Jan 8 1800
My dear Wynn
One of the Wedgewoods
tells me he has just obtained a passport from government to
go to the South of France on account of his health. You will
not wonder that the intelligence gave me a wish to xxx do the same. There is an
after difficulty supposing this surmounted & that xx is the French passport –
but Wedgewood
is personally acquainted with some of the Chemists who are
now transmuted into Senators, [1]
& expects no difficulty here, & he offers to assist
me thro the same channel if I can procure the passport from
our own government. Whether there be any impropriety in
asking it, you will judge. Madeira would be a prison – &
the tedium of confinement in it counteract the climate. I
should think Tuscany safe – Sicily is a better climate – but
the people are turbulent & I have no wish to witness
the xxxxx Italian
revolutions. if France be inaccessible I must think of
Lisbon, or more probably of the West Indies. One of the
healthy Islands – were it not for the voyage, would offer a
strong inducement, in the opportunity of seeing tropical
scenery.
I continue the same. quite recovered from the
effects of the nervous fever, but with the pain at in my side & the same
annihilating feelings – for such they seem – recurring at
night. by day I have spirits – but at night ether only
slightly relieves the symptoms instead of removing them. the mental stimulus of travelling will
be useful to me.
Maraccis Refutation of the Koran has much
amused me. he collects all the Mohammedan miracles. some, he
says, are lies. some may be true, but then the Devil wrought
them. one which happened to please him, he strongly
suspected to be true of some Xtian Saint & stolen by the
Musselmen. [2] After all this the
honest Father gives a specimen of what miracles ought to be
believed – St Janarius’s blood is one –
& the Chapel of Loretto another. [3] – One of the Mohammedan stories is very
fine. [4] A husband taking
leave of his wife, commended the child with whom she was
pregnant, to God. he departed – & the wife died. but on
his return after an absence of some months it was told him
that a light appeared nightly on his wifes grave. he went to
it – the tomb opened, & his wife rose in her
grave-clothes & presented to him her living child –
telling him – that had he commended both to God, both would
have been preserved. this said she returned to death – &
the grave closed.
Of Trieste I have rather a favourable account
from Duppa who
has twice been there – & passd a month there in a severe
winter. Lombardy he recommends, & in case of peace,
& particularly Padua or Vicenza. At Trieste I could
judge in safety of the practicability of getting into Italy.
as for banditti, as I should steer clear of Calabria &
the Tyrol there is not much to apprehend – & my way
would lie wholly in Germany from Hambro to the Adriatic.
God bless you.
yrs affectionately
Robert Southey
Jany. 8.
1800
Notes* MS: National Library of Wales, MS
4811D
Unpublished. BACK [1] The French Constitution of the Year VIII,
approved after the Brumaire coup in November 1799,
provided for a Senate, which included some eminent
French scientists, some of whom had worked in the field
of chemistry, including Claud-Louis Berthollet
(1748–1822), Jean Darcet (1725–1801), Gaspard Monge
(1746–1818) and Paul Simon Laplace (1749–1827). BACK [2] Lodovico Maracci (1612–1700), Alcorani Textus
Universus ex Correctioribus Arabum Exemplaribus
Summa Fide, atque Pulcherrimis Charecteribus
Descriptus, ... in Latinum Translatus, 2
vols (Padua, 1698), II, part 2, pp. 76–77 and appendix;
used as a note in Thalaba the Destroyer
(1801), Book 11, line 114. BACK [3] The blood of St Januarius, patron saint
of Naples, is kept in two ampoules and is said to
liquefy three times a year at festivals. The Holy House
at Loretto is believed, in Catholic tradition, to be the
house that Jesus grew up in at Nazareth and that was
transported by angels to Italy in the 13th
century. BACK [4] This story
is related to Southey’s plans for an unexecuted poem on
‘The babe born in the grave’, Common-Place
Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series
(London, 1849–1850), IV, p. 274. BACK |
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