1836. Robert Southey to Thomas Southey, 5 December 1810 ⁠* 

My dear Tom

I am sorry George Taylor [1]  should have read Kehama in its imperfect state, for there <are> a good many parts in the manuscript in which the versification is defective, – not to mention the many insertions in the printed copy. – It never will surprize x me to find that the poem is not relished, – it is just as impossible to give a taste for works of imagination, as it is to give a taste for music, & I who am without one shall never quarrel with any body for being without the other. The sort of praise which I wish Kehama to obtain, & the real value of such works, is expressed in what Turner tells me his wife [2]  said of the poem when he made her leave of it off at midnight. She could have read it all night, she said, she felt it elevate her conceptions, & occasion an excitement of mind that made her feel superior to herself. This is there use, to take us out of ourselves, to carry us into the world of unrealities, to busy us with some thing which is not immediately connected with flesh & blood; – to elevate rather than to affect, – & to make us perceive our own imaginative powers instead of constantly referring us to ordinary feelings.

Bedford has seen the review which Scott has written of it, [3]  – & which from his account tho a very friendly one, is like that of the Cid very superficial. [4]  He sees nothing but the naked story, x the moral feeling which pervades it has escaped him. I do not know whether Bedford will be able to get a paragraph interpolated touching upon this & showing that there is some difference between a work of high imagination & a story of mere amusement. –

Since this was written I have had a letter from Scott himself, telling me of his reviewal, & how hastily he wrote it while the first impression of the poem was fresh upon him, – that he might be beforehand with the Edinburgh in fixing its character with the public, as far as it is to be fixed by public criticism. – I do not know who reviewed the Brazil, but I guess it was Reginald Heber. [5]  He is wrong in complaining of the want of general & retrospective views, – or rather this is an imputation to which the work is subjected only because it has been published by halves. In their fit time & place they will come in. A coronal is not a coronet, for the last word is appropriate to rank & heraldry. A poitral is a horses breast-flesh. A tambour is an outlandish drum, not such as the soldiers use. Napery implies napkins & tablecloths, either or both. Therefore properly used when a comprehensive term was required. Harry will tell you that a Broad is the spread of a river into a sheet of water, – someth which is certainly neither lake nor lagoon. – The mistake about Lutheranism the Reviewer has well accounted for by the constant presence <use> of the word Luteranos in the Portugueze writers. Araboutan he might have seen in one of the notes is the indigenous name not of Brazil itself, but of the Brazil-tree. [6]  On the whole I could not have desired a more favourable reviewal, nor one in which the temper of the reviewer should, in the main, join better with my own. As for what he says concerning a change in my way of thinking, he does not perceive that it is the times that have changed most.

I am exceedingly tickled with the notion about Sir John Sinclair – alias Sir John Jackass – & the Black ram in the last article. [7]  – My Evangelical article has been hurt by mutilation [8]  – they have marred the whole sarcasm against Sidney Smith [9]  by leaving out, I cannot conceive why, the flea-bites, – pray write the words in in Harrys copy, – after “crackd him – ” in resentment for the flea-bites of his small wit” – p. 486. & They have also left out what I said about changing the condition of the Clerk, & restoring the old race of Catechists. [10]  This does not much surprize me, & I shall find a place for it elsewhere, together with a proposal for abolishing the indiscriminate use of sermons, – which of course was too bold to be proposed xx to the Quarterly.

Rickman writes me a very high account indeed of Pasleys [11]  book & urges me to review it, – in consequence of which I have written to Gifford about it.

Thursday last I received the box from Bristol, with 20 volumes from Gutch’s catalogue – Oh there was joy in Greta Hall at the arrival. And that same evening there came two parcels. I was too xxxxxxx happy, – it was happiness enough for three days. One was from Edinburgh, – a vol. of the Somers Tracts, [12]  a vol. of Hogg the Ettrick Shepherds poems [13]  for which I subscribed long since, with a presentation copy & a letter from poor Hogg himself. – The other from Murray containing the Quarterly, & a present from him of three volume of Metrical Romance, just published by Weber, [14]  a two guineas worth, admirably edited, exceedingly curious, & to xxxx after my own heart. – I have got start enough with Ballantyne to lay the Dutch aside [15]  & take a spell at Abella’s documents, which are very clear & good. – God bless you. Our love to Sarah. The children have had a good deal of sickness in this unusually sickly time, but they are now recovered God be thanked.

Yrs RS.

Dec. 5. 1810.

Many happy returns to you both. – my love to Mary, – & tell the Doctor I am become a convert to his system of drinking beer with pastry – Bertha still remembers that Aunt Tom used to give her suga-pumm.