3975. Robert Southey to Bernard Barton, 6 March 1823

MS untraced; text is taken from Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965)
Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), II, pp. 241–242.

My dear Sir

I can at last thank you for your Verses on the death of the miserable Shelley,

⁽¹⁾

which did not reach me till yesterday evening, whereby you will perceive that my communication with the booksellers is not very frequent. But this parcel has been a fortnight longer than it should have been, on the way, owing I suppose to the accumulation of packages in the warehouse during the continuance of snow. The panegyrical Elegy

⁽²⁾

which called forth your wiser verses was sent me also by its author, whom I know not, but who probably writes under a nom de guerre. Whether the sending it was intended as a compliment, or as an insult, is to me a matter of perfect indifference. Shelleys is a flagitious history, and by far the worst tragedy in real life which has ever fallen within my knowledge. As I told him myself in the last communication I had with him, it is truly the Atheist’s Tragedy.

⁽³⁾

It is indeed a strange piece of ill-fortune that an act of robbery should have drawn upon you so heavy a burthen of unprofitable and ungrateful employment: and but a poor satisfaction that when this unusual imposition is over the regular task work will appear almost like a holyday.

⁽⁴⁾

Meantime however your name is making its way, and I think I might venture to predict, that if you were to try a volume of tales in verse, you would find a lucrative adventure.

Peradventure I may see you in the course of spring, as I have the intention of passing a day with Thomas Clarkson on the way between Norwich and London.

⁽⁵⁾

Farewell, and believe me Yours truly

Robert Southey.

When you see Major Moor have the goodness to present my remembrances to him, and say that I received his friendly letter yesterday, and with it the Ms. Volume.

⁽⁶⁾

Notes

1. Barton’s Verses on the Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1822).[back]

2. John Chalk Claris (c. 1797–1860; DNB) [Arthur Brooke], Elegy on the Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1822).[back]

3. Southey to Shelley, 12 October 1820, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3538, in which Southey invoked Cyril Tourneur (d. 1626; DNB), The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611). The eponymous ‘Atheist’ kills himself at the end of the play.[back]

4. Barton was a clerk in Messrs Alexander’s Bank in Woodbridge. The Ipswich branch of the bank sustained a major loss on 11 September 1822 when a parcel of banknotes, to the value of over £30,000, which it had received from their London bankers, was stolen from the mail coach at Colchester. The bank offered a reward of £5,000 for information leading to the recovery of the notes but ended up having to negotiate their return with the thieves.[back]

5. Barton and Southey did indeed meet at Thomas Clarkson’s house in 1824.[back]

6. Possibly letters and documents collected by Sir Augustus Simon Frazer (1776–1835; DNB), a career soldier, who had seen service in the Peninsular campaign as a highly effective senior commander of horse artillery. He was Moor’s brother-in-law, and Moor had offered these papers to help with Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

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3975. Robert Southey to Bernard Barton, 6 March 1823

3975. Robert Southey to Bernard Barton, 6 March 1823

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer