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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 22. Previously published: Lynda Pratt, ‘The Pantisocratic Origins of Robert Southey’s Madoc: an unpublished letter’, Notes and Queries, 244 (1999), 34–39.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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Experience is <said to be> the Mother of Wisdom — I have been married to Experience nearly two years, & if little Wisdom be not come yet the connection will be a barren one. of every event that has occurred to me I think I can behold the optimism, nothing less than the disappointment of my most ardent wishes, & the villainy of the man I most trusted could have mellowed down that enthusiasm of disposition almost tottering on frenzy. nor should I have known what my own mind is capable of, if all its energies had not been put in requisition by the omnipotence of Necessity. when I left you in London my hopes were centred in the wilds of America. I had devoted myself to the establishment of a system which I still believe to be the panacea of all human calamities, & <in the future completion of which> I expect a promised millennium, but in the ardent perception of the end — I glanced rapidly over the means.
for the founders of such a system, fortune ability <energy> & virtue were indispensable. the first we were all deficient in — of the second there was a quantum sufficit — energy was confined to me alone & virtue to me & George Burnett. enough of all this — tis a long story & fitter for a fire side than a sheet of paper. of one part of my history even Grosvenor & Wynn are (for me) ignorant: not that I wanted confidence — but their feelings & principles would have been hurt. I supported myself some months by giving public lectures. under the name of historical indeed — but to all intents political. think Horace of the sudden change! I who had lived twenty years in seclusion — treading in the steps of Thelwall
At present I correspond
Concerning Joan of Arc send me much criticism — Cottle is now interleaving onebefore the battle of Patay. Talbot by a desperate effort to pierce to the royal tent — & there to be slain by Conrade who shall thus die in the presence of Agnes. perhaps too the detaching Burgundy from the English interest by means of the Maid might make a good book & be so interwoven as to appear essential to the main action. the whole part written by Coleridge I shall expunge. of what is to be substituted I have as yet no clear idea. give me your free opinion on these intended alterations, & find as many faults as you can. would it be well to enlarge the poem to twelve books? perhaps not — as the time necessary for that will be better employed on Madoc.
Warburtonx property of the nation — they cultivated it by their common toil — the produce was laid up in common storehouses — & enjoyed by all according to their respective wants. individual property thus annihilated — all motives for vice necessarily ceased. this sytem was established by Mango Capac.
of the features of the piece you will form a better judgment as they shall gradually be formed, than I give can give you of what is yet in embryo. I have not written a line of the poem since I saw you in London, & only one book & a half are written — I would fain finish that poem before I die & then I shall have done enough
Lewis’s MonkNew xxxxxxx publications may perhaps xxxxxxxx xxxxxx such publications may be made the vehicles of much truth & utility — yet have I hitherto seen very few that really are so. in his Anna St Ives Holcroft has succeeded — but his Hugh Trevor is outrageously caricatured.
How is it Horace that you have been <had> like me to combat the feelings of misanthropy? yet if you are more to yourself, a different conviction from that of self-unimportance ought to have resulted.
Know thine own worth! & reverence the lyre!
I too am as an atom in existence — but may it not be that very atom destined to leaven the whole? how does “the shortness of its existence forbid the enlargement of its bulk?”
for me — I will not suffer the calm of domestic life to be ruffled. — & hereafter — if I cannot be a great lawyer or a great poet — I will at least be a very honest one, & speak with sincerity in law prose & in blank verse — determined if I can do no good — at least to do no evil. the latter part of your letter makes me suspect that you think worse of women than of men — from my observations on human character I have drawn a directly opposite conclusion. I find purer & more affection & more constancy — take this last word not in its general confined sense — but in a more extensive signification. were I a heathen I would build a temple & worship the Maid of Orleansxx whose character calumny cannot blacken.
farewell. I hope I am in time for the post. write soon & longly.
th. 1796.