockneys’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 3 (May 1818), 196–201. From this it was a short step to ‘King of Cockaigne’ as Cockaigne was a medieval term for an imaginary land of luxury and idleness, such as London was often thought to be by non-Londoners.
as a member of the Satanic Confederacy
(3)
An ally and supporter of Lord Byron. In A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), ‘Preface’, pp. xvii–xxii, Southey denounced ‘the Satanic School’ of modern poetry, without naming any one poet. However, this was clearly a riposte to Byron’s Don Juan (1819), whose suppressed ‘Dedication’, mocking Southey, had circulated widely.
will probably be renewing hostilities against me with all his might & main; – he may do so till his heart aches, without provoking from me the slightest notice in reply.
It is more than likely that Leigh Hunts recollection of this letter induced him, & thro him the party at Pisa, to believe that I was the reviewer of his Foliage;
(4)
An exceptionally hostile review of Leigh Hunt, Foliage; or, Poems Original and Translated (1818), Quarterly Review, 18 (January 1818), 324–335, published 9 June 1818. Its author was John Taylor Coleridge. Byron’s mistaken belief that it had been written by Southey was publicised in Thomas Medwin (1788–1869; DNB), Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: Noted During a Residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822 (London, 1824), pp. 149–150. Byron lived in Pisa November 1821–August 1822, the period when his ‘Conversations’ with Medwin had occurred.
the view which is given of his conduct at the xxx conclusion of that criticism coinciding so well with what I had anticipated as the course he would probably pursue.
(5)
Quarterly Review, 18 (January 1818), 335, had concluded of Leigh Hunt that he had taken the ‘wrong course’ and ‘[h]enceforth all will be wormwood and bitterness to him’, with the result that ‘he will do none of the good he once hoped to do, nor yet have the bitter satisfaction of doing all the evil he now desires; he will live and die unhonoured in his own generation, and for his own sake it is to be hoped, moulder unknown in those which are to follow’. In his letter to Robert Gooch, 14 April 1813, Southey had described Hunt as ‘a man of good feelings, who was led astray by them, & who was tak…
– If you have not seen my correspondence with Shelley, John Coleridge can shew it you,
(6)
See Shelley to Southey, 26 June 1820, Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 358–359; Southey to Percy Bysshe Shelley, [c. 29 July 1820], The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3517; Shelley to Southey, 17 August 1820, Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 361–363; and Southey to Percy Bysshe Shelley, 12 October 1820, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3538.
& unless you have seen it, you xxx can hardly conceive the extent of impudent falsehood in Lord Byron’s account of it.
(7)
Thomas Medwin (1788–1869; DNB), Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: Noted During a Residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822 (London, 1824), pp. 149–150, where Byron claimed that Southey had admitted to Shelley that he had ‘treasured up’ Shelley’s opinions from their acquaintance in 1811–1812 to use against the younger poet.
– I have done with them now in the way of controversy;
(8)
Southey had replied to the accounts of Byron’s conversations in Medwin’s book with a letter to the Editor of the Courier, 8 December 1824, Letter 4289, published 13 December 1824.
– tho in the way of chastisement I shall lay the scourge on as occasion may require or opportunity present itself. – Of all the commendations that ever fell to my lot, the one which pleased me most was an expression of Mrs Piozzi’s – in a letter to old Mr Davis of Streatham: speaking of my tender epistle to William Smith she said, “Oh how I delight to see him trample upon his enemies.”
(9)
Southey was briefly in London in April–May 1817, at the time of the publication of his A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P. (1817). He was shown the manuscript of a letter from Hester Thrale Piozzi (1741–1821; DNB) to Reynold Davies (1752–1820), Herbert Hill’s Curate at Streatham. In it, Piozzi declared, ‘To the Amusement of the Literary World, our Laureate has contributed by his Spirited Letter, admired by People of all Opinions; because if they accuse his Poetry of Mistiness or Mysticism – his Prose has been so clear and explicit – nor can his Meaning be mistaken: – Oh I am so glad to see h…
Nothing would vex these miserable dogs so much as to know how heartily I despise them; but it is not possible for them to have any conception of this; – they live so entirely in the present themselves, & are so wholly intent upon producing immediate effect, that they can have no more notion of my sphere of existence, than a mole has of the life & habits of a sky lark.
This day I began the last canto of the Tale of Paraguay,
(10)
Southey’s A Tale of Paraguay (1825).
& I shall not be long in concluding it. A horse always quickens his pace when he knows that the end of his journey is near. And my progress will be accelerated by the desire of taking up the New England poem
(11)
Southey’s unfinished ‘Oliver Newman’, set in New England. A fragment was published posthumously in Oliver Newman: a New-England Tale (Unfinished): with Other Poetical Remains by the Late Robert Southey (London, 1845), pp. 1–90.
in good earnest, as a primary occupation, & pursuing it with vigour to its close. The Spenserian stanza
(12)
The Spenserian stanza of eight lines of iambic pentameter and a concluding hexameter.
has impeded me much more than I had apprehended. It is certain that I could have composed a poem of twice the length in any other metre, in half the time. Nevertheless I do not repent the choice. The character of the story was such that it could not with equal fitness have been cast in any other mould. And perhaps also I felt as if it were a sort of homage which I owed to Spenser,
(13)
Edmund Spenser (1552/1553–1599; DNB), The Faerie Queene (1590–1596), one of Southey’s earliest poetic enthusiasms.
thus to follow him once in his own measure.
This & the second volume of the Peninsular War,
(14)
Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).
(of which 30 sheets are printed) are my main employments at this time. But I shall have my Colloquies
(15)
Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (1829).
in the press, as soon as I hear that the engravings which are to accompany them
(16)
William Westall produced six sketches of Lake District scenes that were engraved for Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 2 vols (London, 1829): vol. I: ‘Druidical Stones near Keswick’, ‘Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite-water, and Skiddaw from Walla Crag’, and ‘Derwentwater from Strand Shagg’; and vol. II: ‘Crosthwaite Church and Skiddaw’, ‘Greta Hall, Derwentwater, and Newlands’, and ‘Tarn of Blencathra’.
are in any forwardness.
The Irish seem in a fair way this winter of having their old desire, – “long nights & bloody blankets.”
(17)
Southey claimed this was ‘one of the ferocious toasts of the United Irish’, i.e. those who organised the Irish rising in 1798 (Essays Moral and Political, 2 vols (London, 1832), I, p.138). This quotation was part of a section he restored or added to the republication of his essay ‘On the State of the Poor’, Quarterly Review, 8 (December 1812), 319–356. There was considerable agrarian unrest in Ireland 1821–1824 and the Catholic Association had been formed in Ireland in 1823 to campaign for Catholic Emancipation. In 1824 it developed into a mass movement and pressure started to build for politi…
The object of the rampant Papists in that country is plainly to bring about a separation of the two kingdoms by means of a religious war. They will succeed in raising a rebellion. – God grant, it may not commence by a massacre. I wish I could see as much reason for expecting that when they have been reconquered, proper means will be taken for making the conquest effectual. Sure I am that no statesman has yet shewn himself among our ministers from whom this can be expe hoped. If the rebels meet with any success at the outset, or show themselves in any force, we shall hardly escape without some attempt on the part of the English & (more likely) the Scotch Radicals. I know that they have had agents in Ireland. Quiet as every thing appears in this country just now, – the combustible materials are all ready, & at any moment may burs the flames may burst forth. But if the better part of this nation be but true to themselves, there is no danger which they may not surmount.
If you were a Lawyer I would recommend you to read “Who wrote Εἰκὼν Βασιλική? as a most convincing display of accumulative evidence.
(18)
‘Royal Portrait’, i.e. Eikon Basilike, The Portraicture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings (1649), no. 987 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library, purported to be the work of Charles I (1600–1649; King of Great Britain 1625–1649; DNB). Christopher Wordsworth, Εἰκὼν Βασιλική Considered and Answered in Two Letters addressed to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (1824) aimed to support the idea that Charles I was the actual author – a conclusion not endorsed by modern scholars. The book was no. 3042 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.
Whenever the question shall be regarded without any mixture of political feelings (which it will not be in our days) – that book will be considered as having decided it beyond all reasonable doubt.
I shall be always glad to hear of you & yours –
God bless you
Yrs affectionately
Robert Southey
