Monday. Dec 17. 98.
My dear Wynn
I have been about & about writing these
many days, but my daily walk takes up so inconvenient a
portion of my day that I find the rest short enough for its
calls. you do not know the comfort of slipping eight miles
thro the mire for the mere purpose of exercise with no other
end or object & in all weathers. since my return I have
been very unwell & still am indisposed enough to be very
punctual in following advice.
The Lyrical Ballads are by Coleridge & Wordsworth. [1] The Night[MS torn], the
Dungeon, the Foster Mothers Tale, & the long ballad of
the Old [MS torn]er are all that were written by Coleridge. the ballad I think nonsense, the
nightingale tolerable. the other two are pieces of his
tragedy. for Wordsworths poems the last pleases me best, [2] & tho
the Idiot boy is sadly dilated it is very well done. I
reviewed them two months ago. [3]
I mentioned to Cottle what
Lewis [4] wished about my
Ballads, for the copyright is his. he referred it entirely
to me, but seemed convinced that to let them be printed
elsewhere would injure the sale materially. I thought so
too, so he must not have the Old Woman. [5] in my next I will send
you the wood cut, [6] the Devil is done as well as if the Pious
Painter [7]
had made the drawing from the life. I have altered the trepidation stanza, it is better tho
not good, “And the choristers song that late was so strong,
Grew a quaver of consternation. They did not try Benvenuto
Cellinis’ [8]
dæmonifuge, a recipe of in
which Martin Luther seemd to have confidence, for I find it
recorded in the Colloquia or Table Talk of that great
Reformer, (a book which by the by was translated in
consequence of a miracle). [9] that he was of opinion
the best way to drive away the Devil (& grievously was
Martin Luther beset by the Devil) was to make fun of him
& mob him, & annoy him with jokes, one of which
jokes Martin Luther has left for the benefit of posterity —
Oh ho Devil! I have bewrayed my breeches — dost thou not
smell me? [10]
Did you ever see the book? it shows him to be
either as great as a fanatic
or rogue as the Romish Saints whom he so execrates. however
there are some good things in it. among the rest an g[MS
torn] of certain strange children called Killcrops whom I
shall [MS torn] day balladize perhaps. [11] A Killcrop is the child of
the Devil, either laid as a changeling in the cradle, or
begotten by the Nix which is Lewis’s Water King, [12] only the Nix does
not kill young women. but a Killcrop resembles other
children in every thing except its appetite — for he sucks
his mother dry & all the nurses that comes to him & moreover eats
as much as two threshers. Martin Luther saw one, a boy of
twelve years old, & so confident was the Old Reformer
that he was a Killcrop, that he wrote to the Prince of
Anhalt whose subject the boy was, to say that if he was
Prince in that country, he would have the Killcrop thrown
into the river. but as the Prince did not take the hint,
Martin Luther desired the ostensible parents to pray to God
to remove the Devil, & they did so, & so xx in two years the Killcrop
died.
Sundry other things doth Martin Luther relate
concerning the Devil, pleasant to read & profitable to
know that we <may> beware of his cunning.
He has a story of a Succubus like your origin
of the Mortimer. [13] I have planned a very
ugly ballad upon the known [MS torn] that the Devil walks in
dead bodies. [14]
God bless you.
yrs affectionately
Robert Southey.
Notes* Address: To/ C. W. Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ 5 Stone Buildings/ Lincolns
Inn/ London
Stamped: BRISTOL
Postmarks: FREE/
DE/ 18/ 98; B/ DE/ 18/ 98
Endorsements: Dec 17/ 98;
Mr Wynn
MS: 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. 176–178. BACK [1]
Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other
Poems (1798). BACK [2] ‘Lines Written a Few
Miles Above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of
the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798’. BACK [3]
Critical Review, 24
(October 1798), 232–234. BACK [4] Matthew
Gregory Lewis (1775–1818; DNB) was
probably collecting ballads for his Tales of
Wonder (1801). BACK [5] ‘A Ballad, Shewing How an
Old Woman Rode Double, and Who Rode Before Her’,
published in Poems, 2 vols (Bristol,
1799), II, pp. [143]–160. BACK [6] A
woodcut illustrating ‘A Ballad, Shewing How an Old Woman
Rode Double, and Who Rode Before Her’ appeared in
Poems (Bristol, 1799), p.
[143]. BACK [7] Southey’s
‘The Pious Painter: A Catholic Story’ was published in
the Morning Post, 2 November 1798. In the
poem, the painter makes a picture of the Devil. BACK [8] Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), Italian artist. BACK [9] Martin Luther (1483–1546), German
religious reformer. His Dris Martini Lutheri
Colloquia Mensalia: or, Dr. Martin Luther’s Divine
Discourses at his Table … Translated by Henrie
Bell (1652) was published posthumously. The
story of the miraculous survival of the book and its
translation is recorded in ‘Captain Henrie Bell’s
Narrative’, unpaginated. BACK [10]
Dris Martini Lutheri Colloquia
Mensalia (London, 1652), p. 381. BACK [11]
Dris Martini Lutheri
Colloquia Mensalia (London, 1652), p. 387.
Joseph Cottle published a ballad on this subject in
Southey’s Annual Anthology (Bristol,
1799), pp. 151–160. BACK [12] Matthew Gregory Lewis
(1775–1818: DNB), ‘The Water King. A
Danish Ballad’ in The Monk, 3 vols
(London, 1796), III, pp. 17–20. BACK [13]
Dris Martini Lutheri Colloquia
Mensalia (London, 1652), pp. 386–387. Wynn’s
tale of ‘the origin of the Mortimer’ may have been a
legend that the Mortimer family, powerful landowners on
the English-Welsh Borders in the medieval era, were
descended from a succubus. BACK [14] Southey
does not seem to have written this ballad. BACK |
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