The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 1: 1791-1797 A Romantic Circles Electronic Edition Southey, Robert, 1774-1843 Lynda Pratt Romantic Circles General Editor, Neil Fraistat General Editor, Steven E. Jones General Editor, Carl Stahmer Technical Editor Laura Mandell 2009-03-15 rce195 letterEEd.26.195 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD March 15, 2009

Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.

Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>

Romantic Circles c/o Professor Neil Fraistat Department of English University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 fraistat@umd.edu

By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions: These texts and images may not be used for any commercial purpose without prior written permission from Romantic Circles. These texts and images may not be re-distributed in any forms other than their current ones.

Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.

National Library of Wales, MS 4811D. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 119–20.Dating note: The letter is dated from the endorsement; the postmark suggests a date before c. 30 January 1797.

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.

All quotation marks and apostrophes have been changed: " for “," for ”, ' for ‘, and ' for ’.

Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.

Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.

Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.

Southey's spelling has not been regularized.

Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.

& has been used for the ampersand sign.

£ has been used for £, the pound sign

All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.

 NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on 2009-02-26 Architecture Artifacts Bibliography Collection Criticism Letters Drama Life Writing Politics Folklore Ephemera Fiction History Leisure Manuscript Reference Works Humor Education Music nonfiction Paratext Perodical Philosphy Photograph Citation Family Life Poetry Religion Review Visual Art Translation Travel Book History Law Southey Letters: Biographies Southey Letters: Places Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan corrections from proofing Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan TEI Encoding
195. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [26 January 1797] Address: [MS torn] W Williams Wynn Esqr/ No 5. Stone Buildings/ Lincolns Inn/ London/ SingleStamped: BATHPostmark: [partial] BJ/ 30/ 97Endorsement: Southey/ Jan 26/ 1797MS: National Library of Wales, MS 4811DPreviously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 119–20.Dating note: The letter is dated from the endorsement; the postmark suggests a date before c. 30 January 1797.

I differ from you concerning La Fayette.Marie-Paul-Joseph-Roch-Gilbert Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (1757–1834), French general and politician. He was an active supporter of the American side in the War of Independence, but took a moderate position during the French Revolution and eventually fled to Austria, where he was imprisoned. on what pretext is he confined but as the prisoner of the allies? he cannot be supposed the prisoner of the Emperor individually. therefore instead of seeing any impropriety in the interference of England, I think for its own honor this country should wash its hands of so infamous a transaction. La Fayette is not amenable to the Emperor for aught he may have done. I am glad to see the French are opening their eyes to his conduct. how did you like Mr Wyndhams speechWilliam Windham (1750–1810; DNB), Secretary of War, 1794–1801, declared in the House of Commons on 16 December 1796 that La Fayette’s imprisonment was not a matter for the British government. upon this subject?

“Mary” is a bad poemSouthey’s ballad ‘Mary’ was published in his Poems (1797). — but it is generally liked. it has been selected as a favorite by Dr Beddoes — a hypercritic of the DarwinErasmus Darwin (1731–1802; DNB). school, who writes bad verses himself, & of course criticises every body all others severely.

Si el sabio no aprueba, malo! Si el necio aplaude, peor!A poem by Tomás de Iriarte (1750–1791), translated by Southey as ‘The Dancing Bear’. Southey’s version of these lines appeared in his Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (London, 1797), p. 551, as ‘Bad is the censure of the wise/ The Blockhead’s praise is worse’.

I begin to think that our opinions upon poetry are not consonant. I am no friend to the harmony with which we have been cloyed since the days of Pope.Alexander Pope (1688–1744; DNB). ChurchillCharles Churchill (1732–1764; DNB). is too rough: but there is a medium, & I am on the side of Bowles versus Reviewers:Negative assessments of the versification and language of William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850; DNB), Hope, An Allegorical Sketch on Recovering Slowly from Sickness (1796) had appeared in the Critical Review, 19 (January 1797), 235–236, and the British Critic, 9 (January 1797), 190–191. who by the by are in general a set of stupid fellows. Coleridge has the Monk to review for the CriticalMatthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818; DNB), author of the controversial The Monk (1796), which Samuel Taylor Coleridge reviewed in the Critical Review, 19 (February 1797), 194–200. — & I am somewhat curious to see how he will handle Lewis. I am engaged when in town to write for the Analytical & should very much like to begin by dissecting Ambrosio. I do not think the Monk can be praised too highly, or blamed too severely.

I wish Bob would insert a review of my writing in the British Critic. there a it is upon a strange poem with still stranger notes, written by a man of brilliant genius & polishd manners who is deranged. it is easy to imply this without doing it in such terms as would wound his feelings. the book is “the Hurricane a Theosophical & Western Eclogue by William Gilbert.” William Gilbert’s The Hurricane had been published in 1796. Gilbert has been called to the bar. he was clerk to the House of Commons at Antigua, & came to England as Counsel on a celebrated cause in the annals of Military Law. I know him & pity him —

where a sight shall Sorrow find Sad as the ruins of the human mind! An adaptation of William Lisle Bowles, Verses on the Benevolent Institution of the Philanthropic Society (Bath, 1790), p. 16. Southey had previously used these lines as an epigraph to the four ‘Botany-Bay Eclogues’ published in his Poems (1797).

My book is done.Southey’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (1797). & I wait only to get your copies hot pressed to dispatch them. I was obliged to cancel two complete sheets — such blunders did they make in my absence.

to night I return to Bristol to visit the only friend I have there. you know that now I do not rashly use the word. we are going to see the skeletons of which you may have seen some account in the papers — you may expect a true & particular account.For Southey’s account of the skeletons found in 1797 at Aveline’s Hole in the Mendip Hills, near Burrington Combe, see his letter to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, 28 January 1797 (Letter 196) and to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 29 January [1797] (Letter 197).

I am about to send a Joan of Arc to St Pierre.Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814), author of Paul et Virginie (1788) and Etudes de la Nature (1784). you know he earnestly recommends the subject — for a drama [MS torn] there is a communication by means of RemnantJames Remnant (fl. 1790s) a bookseller in High Holborn, who specialised in German books. [MS torn]German bookseller to Hambro — Rotterdam — & [MS obscured] Paris — & a present from one literary man to another does not come within the penalties of the Traitrous Correspondence bill.The Traitorous Correspondence Act of 1793 was designed to prevent British citizens from aiding France in any way.

farewell. R Sou[MS torn]