The Devil is undoubtedly in the Doctors & a damned
contradictory Devil he is — I vindicated his honour & gave him all the
merit which the pedagogues arrogate to themselves, & in return he
persecutes me with every hatred malice & all uncharitableness [1] — would it be dangerous to see
Prejudice Stupidity & their Reverencies sitting in judgement upon N
5 [2] in a dream? — at any rate I
will write the vision & lay it by till I am out of the clutches of the
Inquisitors & then a fig for the Sultan & Sophy. [3] you have seen the
sky before a storm overspread with a dreadful lowering calm as a prelude to the
coming tempest — it is like the silence of all these Demoniacs they are forging
some infernal scheme & waiting in anxious silence for the event —
A soul prepard needs no delays
The summons come the Saint obey —
Swift was his flight & short the road
He closd his eyes & saw his God
The flesh rests here till Jesus come
And claim the treasure from the tomb
[4]
I studied this from the monument at Church & planned a paper upon
Epitaps.
you say first Ginger refused to receive F.6 [5] & at the end that he has got them at last — how do you
reconcile this? you must be convinced that Egerton is an infamous fellow
by his saying the F. was discontinued — he has certainly given up my name but is
afraid to have it known & in consequence of his fear in all probability
the manes of Gualbertus [6] will be undisturbd —
you know the line in the next ode
Tho’ gloomy dark thy present doom
[7]
if you approve of the alteration make it
Tho dark & gloomy be thy present doom x
Whiter the thread &c &c —
O Plato Plato what a task for a philosopher! exclaimd Julian [8] as he performd his military exercise awkwardly — o Patience
Patience what a task for Gualbertus say I as I must restrain the pen from
satire. I think I could kill the Reverend Doctor in a fortnight if I might but write at him — “figure
to yourself a war desperate & mighty a war of the passions here
Indignation & conscious merit oppose insensibility — dignity meaness —
han Sensibility <feeling> apathy — figure thee o
Peter [9] & then behold Stupidity — Insolence Despotism
& the Doctor triumphing over sense over modesty
over liberty & over Basil [10] —
the bell rings for dinner & I can only add
that I am sincerely yours
Basil.
pray would not a list of literary martyrs at the shrine of
power make a subject for a paper? Milton Spenser Ovid Wilkes [11] Gualbert[MS torn]
the last not least —
Notes
* Address: Grosvenor Charles
Bedford Esqr/ Brixton Causeway/ Surry
Postmark:
[partial] DAP/ 3
Watermark: Crest with fleur de lys
MS: Bodleian
Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 27
Unpublished.
Dating note: Dating from
partial postmark and internal evidence (reference to issue 7 of The Flagellant, which appeared on 12 April
1792). BACK
[1] The reference is to William Vincent
(1739–1815; DNB), who Southey blamed for his
expulsion from Westminster School. BACK
[2] Southey’s authorship in the fifth
issue of the schoolboy magazine, The Flagellant, 29
March 1792, of an essay 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
[3] Southey is paraphrasing William Congreve
(1670–1729; DNB), The Way of the
World (1700), Act 4, scene 1, line 426. BACK
[4] A widely-used memorial verse. BACK
[5] The sixth issue of The Flagellant, 5 April
1792. BACK
[6] John Gualbert (c.
995–1073), founder of the Vallombrosian order. The pseudonym ‘Gualbertus’
was used by Southey for his controversial attack on flogging as an invention
of the devil in the fifth issue of The Flagellant
(29 March 1792). Perhaps as an attempt to defuse the resulting controversy,
the death of ‘Gualbertus’ was announced in the sixth issue, 5 April
1792. BACK
[7]
The Flagellant, 7 (12 April
1792), 118. BACK
[8] Flavius Claudius Julianus, the Apostate
(331–363; reigned 361–363), Roman emperor. See Edward Gibbon (1737–1794;
DNB), History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, 12 vols (London, 1788), II, p.
162. BACK
[9] Peter the Hermit (d. 1115),
religious fanatic, instrumental in preaching the First Crusade. ‘Peter’ and
‘P.H.’ were pseudonyms used by Southey’s friend Grosvenor Charles
Bedford. BACK
[10] St
Basil (c. 330–379), founder of eastern monasticism. A pseudonym used by
Southey when writing in The Flagellant
(1792). BACK
[11] John Milton (1608–1674; DNB), republican poet, arrested and fined after the
Restoration of Charles II (1630–1685; DNB) in
1660; Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599; DNB), his
house in Ireland was burnt in a rising by the O’Neills in 1598 and he
died in distress in London; Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC–AD 17), exiled
by the Emperor Augustus in AD 8; John Wilkes (1725–1797; DNB), arrested for libel against the government in
1762. BACK
