My dear Wynn
I hoped to have seen you instead of writing
again – but in fact I am not well enough to venture upon the
journey, & it is better to err on the prudent side than
to venture too much. the season is against me – I want the
cold bath – I am relaxed & incapable of much exertion.
if you were the physicians wig instead of the judges, you
should have a detail of all my physical feelings.
this is very unfortunate. month after month
passes away & I am already at an age when a man ought to
be settle travelling on in
his road. I want to be so settled as to look on to no
removal.
however to a pleasanter subject. I thought
you knew that that all my
lesser ballads were reserved for the Anthology or
Gleanings. [1] The x Cross Roads which I repeated to you & a
story of a Sailor conscience haunted for flogging a negro to
death a circumstance which occurred here, make all the
ballads besides those you know in the volume. [2] On these things I bestow
not much correction. on a great work like Madoc I should
think ten years labour well bestowed. [3]
Are you satisfied with the plan of Queen
Mary? [4] & do you think it better than my old
Banditti [5] – Pedro the Just [6] – or the Pythoness? [7] I like it & think I have thought of it
long enough to begin.
To the pious painter, the story of which I
found in the Pia Hilaria, there is a sequel in Le Grands
book which must be balladized in a second part – how the
Devil was even with him. [8] Cornelius Agrippa [9] is bad enough – a better far is what
perhaps you have not seen – The Well of St Keyne. [10]
the Saints are very kind to me. St
Isidro – (not Isidore) has furnished me
with a legend which will work up into a somewhat terrific
& grotesque. [11] I loppd off the other
botch & merely made it The Parson & the
Undertaker. [12] It might perhaps have been The
Undertaker that beast & my brother the Priest. but the
Poet is like the Law & de minimis [13] it takes no notice.
God bless you. you are I suppose like us knee
deep in snow – but ours is clean snow – & I can study a
Lapland description.
yrs truly
R Southey.
Monday 4 Feby.
Notes* Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr M.P./ 5. Stone Buildings/ Lincolns
Inn/ London
Postmarks: BRISTOL/ FEB 4 99; [partial]
FE/ 99
Endorsements: Feby. 4/
1799; 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. 180–181. BACK [1] The
first volume of the Annual Anthology
appeared in 1799. BACK [2] ‘The Cross Roads’ and ‘The
Sailor, who had Served in the Slave-Trade’,
Poems, 2 vols (Bristol, 1799), II,
pp. [89]–102, [103]–114. BACK [3] Southey had first thought of
writing about Madoc in 1789. His poem was not published
until 1805. BACK [4] Southey’s
proposed tragedy, set during the reign of Mary I
(1516–1558; reigned 1553–1558; DNB); see
Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood
Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp.
190–192. BACK [5] A plan
or idea for a work (probably a play) which has not
survived. It was possibly modelled on Johann Christoph
Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), Die
Raüber (1781). BACK [6] Another unexecuted or
lost work. Pedro I (1320–1367; King of Portugal,
1357–1367); his lover Inez de Castile (1325–1355) was
murdered on the orders of his father. When he became
King he personally killed two of the murderers, while
one more escaped. He was alleged to have arranged for
Inez’s corpse to be crowned Queen. For Southey’s plan
see Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood
Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp.
189–190. BACK [7] The Pythia was the title
given to the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, who was
famous for her prophecies, uttered under the influence
of vapours rising from the earth. Southey planned – but
did not execute – a drama based on an episode from
Biblioteke, 16.26, about the
abduction of the Pythia by Echecrates the Thessalian;
see Southey to John May, 3 December 1798, Letter
358. BACK [8] The first part of ‘The Pious Painter’ was
published anonymously in the Morning
Post, 2 November 1798; the second appeared in
the same newspaper on 26 July 1799. Southey’s sources
were Angelinus Gazaeus (1568–1653), Pia
Hilaria (London, 1657), pp. 31–36 and Pierre
Jean Baptiste Le Grand d’Aussy (1737–1800),
Fabliaux, 4 vols (Paris, 1779–1781),
IV, p. 51. BACK [9] ‘A Ballad of a Young Man
that would Read Unlawful Books and How he was Punished’,
Annual Anthology (Bristol, 1799), pp.
198–200. BACK [10] Southey’s ballad, first published anonymously in the
Morning Post, 3 December 1798. BACK [11] Probably ‘The Wedding Night’, Morning
Post, 18 December 1799. St Isidore of
Seville (c. 560–636) was a well-known Spanish
saint. BACK [12] Published as ‘The Surgeon’s Warning’ in
Poems, 2 vols (Bristol, 1799), II,
pp. [161]–173. BACK [13] The Latin translates as ‘on
trivialities’. BACK |
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