Oh tell it in Askalon tell it in Gath
[1]
And send a description & drawing to Bath
Oer Europes wide realm let the tidings prevail
Let Echo repeat & divulge thro the air
Let Bunbury
[2] paint & engrave a vast store
Let the world see a sight it has neer seen before
The Hibernian giant
[3] must now the day
yield
The monstrous Craws quit to the
Doctor the field
Not one person shall go to see Count Borowlask’
[4]
To see Ouran Outangs no stranger will ask —
All the beasts in the strand may be put up to sale
[5]
Oh tell it in Askalon — tell it in Gath
And send a description & drawing to Bath.
Not such was the wonder America found
When first men & horses disbarkd on their ground
Not such when Æneas that pious old sinner
Saw the harpies fly off with his ready dressd dinner
[6]
Nor when Nebuchadnezzar was turnd out to grass
[7]
When the Barber found Midas had ears of an ass
[8]
Not such when old
Bunbury went sober to bed
Or young
Wynn
washd his hands or combd out his pigs head
Not such when by chance Truth was spoken by
Dodd
Not such when the Flagellant cut up the rod —
[9]
When three armaments rose at one ministers call
When three armaments ended in nothing at all
When the old pair of breeches were smelt — or who’d think
That a parliament breeches should happen to stink —
When first in balloon durst a lunatic sail
As now that the
Doctor has got a pigtail!
Let the newspapers now no more talk of Tippoo
[10]
Of the fine fighting Christian or pugilist Jew.
[11]
Let them publish no more Jemmy Boswells
[12] Scotch wit
Or the faith of Dundas or the wisdom of Pitt
[13]
Or Merrys
[14] bright verse like a bubble of air
Search for substance alas & no substance is there
—
No more let Religion most mildly desire
To see Priestly as well as his house in the fire
[15]
No more Common Sense
[16] with astonishment look
At the see given Horsely for Badcocks
bought book —
[17]
No more let Servility fancy he can
Suppress by a bull like the Pope rights of man.
[18]
No more Common Sense puzzle over that work
The romantic reflections of Knight erring Burke —
[19]
No more Freedom wonder at votes held for sale
Oh had Gray now been living — no more his Bards hair
[20]
Like a meteor had streamd to the wild streaming <troubled> air
The
Doctors example would surely prevail
And Gray draw his Bard with a streaming pig tail!!
Take your pencil dear
Bedford I beg
& I pray
Draw the
Doctor & send without any delay
The bloom of the youth with the firmness of man
Or on horseback or foot or with fine bow & arrow
Equippd like Apollo
[22] to shoot at a sparrow
Oh tell it in Akalon tell it in Gath
And s[MS obscured] scription & drawing to Bath
[23]
so much my dear Bedford for the Drs tail. & now in plain sober prose I am much obliged to you
for your ode which I like very much. but why will you translate? it is a servile
employment & not worthy of you. you want a metre you say for your next.
you know Parnells Fairy tale? [24] but I am the worst person to apply to as all my odes
are irregular except Ignorance [25] which you have. Grays Spring & drownd cat [26] are pretty I
think — but I am not regular myself & detest regularity.
I hope all your friends are well. make my compliments &
thank Mr Reed. [27] remember <me> to
little Joseph. I wrote him a
serious epistle the other day & desir’d an English answer — do make him
write — I fear after all he will sink into an editor like Brunck [28] unless you can find some means to rowse him — is it not
horrible that such a Genius should do nothing but write Latin? if you see Lamb remember me to him &
his Majesty I shall write them soon.
but my time is much taken up. since ten this morning I have never laid the pen
down & it is now past one. this is not idle — but Vincent would say so as all my
writings are English. write soon.
Notes
* Address: G C Bedford Esqr/ Old Palace Yard/ Westminster
Stamped:
BATH
Postmark: BJY/ 9/ 92
Watermark: [Obscured by MS binding;
possibly W S]
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c.
22
Unpublished. BACK
[2] The artist
and caricaturist Henry William Bunbury (1750–1811; DNB), father of Southey’s school friend Charles John
Bunbury. BACK
[3] Charles Byrne (known as O’Brien) (1761–1783; DNB) was 8 feet and 4 inches tall. BACK
[4] Joseph Boruwlaski (styled Count Boruwlaski)
(1739–1837; DNB), travelling performer and
memoirist. He was 3 feet 3 inches tall. BACK
[5] Exeter Change in the Strand, London, where
the public could pay to see a menagerie. BACK
[6] Virgil (70–19 BC), Aeneid, Book 3, lines 219–258. BACK
[7]
Daniel 4: 32
relates how Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon 605–562 BC, received the
prophecy that his kingdom would fall and he would ‘eat grass as
oxen’. BACK
[8] In legend, King Midas was given the ears of
an ass after offending the god Apollo. BACK
[9] Southey’s authorship of the fifth issue of
The Flagellant (29 March 1792), which
claimed flogging was an invention of the devil and parodied the
Athanasian creed, caused a scandal and led ultimately to his expulsion
from Westminster School. BACK
[10] Tippu Sultan (1750–1799), Sultan of Mysore
1782–1799, defeated by the East India Company and killed at the battle
of Seringapatam, 1799. BACK
[11] Daniel Mendoza (1763–1836; DNB), famous English boxer. BACK
[12] James Boswell (1740–1795; DNB), biographer of Samuel Johnson (1709–1784; DNB). BACK
[13] Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville
(1742–1811; DNB), Home Secretary 1791–1794, and
political ally of the Prime Minister, William Pitt, the Younger
(1759–1806; DNB). BACK
[14] Robert Merry
(1755–1798; DNB), poet whose work had been
parodied by Southey in a letter to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [c. 31 May
1792] (see Letter 11). BACK
[15] The house, laboratory and library of the
scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley (1733–1804; DNB) were destroyed during the Birmingham riots, July
1791. BACK
[16] Thomas Paine (1737–1809; DNB), Common Sense (1776), a key tract in support of the
American Revolution. BACK
[17] In 1788,
Samuel Horsley (1733–1806; DNB) was appointed
Bishop of St David’s. The theologian Samuel Badcock (1747–1788; DNB) had not been paid to write for Horsley, but
was reputed to have accepted £500 from Joseph White (c. 1746–1814;
DNB) for writing White’s
Bampton lectures on Christianity and Islam. BACK
[18] Thomas Paine, The Rights of
Man (1791–1792), had been suppressed by the government
earlier in 1792. BACK
[19] Edmund Burke (1729/30–1797; DNB), politician and author of Reflections
Upon the Revolution in France (1790) which had lamented the
passing of the age of chivalry. BACK
[20] Thomas Gray (1716–1771; DNB), ‘The Bard’ (1757). BACK
[21] In Greek
mythology, a handsome young god. BACK
[22] In
Greek mythology, Apollo was, amongst many things, the god of
archery. BACK
[23] These two lines written up the right
hand margin of fol. 2 r. BACK
[24] Thomas
Parnell (1679–1718; DNB), ‘A Fairy Tale, in the
Ancient English Style’ (1722). It is written in sestets of iambic tetrameter
and trimeter. BACK
[25] Southey’s
ode ‘To Ignorance’ was sent to Charles Collins, 16 April 1792 (see Letter
6). BACK
[26] Thomas Gray (1716–1771; DNB), ‘Ode on the Spring’ (1748) and ‘Ode on the Death of a
Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’ (1748). BACK
[27] Isaac
Reed (1742–1807; DNB), literary scholar and editor
of Shakespeare, tried — and failed — to prevent Egerton, the printer of
The Flagellant, from revealing Southey’s name
to the Westminster School authorities. BACK
[28] Richard François Philippe Brunck (1729–1803), a
French classical scholar notorious for cavalier handling of the texts he
edited. BACK
