Appendix 3: Southey’s manuscript drafts of his letter to the Courier 1822

Southey’s manuscript drafts of his letter to the Courier 1822

This appendix makes available annotated transcripts of three manuscripts relating to Southey’s letter to the Editor of the Courier (see Letter 3775), published in the Courier on 11 January 1822.

The first (3.1) is dated 5 January 1822 and is now in the John Murray archive, National Library of Scotland. Its text is very close to that published in the Courier. The second and third manuscripts (3.2.1 and 3.2.2) are now in the Huntington Library, San Marino. They contain undated drafts of material for the letter and represent earlier stages of Southey’s drafting process.

Seen together, and in conjunction with the published letter, they provide evidence of Southey taking some time and care in creating his public response to Byron.

3.1 Robert Southey to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822

Watermark: W D & Co/ 1819
MS: National Library of Scotland, MS 42552. ALS; 4p.

To the Editor of the Courier

Sir,
Having seen in the newspapers a note relating to myself, extracted from a recent publication of Lord Byrons, I request permission to reply thro the medium of your journal.

⁽¹⁾

I come at once to his Lordships charge against me, blowing away the abuse with which it is frothed, & evaporating a strong acid in which it is suspended. The residuum then appears to xx <be> that “M^r Southey, on his return from Switzerland, (in 1817) scattered abroad calumnies, knowing them to be such, against Lord Byron & others.” To this I reply with a direct & positive denial.

If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk,

⁽²⁾

or Monk of La Trappe,

⁽³⁾

that he had furnished a harem, or endowed a hospital, I might have thought the account, whichever it had been, possible, & repeated it accordingly, <passing it, as it had been taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this manner> I might have spoken of him as of Baron Gerambe, the Green Man, the Indian Jugglers,

⁽⁴⁾

or any other figurante

⁽⁵⁾

of the time being. There could was no reason for any particular delicacy on my part in speaking of his Lordship. And indeed any I should have thought any thing which might be reported of him, would have injured his character as little, as the story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guildford, that he had ridden a Rhinoceros.

⁽⁶⁾

He may ride a Rhinoceros, & tho every body will <would> stare, no one would wonder. But making no enquiry concerning him when I was abroad, befor because I felt no curiosity I heard nothing, & had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends & acquaintance on my return, it was of the Flying Tree at Alpnacht,

⁽⁷⁾

& the Eleven Thousand Virgins at Cologne,

⁽⁸⁾

– not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than S^t Ursull Ursula.

Once, & once only, in connection with Switzerland, I have alluded to his Lordship; & as the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review, speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau, I said it was the scene ‘where Lord Byrons Manfred met the Devil & bullied him; – tho the Devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself, than his Advocate, in a cause of Canonization, ever pleaded for him.”

⁽⁹⁾

With regard to the “others” whom his Lordship accuses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends,

⁽¹⁰⁾

whose names I found written in the Album at Mont-Anvert, with an avowal of Atheism annexed in Greek, & an indignant comment in the same language underneath it.

⁽¹¹⁾

Those names, with that avowal & the comment I transcribed in my note-book; & spoke of the circumstance on my return.

⁽¹²⁾

If I had published it, the Gentleman in question would not have thought himself slandered by having that recorded of him, which he has so often recorded of himself.

The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed upon me, I leave as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon himself.

How easily is a noble spirit discern’d
From harsh & sulphurous matter, that flies out
In contumelies, makes a noise, & stinks!
B. Jonson. ⁽¹³⁾

But I am accustomed to such things. And so far from irritating me are the enemies who use such weapons, that when I hear of their attacks, it is some satisfaction to think they have thus employed the malignity which must have been employed somewhere, & could not have been directed against any person whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The viper, however venomous in purpose, is harmless in effect, while it is biting at the file.

⁽¹⁴⁾

It is seldom indeed that I waste a word, or a thought, upon those who are perpetually assailing me. But abhorring as I do the personalities which disgrace our current literature, & averse from controversy as I am, both by principle & inclination, I make no profession of non-resistance. When the offence & the offender are such as to call for the whip & the branding iron, it has been felt <both> seen & felt that I can inflict them.

⁽¹⁵⁾

Lord Byrons present exacerbation is evidently produced by an affliction of this kind; – not by hearsay reports of my conversation four years ago, transmitted him from England. The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic School of Poetry, contained in my preface to the Vision of Judgement.

⁽¹⁶⁾

Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, & parents especially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer indeed, with that honourable feeling by which his criticisms are so peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part.

⁽¹⁷⁾

I give him in this instance full credit for sincerity. I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse. And as I have never condescended to expose in any instance his pityful malevolence, I thank him for having in this stript it bare himself, & exhibited it in its bald, naked, & undisguised deformity.

Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventured to bring the matter of those animadversions into view. He conceals the fact, that they are directed against the authors of blasphemous & lascivious books; against men who not content with indulging their own vices, labour to make others the slaves of sensuality like themselves; against public panders, who, mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, & to carry profanation & pollution into private families, & into the hearts of individuals.

His Lordship has thought it not unbecoming in him, to call me a scribbler of all work.

⁽¹⁸⁾

Let the word scribbler pass; it is not an appellation which will stick, like that of the Satanic School. But if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? I will tell Lord Byron what I have not scribbled, – what kind of work I have not done. I have never published libels upon my friends & acquaintance, expressed my sorrow for those libels, & called them in during a mood of better mind; – & then reissued them,

⁽¹⁹⁾

when the Evil Spirit, which for a time had been cast out, had returned & taken possession with seven others, more wicked than himself.

⁽²⁰⁾

I have never abused the power of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character of a man, or the heart of a woman. I have never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare affix my name; of which I feared to claim in a court of justice, if it were pirated by a knavish bookseller.

⁽²¹⁾

I have never manufactured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I done, – none of the foul work by which literature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My hands are clean; there is no “damned spot” upon them, – no taint which “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.”

⁽²²⁾

Of the work which I have done, it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic School, & its Coryphæus,

⁽²³⁾

the author of Don Juan. I have held up that school to public detestation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, & the domestic morals of their country. I have given them a designation to which their founder & leader answers. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead.

⁽²⁴⁾

I have fastened his name upon the gibbet for reproach & ignominy as long as it shall endure. Take it down who can!

One word of advice to Lord Byron, before I conclude. When he attacks me again, let it be in rhyme.

⁽²⁵⁾

For one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep tune. And while he may still indulge in the same rankness & virulence of insult, the metre will in some degree seem to lessen its vulgarity.

Robert Southey.

Keswick. 5 Jan^y. 1822.

3.2 Two drafts towards Southey’s letter to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822

The Huntington Library, HM 6655, contains two autograph, fragmentary drafts towards Southey’s letter. Neither draft is dated. The first is written on paper with an 1819 watermark, the second on unwatermarked paper; the second draft is furthest away from the version published in the Courier so may be the earlier. We reproduce both here for the first time – and in the order in which they appear in the manuscript.

3.2.1. Draft 1:

Watermark: WD&Co 1819
MS: Huntington Library, HM 6655. AL; 4p.

To the Editor of the Courier

Sir
Having seen in the newspapers a note relating to myself, extracted from a recent publication of Lord Byrons, I request permission to reply thro the medium of your journal.

⁽²⁶⁾

I come at once to his Lordships charge against me, blowing away the abuse with which it is frothed, & evaporat evaporating a strong acid in which it is suspended. The residuum then appears to be that “M^r Southey on his return from Switzerland in 1817, scattered abroad calumnies, knowing them to be such, against Lord Byron & others.” To this I reply with a direct & positive denial.

If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk,

⁽²⁷⁾

or Monk of La Trappe,

⁽²⁸⁾

that he had furnished a harem, or endowed a hospital, I might have thought any of the accounts possible, & repeated it accordingly. But making no enquiry concerning him, because I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing & had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends & acquaintance on my return, it was of the Flying Tree at Alpnacht,

⁽²⁹⁾

& the Eleven Thousand Virgins at Cologne,

⁽³⁰⁾

– not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than S^t Ursula.

Once & once only, in connection with Switzerland I have alluded to his Lordship; & as the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. Speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau I said it was the scene “where Lord Byrons Manfred met the Devil & bullied him, – tho’ the Devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself, than his advocate in a cause of canonization ever pleaded for him.

⁽³¹⁾

With regard to the “others” whom his Lordship accuses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends,

⁽³²⁾

whose names I found written in the Album at Mont Anvert, with an avowal of Atheism annexed in Greek, & an indignant comment in the same language, underneath it.

⁽³³⁾

Those names with that avowal & the comment I transcribed in my note-book, & spoke of the circumstance on my return.

⁽³⁴⁾

If I had published it, the Gentleman in question would not have thought himself calumniated <slandered>, by having that recorded of him, which he has so often recorded of himself. But that Gentleman was <once> for a short time my neighbour;

⁽³⁵⁾

I met him upon terms, not of friendship indeed, but certainly of mutual good will: I admired his talents; thought that he would outgrow his errors (perilous as they were) & trusted that meantime a kind & generous heart would resist the effect of fatal opinions which he had taken up in ignorance & boyhood. Therein I was mistaken. But if I have ceased to regard him with hope, he is to me an object of sorrow & aweful commiseration, not of any injurious feeling. And when I have expressed myself with severe justice concerning him, it has been in direct communication to himself.

⁽³⁶⁾

The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed upon me I leave as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon himself.*

⁽³⁷⁾

So far are such enemies from irritating me, that when I hear of their attacks, it is some satisfaction to think they have thus employed the malignity which must have been employed somewhere; & could not have been directed against any person whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The viper however venomous in purpose is harmless in effect while it is biting at the file.

⁽³⁸⁾

It is seldom indeed that I waste a word or a thought upon such enemies <those who are perpetually assailing me.> But abhorring as I do the personalities which disgrace our current literature, & averse from controversy as I am both by principle & inclination, I make no profession of non-resistance. When the offence <& the offender> are such as to call for the whip & the branding iron, it has been seen & felt that I can inflict them.

⁽³⁹⁾

Lord Byrons present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind, – not by any hearsay reports of my conversation four years ago, transmitted him from England. Its cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic School of poetry, contained in my Preface to the Vision of Judgement.

⁽⁴⁰⁾

Those remarks excited what is called a great sensation among his Lordships friends; & great were the anticipations formed by some in dismay, & others in delight, of the vengeance which was to fall upon the Poet Laureates devoted head. The Author of Don Juan, as if own brother to Raw Head & Bloody Bones, was to swallow him up quick.

⁽⁴¹⁾

But the Poet Laureate might perhaps prove as untoothsome in the operation, as the curious pear so designated in the Marquis of Worcesters Inventions.

⁽⁴²⁾

He who means to attempt it would do well to put his throat in training, & begin with a hedge hog. – If his Lordship has not yet learnt that he who plays at bowls must expect to meet with rubs,

⁽⁴³⁾

– some very good teaching has been thrown away upon him.

Happy Twere would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what I have said of that flagitious school. Many persons, & parents especially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer indeed, with that honourable feeling by which his criticisms are so peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part.

⁽⁴⁴⁾

I give him in this instance full credit for sincerity. I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse. And as I have never condescended to expose in any instance his pityful malice<levolence>, I thank him for having in this, stript it bare himself, & exhibited it in its bald, naked & undistinguished deformity.

Lord Byron, like his encomiast the Edinburgh Reviewer, has not ventured to bring the matter of those animadversions befor into view. He conceals the fact that they are directed against the publication <composition authors> of blasphemous & lascivious books, – against men who not content with indulging their own vices, labour to make others the slaves of sensuality like themselves, – public pandars, who mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, & to carry profanation & pollution into private families, & into the hearts of individuals.

His Lordship has thought it not unbecoming in him to call me a scribbler of all work.

⁽⁴⁵⁾

Let the word scribbler pass, – it is not an appellation which will stick, like that of the Satanic school: – but if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? I will tell Lord Byron what I have not scribbled; – what kind of work I have not done. I have never published libels upon my friends & acquaintance, expressed my sorrow for those libels & suppressed them in <called them in, during> a mood of better mind, – & <then again> reissued them

⁽⁴⁶⁾

when the Evil Spirit which for a time had been cast out, had returned & taken possession with seven others more wicked than himself.

⁽⁴⁷⁾

I have never abused the power of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character of a man, or the heart of a woman. I have never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare affix my name, or which I feared to claim in a Court of Justice if it were pirated by a dirty <knavish> bookseller.

⁽⁴⁸⁾

I have never manufactured furniture for the brothel. I <None of these things> have I done, – none of the dirty <foul> work by which literature is rendered a nuisance to <perverted to the injury> of mankind. My hands are clean: there is no “damnd spot” upon them. Let Lord Byron look to his! <no taint which all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.>

⁽⁴⁹⁾

Of the work which I have done, it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic school & its Coryphaeus

⁽⁵⁰⁾

the author of Don Juan. I have attacked <held up> that School <to public ridicu detestation> as enemies to the religion, the domestic morals, & the institutions of their country. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead.

⁽⁵¹⁾

I have fastened his name upon the gibbet for reproach & ignominy as long as it shall endure. Take it down who can!

One word of advice to Lord B. before I conclude. When he attacks me again let it be in rhyme.

⁽⁵²⁾

For one who has so little command of himself it will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep tune. And while he may still indulge in the same rankness & virulence of insult, the metre will in some degree <seem to> lessen its vulgarity.

<* How easily is a noble spirit discernd
From harsh & sulphurous matter, that flies out
In contumelies, makes a noise, & stinks.
(53)
Ben Jonson (1572–1637; DNB), Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act 4, scene 1, lines 51–53.
But I am accustomed to such things – And so far &c>
(54)
Southey’s asterisk indicates that these verses should be placed at the asterisked point earlier in the letter.

3.2.2 Draft 2:

MS: Huntington Library, HM 6655. AL; 4p.

x x x x x

– If in the common intercourse of London (where I go seldom, & mix little in general society) I have heard & repeated any thing concerning Lord Byron, it was past as it was taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this manner I may have spoken of him as of Baron Geramb, the Green Man, the Indian Jugglers,

⁽⁵⁵⁾

or any other figurante

⁽⁵⁶⁾

of the time being. The To call to mind such talk after an interval of weeks instead of years, would be as impossible as to remember what was said of the weather, or the news of the day. Only this I know, that I never traduced him, or any other person. There was no reason for any remarkable delicacy on my part in speaking of Lord B. And indeed I should have thought that any thing which might be reported of him would have injured his character as little, as the story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guildford that he had ridden a Rhinoceros.

⁽⁵⁷⁾

He may ride a Rhinoceros, & tho every body will stare, no one will wonder.

But to the charge that after my return from Switzerland I reported slanders of his Lordship & some others, I reply with a direct & positive denial.

⁽⁵⁸⁾

If I had heard in that country that he had turned Turk,

⁽⁵⁹⁾

or Monk of La Trappe,

⁽⁶⁰⁾

– that he had furnished a harem, or endowed a hospital, I might have <thought> either

⁽⁶¹⁾

account possible, & repeated it accordingly. But making no enquiry <concerning him> because I felt no interest, I heard nothing, & had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends & acquaintance on my return, it was of the Flying Tree at Alpnacht

⁽⁶²⁾

& the Eleven Thousand Virgins at Cologne,

⁽⁶³⁾

not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than S^t Ursula.

Once & once only in connection with Switzerland, I have alluded to his Lordship. The passage was curtailed in the Press, & I take this opportunity of restoring it. Speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau, I said it was the scene “where Lord Byrons Manfred met the Devil & bullied him; – tho the Devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself, than his Advocate in a suit of canonization ever pleaded for him.

⁽⁶⁴⁾

Lord Byronm says that I can know nothing of his private life.

⁽⁶⁵⁾

Certainly nothing more of it than what he has himself thought proper to make public & notorious; that he is

– one whose hand
Like the base Judaean, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.
(66)
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, Act 5, scene 2, lines 346–348.

More than this assuredly I do not know. But in supposing that the principles, opinions & feelings which form the tenour of his private life are to be found in his writings, I apply to him that test whereby I am willing to be tried myself. There I see that like Michael Draytons Mooncalf

He termeth virtue madness or mere folly,

He hates all high things, & profanes all holy.

⁽⁶⁷⁾

There I find the portraiture of one who hates men, despises women, is sated with the vices of this world, & seems to have no views or hopes beyond it.

But in truth all who know me can bear witness how little I busy myself with my contemporaries or with contemporary literature. I find too much employment among the dead, to misspend my thoughts upon the living. His Lordship has bestowed more time in writing concerning me than I have ever done in thinking or conversing about him. Nemo me impune lacessit is not my motto.

⁽⁶⁸⁾

The Duncery have assailed me with impunity during five & twenty years. Cobbett, Hone et id genus omne,

⁽⁶⁹⁾

(the skunks & polecats of the press) have done it, are doing it, & will continue to do so: Lord Byron did it when he first ran amuck,

⁽⁷⁰⁾

& on many a subsequent occasion; & his Lordships Boy Hobby-ho did it, when with a magnanimity scarcely inferior to that of Buonaparte he abstained from suicide after the battle of Waterloo.

⁽⁷¹⁾

The egregious & incomparable Jeremy, <ever Jeremy the Merry-Bentham>[Benth equipped in full motley, has shaken his bauble & bells at me, erected his ancient cockscomb, & crowed in triumphant <exultant> defiance.

⁽⁷²⁾

Sir Tarquin the Table-Talker still slavers out his malevolence as freely as if he were quite certain I should never publish a tale in illustration of the old proverb Save a Thief from the gallows <which tells me what he xxx xxxxx [word runs over edge of MS] criminal xxxx [word runs over edge of MS] justice may expect for his reward>

⁽⁷³⁾

& he’ll cut your throat. So far are such men from irritating me, that when I hear of their attacks, it is a satisfaction to think they have <thus> employed upon me the abuse which must have been employed somewhere, & could not be directed against any person whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The viper however venomous in purpose, is harmless in effect, while it is biting at the file.

⁽⁷⁴⁾

It is seldom indeed that I waste a word or a thought upon such enemies. But abhorring as I do the personalities which disgrace our current literature, & averse from controversy as I am both by principle & inclination, I make no profession of non-resistance. When the offence is such as to call for the whip & the branding iron it has been seen & felt that I can inflict them

⁽⁷⁵⁾

There may be some reason for supposing that Lord Byrons present exacerbation is produced by an infliction of this kind, rather than by any hearsay reports of my conversation four years ago, transmitted him by his correspondents in England. The little credit which any such reports can deserve, his Lordship must well understand, from what has frequently happened to himself; for I presume he does not imagine that he is the only person concerning whom idle or malicious tales are raised & circulated without the slightest foundation. A more reasonable motive for his bitterness may perhaps be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic School of poetry, contained in my preface to the Vision of Judgement.

⁽⁷⁶⁾

Those remarks excited what is called a great sensation among his Lordships friends; & great were the anticipations formed by some in dismay, & others in delight, of the vengeance which was to fall on the Poet Laureates devoted head. The author of Don Juan, as if he were own brother to Raw Head & Bloody Bones, was to swallow him up quick.

⁽⁷⁷⁾

But the Poet Laureate might perhaps prove as untoothsome in the operation, as the <notable curious> pear which is so designated in the Marquis of Worcesters Inventions.

⁽⁷⁸⁾

He who means to attempt it should <would do well to> put his throat in training, & begin with a hedge-hog. – If his Lordship has not yet learnt that he who plays at bowls must expect to meet with rubbers,

⁽⁷⁹⁾

some very good teaching has been thrown away upon him.

Well would it be for Lord Byron if he could look back upon any of his writings with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what I have said of that flagitious school. Many parents have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer indeed with that honourable feeling by which his criticisms are so peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves has imputed them wholly to envy on my part.

⁽⁸⁰⁾

I give him in this instance full credit for sincerity. I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse. And as I have never condescended to expose in any instance relating to myself his pityful malignity, I thank him for having in this stript it bare himself, & exhibited it in its bald, naked & undisguised deformity.

The Corypheus

⁽⁸¹⁾

of the Satanic School may continue to censure my works with as little moderation in public, as he has in private extolled them He may go on lampooning friends as well as enemies

And sweating plays so middling bad were better.

⁽⁸²⁾

He may produce more imitations of M^r Wordsworth, & then ridicule & depreciate the author whom he is, & ever will be unable to equal.

⁽⁸³⁾

But with all his talents & all his endeavours, he can never be a great poet unless he becomes a wiser & better man. That change would bring with it a consciousness that he has perverted great talents to the worst purposes. To wish that he may become thus miserable, while it may yet avail him, is not the wish of an enemy. Shame is indelible, but by the mercy of God sin may be forgiven.

Notes

1. In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 328, Byron had cautioned: ‘I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey’s calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.’ Southey had visited Switzerland in his continental tour of May–August 1817. Byron believed that Southey had subsequently spread rumours that Byron and Shelley engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. Southey had seen the note relating to himself in the Westmorland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle, 29 December 1821. [back]

2. i.e. that Byron had converted to Islam. [back]

3. The monastery of La Trappe in Normandy, where a particularly severe reform of the Cistercian Order had begun in 1664, prescribing hard manual labour, silence and a meagre diet. [back]

4. Ferdinand de Geramb (1772–1848), Austrian adventurer and soldier, prolific writer, figure in London Society, prisoner in France 1812–14 and, from 1817, Trappist monk, rising to be procurator-general of the monastery in 1833; Henry Cope (d. 1806), an eccentric who dressed only in green and committed suicide in Brighton on 25 October 1806; the ‘Indian Jugglers’ were a sensation in London in 1813, The Times, 27 July 1813 reporting ‘The exhibition of the Indian Jugglers at No. 87 Pall Mall, has been attended by nearly all the Families of distinction in town; and is becoming extremely popular. The swallowing of the sword, and the novelty of the other performances, have attracted the public attention beyond anything that has appeared in the metropolis for many years past.’ The lead performer was probably Ramo Samee [Ramaswamy] (d. 1850) from Madras, who performed on the British and American stage into the 1840s. [back]

5. An extra in a theatrical performance. [back]

6. Roger North (1651–1734; DNB), The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North, Baron of Guildford, 2 vols (London, 1808), II, pp. 240–241, describing the reaction of Francis North, 1st Baron Guildford (1637–1685; DNB), lawyer, judge and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal 1682–1685. [back]

7. In his continental journey of 1817, Southey reached Alpnach in Switzerland on 11 July 1817. There he saw the eight-miles-long ‘Slide of Alpnach’, erected to convey logged spruces from the mountainside to the lake below. The trough, a feat of engineering supported on a timber frame over several ravines, was so angled as to transport the tree trunks from forest to shore in no more than six minutes. [back]

8. The Church of St Ursula at Cologne contains an enormous reliquary in which supposedly lie the bones of this fourth-century British saint. According to legend, she was killed by the Huns, along with her eleven thousand virginal handmaids, while on a pilgrimage to Cologne. Southey visited Cologne on the return leg of his journey in 1817. For a letter in which he mentioned both the ‘Slide of Alpnach’ and St Ursula, see Southey to Herbert Hill, 16 November 1817, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Party Five, Letter 3037. [back]

9. This passage appeared as ‘and the Jungfrau where Lord Byron’s Manfred met the devil and bullied him’, the rest being omitted, in Southey’s ‘Cemeteries and Catacombs of Paris’, Quarterly Review, 21 (April 1819), 359–398 (366). The reference is to Lord Byron’s Manfred: a Dramatic Poem (1817), Act 2, scene 3, where Manfred resists a pact with the Devil. Southey suggests the Devil must have argued as feebly as the Devil’s Advocate (promotor fidei), a canon lawyer in the Catholic Church whose role it was to make the case against a candidate’s canonisation. [back]

10. Percy Shelley; Mary Godwin Shelley (1797–1851; DNB), for whom Shelley had abandoned his marriage and with whom he travelled to Switzerland in 1814; and her step-sister, Clara Mary Jane Clairmont (1798–1879; DNB). [back]

11. Mont Auvert is a summit near the Mer de Glace and a popular tourist destination. At its top was a small building in which travellers could take shelter. It contained an album in which visitors could write their names and comments. The Shelley party had visited in July 1816 and had written their names in the album and against them the phrase, in Greek, ‘Atheists one and all.’ Underneath, in Greek, someone, possibly Edward Copleston, had responded ‘If that is true they are all fools and unfortunates, believing it in their stupidity. But if it is not true, they are all liars.’ [back]

12. Southey had recorded this information in his travel journal on 26 June 1817, and shared it in a letter to John May, 1 August 1817; see The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Five, Letter 3005. [back]

13. Ben Jonson (1572–1637; DNB), Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act 4, scene 1, lines 51–53. [back]

14. A reference to Phaedrus (fl. 1st century), Fabulae Aesopiae, a Latin collection of fables, which included the story of how a viper is wounded by a file on the floor of a workshop and fruitlessly bites it in return. [back]

15. Probably a reference to Southey’s A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P. (London, 1817), p. 28, which had claimed to brand Smith on the forehead ‘with the name of SLANDERER.’ [back]

16. A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), ‘Preface’, pp. xvii–xxii, where 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. [back]

17. Edinburgh Review, 35 (July 1821), 422–436 (422). Southey (correctly) believed the review to be by Francis Jeffrey, given Jeffrey’s previous excoriating comments on Southey in the Review. [back]

18. In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 329, Byron had called Southey ‘an arrogant scribbler of all works sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow creatures.’ [back]

19. Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) was suppressed by him in 1812, but many subsequent editions appeared without his authority. [back]

20. Matthew 12: 45 and Luke 11: 26. [back]

21. The first two cantos of Byron’s Don Juan (1819) were published anonymously. Its publisher, John Murray, did not bring a legal case to stop pirated, cheaper copies being printed, as he was embarrassed at his association with the publication, and his own name as publisher did not appear on the poem. [back]

22. Macbeth, Act 5, scene 1, lines 35, 50–51. [back]

23. In Greek drama, the leader of the chorus. [back]

24. 1 Samuel, 17: 49. [back]

25. Unfortunately for Southey, Byron had responded with The Vision of Judgment, a parody of Southey’s A Vision of Judgement (1821), published in The Liberal, 1 (October 1822), 3–39. [back]

26. In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 328, Byron had cautioned: ‘I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey’s calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.’ Southey had visited Switzerland in his continental tour of May–August 1817. Byron believed that Southey had subsequently spread rumours that Byron and Shelley engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. Southey had seen the note relating to himself in the Westmorland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle, 29 December 1821. [back]

27. i.e. that Byron had converted to Islam. [back]

28. The monastery of La Trappe in Normandy, where a particularly severe reform of the Cistercian Order had begun in 1664, prescribing hard manual labour, silence and a meagre diet. [back]

29. In his continental journey of 1817, Southey reached Alpnach in Switzerland on 11 July 1817. There he saw the eight-miles-long ‘Slide of Alpnach’, erected to convey logged spruces from the mountainside to the lake below. The trough, a feat of engineering supported on a timber frame over several ravines, was so angled as to transport the tree trunks from forest to shore in no more than six minutes. [back]

30. The Church of St Ursula at Cologne contains an enormous reliquary in which supposedly lie the bones of this fourth-century British saint. According to legend, she was killed by the Huns, along with her eleven thousand virginal handmaids, while on a pilgrimage to Cologne. Southey visited Cologne on the return leg of his journey in 1817. For a letter in which he mentioned both the ‘Slide of Alpnach’ and St Ursula, see Southey to Herbert Hill, 16 November 1817, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Party Five, Letter 3037. [back]

31. This passage appeared as ‘and the Jungfrau where Lord Byron’s Manfred met the devil and bullied him’, the rest being omitted, in Southey’s ‘Cemeteries and Catacombs of Paris’, Quarterly Review, 21 (April 1819), 359–398 (366). The reference is to Lord Byron’s Manfred: a Dramatic Poem (1817), Act 2, scene 3, where Manfred resists a pact with the Devil. Southey suggests the Devil must have argued as feebly as the Devil’s Advocate (promotor fidei), a canon lawyer in the Catholic Church, whose role it was to make the case against a candidate’s canonisation. [back]

32. Percy Shelley; Mary Godwin Shelley (1797–1851; DNB), for whom Shelley had abandoned his marriage and with whom he travelled to Switzerland in 1814; and her step-sister, Clara Mary Jane Clairmont (1798–1879; DNB). [back]

33. Mont Auvert is a summit near the Mer de Glace and a popular tourist destination. At its top was a small building in which travellers could take shelter. It contained an album in which visitors could write their names and comments. The Shelley party had visited in July 1816 and had written their names in the album and against them the phrase, in Greek, ‘Atheists one and all.’ Underneath, in Greek, someone, possibly Edward Copleston, had responded ‘If that is true they are all fools and unfortunates, believing it in their stupidity. But if it is not true, they are all liars.’ [back]

34. Southey had recorded this information in his travel journal on 26 June 1817, and shared it in a letter to John May, 1 August 1817; see The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Five, Letter 3005. [back]

35. Shelley had stayed in Keswick November 1811–February 1812 and met Southey a number of times. [back]

36. In a letter of 26 June 1820, Shelley had accused Southey of writing a hostile review of Laon and Cythna, or the Revolution of the Golden City (1818; published late 1817) and The Revolt of Islam. A Poem, in Twelve Cantos (1818); see Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 358–359. Southey responded with his letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley, [c. 29 July 1820], The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3517. Shelley replied in a letter to Southey, 17 August 1820, Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 361–363. Southey to Percy Bysshe Shelley, 12 October 1820, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3538, closed the correspondence. [back]

37. Southey’s asterisk indicates that the verses found on the last page of the letter should be inserted here. We have placed them at the end of our transcription, but indicated them in <…>. [back]

38. A reference to Phaedrus (fl. 1st century), Fabulae Aesopiae, a Latin collection of fables, which included the story of how a viper is wounded by a file on the floor of a workshop and fruitlessly bites it in return. [back]

39. Probably a reference to Southey’s A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P. (London, 1817), p. 28, which had claimed to brand Smith on the forehead ‘with the name of SLANDERER.’ [back]

40. A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), ‘Preface’, pp. xvii–xxii, where 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. [back]

41. Rawhead and Bloody Bones was the name of a monster used to frighten children. Southey had used this particular phrase before, in Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1808, 1.1 (1810), 23. [back]

42. Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester (1602/1603–1667; DNB), The Century of Inventions (London, 1663), p. 57: ‘A little Ball made in the shape of a Plum or Pear, being dexterously conveyed or forced into a bodies’ mouth, shall presently shoot forth such and so many Bolts of each side and at both ends, as without the owners Key, can neither be opened or filed off, being made of tempered Steel, and as effectually locked as an iron chest.’ [back]

43. An eighteenth-century proverb, referring to the game of lawn bowls, where ‘robbers’ or ‘robs’ were unequal levels in the playing field that could prevent players’ shots reaching their target. [back]

44. Edinburgh Review, 35 (July 1821), 422–436 (422). Southey (correctly) believed the review to be by Francis Jeffrey, given Jeffrey’s previous excoriating comments on Southey in the Review. [back]

45. In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 329, Byron had called Southey ‘an arrogant scribbler of all works sitting down to deal damnation and destruction upon his fellow creatures.’ [back]

46. Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) was suppressed by him in 1812, but many subsequent editions appeared without his authority. [back]

47. Matthew 12: 45 and Luke 11: 26. [back]

48. The first two cantos of Byron’s Don Juan (1819) were published anonymously. Its publisher, John Murray, did not bring a legal case to stop pirated, cheaper copies being printed, as he was embarrassed at his association with the publication, and his own name as publisher did not appear on the poem. [back]

49. Macbeth, Act 5, scene 1, lines 35, 50–51. [back]

50. In Greek drama, the leader of the chorus. [back]

51. 1 Samuel, 17: 49. [back]

52. Unfortunately for Southey, Byron had responded with The Vision of Judgment, a parody of Southey’s A Vision of Judgement (1821), published in The Liberal, 1 (October 1822), 3–39. [back]

53. Ben Jonson (1572–1637; DNB), Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act 4, scene 1, lines 51–53. [back]

54. Southey’s asterisk indicates that these verses should be placed at the asterisked point earlier in the letter. [back]

55. Ferdinand de Geramb (1772–1848), Austrian adventurer and soldier, prolific writer, figure in London Society, prisoner in France 1812–14 and, from 1817, Trappist monk, rising to be procurator-general of the monastery in 1833; Henry Cope (d. 1806), an eccentric who dressed only in green and committed suicide in Brighton on 25 October 1806; the ‘Indian Jugglers’ were a sensation in London in 1813, The Times, 27 July 1813 reporting ‘The exhibition of the Indian Jugglers at No. 87 Pall Mall, has been attended by nearly all the Families of distinction in town; and is becoming extremely popular. The swallowing of the sword, and the novelty of the other performances, have attracted the public attention beyond anything that has appeared in the metropolis for many years past.’ The lead performer was probably Ramo Samee [Ramaswamy] (d. 1850) from Madras, who performed on the British and American stage into the 1840s. [back]

56. An extra in a theatrical performance. [back]

57. Roger North (1651–1734; DNB), The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North, Baron of Guildford, 2 vols (London, 1808), II, pp. 240–241, describing the reaction of Francis North, 1st Baron Guildford (1637–1685; DNB), lawyer, judge and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal 1682–1685. [back]

58. direct ... denial; underlined in pencil. In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 328, Byron had cautioned: ‘I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey’s calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.’ Southey had visited Switzerland in his continental tour of May–August 1817. Byron believed that Southey had subsequently spread rumours that Byron and Shelley engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. Southey had seen the note relating to himself in the Westmorland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle, 29 December 1821. [back]

59. i.e. that Byron had converted to Islam. [back]

60. The monastery of La Trappe in Normandy, where a particularly severe reform of the Cistercian Order had begun in 1664, prescribing hard manual labour, silence and a meagre diet. [back]

61. either: underlined in pencil. [back]

62. In his continental journey of 1817, Southey reached Alpnach in Switzerland on 11 July 1817. There he saw the eight-miles-long ‘Slide of Alpnach’, erected to convey logged spruces from the mountainside to the lake below. The trough, a feat of engineering supported on a timber frame over several ravines, was so angled as to transport the tree trunks from forest to shore in no more than six minutes. [back]

63. The Church of St Ursula at Cologne contains an enormous reliquary in which supposedly lie the bones of this fourth-century British saint. According to legend, she was killed by the Huns, along with her eleven thousand virginal handmaids, while on a pilgrimage to Cologne. Southey visited Cologne on the return leg of his journey in 1817. For a letter in which he mentioned both the ‘Slide of Alpnach’ and St Ursula, see Southey to Herbert Hill, 16 November 1817, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Party Five, Letter 3037. [back]

64. This passage appeared as ‘and the Jungfrau where Lord Byron’s Manfred met the devil and bullied him’, the rest being omitted, in Southey’s ‘Cemeteries and Catacombs of Paris’, Quarterly Review, 21 (April 1819), 359–398 (366). The reference is to Lord Byron’s Manfred: a Dramatic Poem (1817), Act 2, scene 3, where Manfred resists a pact with the Devil. Southey suggests the Devil must have argued as feebly as the Devil’s Advocate (promotor fidei), a canon lawyer in the Catholic Church whose role it was to make the case against a candidate’s canonisation. [back]

65. ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 328. [back]

66. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, Act 5, scene 2, lines 346–348. [back]

67. Michael Drayton (1563–1631; DNB), ‘The Moon-Calf’ (1627), lines 323–324. [back]

68. ‘No one provokes me with impunity’, the motto of the Stuart dynasty from at least 1578. [back]

69. ‘and all of that kind’. [back]

70. George Gordon, Lord Byron, English Bards and Scoth Reviewers (London, 1809), lines 86–118. [back]

71. John Cam Hobhouse (1786–1869; DNB), The Substance of Some Letters Written from Paris During the Last Reign of the Emperor Napoleon; and Addressed Principally to the Right Hon. Lord Byron, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London, 1817), pp. xxiv–xxxvi. Southey believed this attack had exposed him to personal danger when travelling in France on his contintental tour of May–August 1817; see Southey to John Murray [fragment], 21 April 1821, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3674. Southey believed Hobhouse to be a confirmed partisan of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; Emperor of the French, 1804–1814, 1815) and someone who regretted the Allied victory at the Battle of Waterloo (1815). [back]

72. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832; DNB), Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined (London, 1818), p. 26. [back]

73. Hazlitt had been a determined critic of Southey ever since Southey became Poet Laureate in 1813. Here Southey refers to the events in Keswick in the autumn of 1803, when Hazlitt spent some months staying at Greta Hall. According to some accounts, e.g. that of William Wordsworth, recorded in Henry Crabb Robinson’s diary of 15 June 1815 (Edith J. Morley (ed.), Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and their Writers, 3 vols (London, 1938), I, pp. 169–170), Hazlitt was forced to flee the town after assaults on local women. [back]

74. A reference to Phaedrus (fl. 1st century), Fabulae Aesopiae, a Latin collection of fables, which included the story of how a viper is wounded by a file on the floor of a workshop and fruitlessly bites it in return. [back]

75. Probably a reference to Southey’s A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P. (London, 1817), p. 28, which had claimed to brand Smith on the forehead ‘with the name of SLANDERER.’ [back]

76. A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), ‘Preface’, pp. xvii–xxii, where 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. [back]

77. Rawhead and Bloody Bones was the name of a monster used to frighten children. Southey had used this particular phrase before, in Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1808, 1.1 (1810), 23. [back]

78. Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester (1602/1603–1667; DNB), The Century of Inventions (London, 1663), p. 57: ‘A little Ball made in the shape of a Plum or Pear, being dexterously conveyed or forced into a bodies’ mouth, shall presently shoot forth such and so many Bolts of each side and at both ends, as without the owners Key, can neither be opened or filed off, being made of tempered Steel, and as effectually locked as an iron chest.’ [back]

79. An eighteenth-century proverb, referring to the game of lawn bowls, where ‘robbers’ or ‘robs’ were unequal levels in the playing field that could prevent players’ shots reaching their target. [back]

80. Edinburgh Review, 35 (July 1821), 422–436 (422). Southey (correctly) believed the review to be by Francis Jeffrey, given Jeffrey’s previous excoriating comments on Southey in the Review. [back]

81. In Greek drama, the leader of the chorus. [back]

82. George Gordon, Lotd Byron,’Beppo’, Canto 74, line 8, from Beppo: Mazeppa: Ode to Venice: A Fragment: A Spanish Romance: and Sonnet, Translated from Vittorelli (London, 1820), p. 40. [back]

83. Byron had criticised Wordworth’s poetry repeatedly, e.g. in Monthly Literary Recreations, 3 (July 1807), 65–66; English Bards and Scoth Reviewers (London, 1809), lines 119–138; and Don Juan (1819), Canto 1, stanza 90. [back]

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