4026. Robert Southey to John May, 3 June 1823

Address: To/ John May Esq^re-/ Richmond/ Surrey
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmarks: E/ 6 JU 6/ 1823; 10 FNoon 10/ JU. 6/ 1823
Seal: red wax; design illegible
Endorsement: N^o. 234./ 1822/ Robert Southey/ Keswick 3^d June/ rec^d. 7^th d^o./ ans^d. 25^th July
Watermark: F/ 1821
MS: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: Charles Ramos (ed.), The Letters of Robert Southey to John May: 1797–1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), pp. 201–203.

Keswick. 3. June. 1823

My dear friend

I thought that by this time my intended journey would have been compleated, & that I should have returned to enjoy the summer here, where of all places in England, the lakes & mountains render it most enjoyable. And so it would have been if my Book of the Church had been comprized in one volume, according to the original design.

⁽¹⁾

I have never dilated, or even dwelt upon parts that are either uninteresting or unimportant; but the subject led me into more details than I had anticipated. I came to events, – especially in the age of the Martyrs,

⁽²⁾

where I found – in the worthy old Fuller’s words, that all compendium would be dispendium thereof:

⁽³⁾

– & so, as it was better to spoil my summer than my book, here I am still at my desk, – the printer is nearly half thro the second volume, & I am far advanced in the chapter relating to Elizabeths reign, better pleased with the work than with the delay which it occasions in my movements.

⁽⁴⁾

My attention has been for some time devoted to this one object more entirely than is comformable either to my inclination or usual habits. But as the extent of the work has been doubled, & as my ways & means depend mainly upon it this becomes unavoidable. The terms with Murray must of course be re-considered, & I believe I shall recur to the original ones, that I have half the profits of this first edition, & two thirds of any succeeding ones.

⁽⁵⁾

Perhaps it would have been more productive, (relatively so at least) in one volume. Still I think it a more promising adventure than any which I have yet sent abroad; – for I know no view of our Ecclesiastical history which is in so succinct, continuous & readable a form. – One inconvenience arises, & for this I must have recourse to you. My brother Tom’s ways & means for his Canadian expedition are dependent upon me, & were to have arisen from this book.

⁽⁶⁾

But this delay compels me to request you before the end of this month to pay into the hands of his agent 100£ – the Agents name is Hincksman, & he lives in Great Russell Street – the number I do not know, but he succeeded to Peytons business.

⁽⁷⁾

Will you have the goodness to call upon him & tell him this in case any draft from Tom should arrive in the meantime.

I think I have a fair prospect of getting in advance of the world during the next few years, if it please God to continue me in health & ability. Just now I am, according to Harrys advice, fighting strenuously against my annual catarrh, which has made its regular attack, & has hitherto been kept with some success at bay. Today I had a consultation with Edmondson, & the result is that on the day when I succeed in suspending the cold, I am to fortify the system with bark.

⁽⁸⁾

This is to be tried tomorrow, & with good hope of subduing a very troublesome enemy.

M^rs. Coleridge & her daughter are now at Bristol, from hence they will commence their journey home in a few days.

I hear nothing of Gifford, except a report from my Uncle that he is very ill: that he is incapacitated the delay of the Review seems to prove. Bedford seems to know little of him, – probably his new office allows him little leisure to see his friends. But it will never do for the Review thus to have its wheels clogged; & Murray will soon feel this in the failure of his quarterly returns. Heartily do I wish that John Coleridge were at the helm, & right gladly should I begin to communicate with him concerning it.

The French will be more lucky than they deserve, if after having marched into Spain, they can find a decent excuse for marching out again.

⁽⁹⁾

Abisballe

⁽¹⁰⁾

is not a man of good character. Of the persons now upon the stage I should suppose Morillo

⁽¹¹⁾

to be the one of most ability, Eroles

⁽¹²⁾

the one of the highest honour. If they can suppress the Exaltados

⁽¹³⁾

it will so far be well: – but where are the revenues for any government to be found, the colonies being lost, & property, industry, & subordination destroyed? I see no prospect of any thing but barbarism for that unhappy country. It will be overrun by banditti till a government arises strong enough to kept all quiet by military force.

Westalls view of Cintra

⁽¹⁴⁾

seems to be taken from the road some hundred yards below my Uncle’s house. – I have had some interesting papers from Trant,

⁽¹⁵⁾

– & that which Harry sent me from the Portugueze Ambassador

⁽¹⁶⁾

will be of considerable value, as far as it goes. The second volume

⁽¹⁷⁾

will not be long in the press, whence once it gets there, & Murray is promised the books for which I have so long been waiting, but he gets them thro the American Consul at Madrid,

⁽¹⁸⁾

& by the circuitous course of a merchant vessel. If my poor correspondent Abella had been living, I would have had them over in the dispatches.

I know nothing now of what is going on in Portugal, for the Correio Braziliense

⁽¹⁹⁾

has ceased to be published regularly. The Editor

⁽²⁰⁾

has succeeded in bringing on a revolution, – & is of course heartily out of humour with the course which it is taking. The aspects however are not so dark as they were. The old abuses cannot be restored, & there is some hope that more of a mixed government may be formed than the Liberales xxx would desire.

⁽²¹⁾

Without order & justice any government, whatever be its form, & by whatever name it may be called, is a detestable tyranny.

All here desire their kindest remembrances. You have quite won your god-daughters heart. Cuthbert goes on well but likes his play better than his book: – all in good time. Let me hear of you & yours, & remember me most kindly to them. I thought Johnny

⁽²²⁾

would have had John Wordsworth

⁽²³⁾

for a fellow collegian, but he has been placed at New College. God bless you my dear friend.

I have a brief letter on the stocks.

⁽²⁴⁾

Yrs affectionately RS.

Notes

1. Southey’s Book of the Church (1824).[back]

2. Book of the Church, 2 vols (London, 1824), II, pp. 141–251, dealing with the martyrdom of Protestants under Mary I (1516–1558; Queen of England 1553–1558; DNB).[back]

3. ‘For it is all so excellent, that compendium would be dispendium thereof’, Thomas Fuller (1608–1661; DNB), Abel Redevivus; or, the Dead yet Speaking. The Lives and Deaths of the Modern Divines (London, 1651), p. 18, no. 1133 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. Southey had used this quotation from Fuller before in his review of The Works of the Reverend William Huntington, S. S. Minister of the Gospel, at Providence Chapel, Gray’s Inn Lane, Completed to the Close of the Year 1806 (1811), Quarterly Review, 24 (January 1821), 483, published 6 April 1821.[back]

4. Book of the Church, 2 vols (London, 1824), II, pp. 252–312, dealing with the reign of Elizabeth I (1533–1603; Queen of England 1558–1603; DNB).[back]

5. The Book of the Church (1824) went through three editions in 1824 and reached a ninth edition in 1885.[back]

6. Tom Southey was considering emigrating to Canada but decided against doing so after visiting the country.[back]

7. John Hinxman (1759–1844) was a navy agent, whose business was based at 72 Great Russell Street. William Grenfell Peyton (b. 1784) had gone bankrupt in 1822.[back]

8. Willow bark, a common remedy for colds and headaches. [back]

9. French forces had invaded Spain on 7 April 1823 to suppress the liberal regime in the country.[back]

10. Enrique O’Donnell, Count of Abisbal (1769–1834), a Spanish general and member of the Council of Regency 1812–1813. He reluctantly served the liberal regime in 1820–1823, despite his absolutist convictions.[back]

11. Pablo Morillo y Morillo, Count of Cartagena and Marquess of La Puerta (1775–1837), a Spanish general. He had fought the revolutionaries in Venezuela 1814–1820, before returning to Spain to support the liberal regime.[back]

12. Joaquin Ibanez Cuevas y de Valonga, Baron de Eroles (1784–1825), a Spanish commander during the Peninsular War. He opposed the liberal regime and supported the French invasion of 1823.[back]

13. The extreme radicals in Spain.[back]

14. Herbert Hill’s summer home at Sintra, where Southey had lived June–October 1800. This engraving was included in A Series of Views of Spain and Portugal, to Illustrate Mr. Southey’s History of the Peninsular War; Drawn on Stone by W. Westall, A.R.A., from Sketches by General Hawker, Mr. Locker, Mr. Heaphy, &c. Part I, containing Eight Views, illustrating Vol. I (1823).[back]

15. Brigadier-General Nicholas Trant (1769–1839; DNB), an Irish soldier who commanded Portuguese troops and militia in the Peninsular War 1808–1813.[back]

16. Cristóvão Pedro de Morais Sarmento, 1st Viscount of Torre de Moncorvo (1788–1851), a Portuguese diplomat. He served in the Portuguese Embassy in London for nearly forty years and was briefly chargé d’affaires in 1822. His brother, Alexandre Tomás de Morais Sarmento, 1st Viscount of Banho (1786–1840), was also a diplomat. Both men had served as volunteers in a Portuguese force raised in Coimbra which had defended the Vouga river against a French army in 1809 and Alexandre Sarmento had written an account of the campaign which had been forwarded to Southey. Southey needed this material for his History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

17. The second volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832). It did not appear until 1827.[back]

18. Hugh Nelson (1768–1836), an American politician from Virginia and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to Spain 1823–1825. Southey had read John Mitford’s ‘On Spanish Literature, with some Account of Francisco de Olivarez’, New Monthly Magazine, 10 (October 1818), 221–223. It mentioned Olivarez’s Account of the War in Catalonia (1815) in four volumes, published at Seville, 1815; Anecdotes of Chiefs Employed in the Catalan War (1816); and Memoirs of the Spanish Monarchy to the Abdication of Charles 4 & the Usurpation of Joseph Bonaparte (1816). However, none of these works seem to exist. Southey had already asked Murray to try and acquire them; see Southey to John Murray: 10 July 1820, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3509; 27 February 1821, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3641; 11 June 1821, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3693; and 27 July 1822, Letter 3877 and 1 November [1822], Letter 3911. Murray had now written to Spain to try and obtain these books for Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

19. Correio Braziliense (1808–1822), a liberal Portuguese journal published in London, no. 3203 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.[back]

20. Hippolito José da Costa (1774–1823), editor of Correio Braziliense (1808–1822).[back]

21. Following an army revolt in 1820, a Cortes had been elected in 1820 and John VI (1767–1826; King of Portugal 1816–1826) had accepted a new Constitution in October 1822.[back]

22. May’s son, John May (1802–1879). He had entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1823.[back]

23. John Wordsworth entered New College, Oxford, on 21 March 1823 and graduated BA (1826), MA (1830).[back]

24. Southey to John May, 20 August 1823–27 May 1824, Letter 4055.[back]

TEI Link

TEI

Volume Editor(s)

Lynda Pratt

Ian Packer

4026. Robert Southey to John May, 3 June 1823

4026. Robert Southey to John May, 3 June 1823

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer