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 rce3 letterEEd.26.3 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD March 15, 2009

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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 27. Not previously published.

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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3. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [c. 3 April 1792] 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. 27Unpublished.Dating note: Dating from partial postmark and internal evidence (reference to issue 7 of The Flagellant, which appeared on 12 April 1792).

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 The reference is to William Vincent (1739–1815; DNB), who Southey blamed for his expulsion from Westminster School. — would it be dangerous to see Prejudice Stupidity & their Reverencies sitting in judgement upon N 5Southey’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. 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.Southey is paraphrasing William Congreve (1670–1729; DNB), The Way of the World (1700), Act 4, scene 1, line 426. 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 tombA widely-used memorial verse.

I studied this from the monument at Church & planned a paper upon Epitaps.

you say first Ginger refused to receive F.6The sixth issue of The Flagellant, 5 April 1792. & 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 GualbertusJohn 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. will be undisturbd —

you know the line in the next ode

Tho’ gloomy dark thy present doom The Flagellant, 7 (12 April 1792), 118.

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 JulianFlavius 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. 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 PeterPeter 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. & then behold Stupidity — Insolence Despotism & the Doctor triumphing over sense over modesty over liberty & over Basil St Basil (c. 330–379), founder of eastern monasticism. A pseudonym used by Southey when writing in The Flagellant (1792). —

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 WilkesJohn 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. Gualbert[MS torn]

the last not least —