1931. Robert Southey to Walter Savage Landor, 5 June 1811 ⁠* 

Keswick June 5. 1811.

Print your tragedy [1]  in a volume, – that is, in whatever size it be, whether octavo or the more convenient pocket form, let it have boarded covers, that it may stand upon a shelf, & not be dog-leaved among pamphletts. That passage which describes Egilona [2]  is perfectly Landorean: – it has a character of sublimity wholly your own, & of that kind which has set the seal of immortality upon Gebir. [3] 

The concluding lines of the Tragedy are not yet what they should be, – if they had been you would not have asked my judgement of them. [4]  All bad poets admire their all that they write, – a true one never suspects a passage of his own to be imperfect without cause – his suspicions are of the nature of conscience.

Scott you see x is writing upon Rodrigo. [5]  If the old Goth ever gets any literary news from this world, it must surprize him to see hear what work he has made for the poets of the 19^th century. I am anxious to see his poem, there will be a good deal of splendour in it no doubt, – but visions are difficult things to handle –

Have you seen Miss Sewards Letters? She had been “assured” that the author of Gebir reviewed it himself in the Critical Review, & that I was the editor of that Review, – facts of which the one is just as true as the other. [6]  That review, or rather that analysis of Gebir I wrote myself. [7]  After I knew Miss Seward I made her read the poem again, & but she never could get more than glimpses of its merits, glimpses however she did get, & this would have appeared if she had not been (in my opinion) ill used by the man to whom she left her letters for publication. [8]  By not printing the whole which she designed for publication, he has xxxxxx made her appear to be xx given some of her hastiest & most violent expressions which pass now for her settled judgement, because the letters in which they were qualified, or xxxxx or retracted do not appear. In another point she has been ill-used. It was her desire that they should be published in portions, at intervals of two years between each – the reason of this certainly was that by the time the latter portions were published, some persons there spoken of, would in the natural course of years have dropt off, – it is very evident to me that that strange part of her own history relating to Col. T. & his wife, was never meant to be made public while they lived, & they being of her own age, would in all likelihood have been dead, before that portion of the correspondence was publishable, according to her will. [9]  But she left the letters to a Scotch bookseller, who is man-midwife to Jeffray & to <bringing into light> all that that fellow spawns in the Ed. Review, & he, as might have <been> foreseen had no other thought than how to make the greatest immediate profit by the bequest, in utter contempt of the conditions which accompanied it – because they were stated as the wish of the testatrix, – & therefore were not binding in law.

Fellowes who speaks so cavalierly of Gebir in those letters published some poems himself, [10]  which were upon a level with Godwins Antonio [11]  for versification, – & for silliness below any thing which I can call to mind for a comparison. And yet Fellowes who judges so vilely of the poetry of others & writes such execrable verses himself, is on other points a sensible man, in as far as I could judge from dining once in company with him.

We set out for the South on Monday next, & shall be a week on the road. Direct to me at the Revd. Herbert Hill’s, Streatham, Surry, any time for the next month. – Sir Ed. Littleton I find has left Bath. Shall I find you there or at Llanthony about the end of July? or will any wind blow you to London?

God bless you

RS.