Benjamin Constant [1] is
the man whose pamphlet Losh translated [2] in the winter of 1796. I believe him to
possess integrity as well as talents. Riouff whose comments
upon Constants speech I see in the M Post [3] – wrote
the Memoires d’un Detenu. for his own credit he ought to
have been guillottined. Bonapartes reputation is in bad
hands to be defended by such whelps as this man &
Rœderer. [4] Of
Chenier [5] I have no good opinion.
unless I mistake he was a prominent advocate for the unhappy
reelection of the two thirds. you illuminize [6] I perceive in
all your paragraphs. Babœuf [7] was a great man. Mary
Wollstonecraft told me he was the most
extraordinary one she had ever seen. – & in the orgasm
of the Revolution the system of total equalization would
have been wise. it would have rendered any return to common
systems impossible & excited insurrection all over
Europe. But Babœuf did not set sail till the tide had set in
against him. the second Consul (damn their affectation barbarizing
affectation of Roman titles!) Cambaceres, [8] is one of the fairest characters that
has yet appeared, & his choice nomination is creditable to the
government. – but what of all this? Sieyes [9] & the Corsican have trod upon my
Jacobine corns – & I am a thorough English
republican.
Will you convey the herewith book to Mary Hays. she is a
woman perhaps erroneous in all points of first importance,
but a woman of talents, & I believe of a good & warm
heart. I like & esteem her. Lloyd made one
of his mushroom intimacies with her – & you know how it
was broken off. [10]
Mary Hays is one
of those persons whom twenty years hence it will be pleasant
& gratifying to have seen. Moreover Sarah may wish
for some female acquaintance. <I have not mentioned you
in the letter lest you should not like to call with
it.>
I am very idle – so idle that I have not yet
written any poem merely for the sake of telling Stuart at the
end of it that I have done, & that he is welcome to the <my> little work
I have done since
October, to fill up the few gaps before. it is a comfortable
release & my shoulders will
be <are> as much lighter as my purse will
be. Howbeit the seventh Thalaba comes on.
Soon I expect Rickman at
Bristol, a welcome guest. without any common taste, few men
accord better with me. he is a practical man, & of uncommon talents. I
believe he will shortly quit Xchurch &
assume his proper station in society – in which case I lose
all my predilection for Burton – for quite to hermitize is not quite my
wish. Shall we never make a bee hive somewhere?
Six Anthology [11] sheets are printed, & between you
& I, very respectable ones. Cottle threatens
me with a packet from Trauma, of
which he lost the first copies out of his pocket in town. I
have the forlorn hope that there may be some exquisite piece
in its way, like the
never-enough-to-be-renowned-Sonnets. [12]
Trauma is at
Wards or Chards – druggists & chemists in Bread Street
Cheapside No 20 or 21 – for they live next door – & if
you have a mind to shake
<see once more> a very odd & very honest fellow,
by the hand, you will in
some idling <hour> go make an old acquaintances heart
glad by x xxxxxxx shaking
him by the hand.
I have wishd for a letter from you, when the
postman rung every day – but you are employed – & letter
writing is only fit for idlers. tis an employment I do not
over & above esteem, because I am past the age.
To what is the great superiority of Europeans
over Orientalists attributable – & the stationariness or
even retrogression of the Orientalists? Persia for instance
– it cannot be climate – for in that kingdom there all are all temperatures.
religion? but it was the same under Zoroaster as under
Mohammed [13] – neither is Islam
in itself hostile to improvement – at one period the
Mohammedan courts were the most enlightened of Europe.
religion I conceive only so far hostile to the improvement
<advancement> of the species as an establishment is
concerned, & the Mufti no worse than an Archbishop &
certainly not so bad as the Pope.
Perhaps Polygamy is the radical evil. the
degradation of females in consequence of it is obvious, –
& its perpetual excitement is probably the chief cause
of the voluptuousness attributed to climate. hence premature
debility, hence a brutalized nature. hence habits of
domestic despotism, & the inference that what is best in
a family, is best in a state.
In Arabia women are not slaves, & the
Arabs are mostly monogamous. here then are a people under a
burning climate, unenslaved, by no means remarkable for
voluptuousness, & among whom I have never heard of the
vice crime, elsewhere
universal in the East. which is probably another off scyon from the same
root.
The Deserts are not invincible by man. there
are trees & herbs that can grow in the driest sand – the
Acacia is one. these must be his agents – they will create a
soil for other vegetables, & vegetation will perhaps
attract rains – or supply gas for its formation. A curse
upon the war – the French are now destroying our African
settlements [14] – & these settlements would have
been the germs of civilization after the slave Trade should
have been destroyed.
farewell –
yrs truly
Robert Southey.
Thursday 16 Jany. 1800.
Notes
* Address: Mr
Coleridge
MS: Princeton University Library, Robert
H. Taylor Collection, Box 17
Previously published:
Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert
Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965),
I, pp. 214–217. BACK
[1] Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque
(1767–1830), Swiss-born French writer, philosopher and
politician. In 1799–1802 he was effective leader of the
opposition to Napoleon in the Tribunate, a legislative
body under the Constitution of the Year VIII. BACK
[2]
Observations on the Strength of
the Present Government of France, and upon the
Necessity of Rallying Round It. Translated from the
French of Benjamin Constant by James Losh
(1797). BACK
[3] Honore Jean Riouffe
(1764–1813) was an ex-Girondin and author of
Memoires d’un Detenu, Pour Servir a
L’Histoire de la Tyrannie de Robespierre
(1795). He had given an oleaginous speech in praise of
Napoleon in the Tribunate on 6 January 1800 and
criticised Benjamin Constant. The report of these
proceedings in the Morning Post does not
seem to have survived, but see Morning
Chronicle, 13 January 1800. BACK
[4] Pierre
Louis Roederer (1754–1835), economist, historian,
politician and key organiser of the Brumaire coup of
November 1799 that brought Napoleon to power. BACK
[5] Marie-Joseph Chenier (1764–1811), poet, playwright and
politician. He was a member of the Tribunate and critic
of Napoleon 1799–1802. The Constitution of Year III
(1795) which created the Directory had stipulated that
two-thirds of the first legislative bodies elected under
the new constitution must have been members of the
Convention of 1792–5. BACK
[6] To promote ideas associated
with the Illuminati, an 18th-century secret society,
especially deism and republicanism. Southey is referring
to the articles Coleridge was contributing to the
Morning Post. BACK
[7] Francois Noel Baboeuf (1764–1797) French
revolutionary and early socialist thinker; executed 27
May 1797 after the failure of his ‘Conspiracy of the
Equals’. BACK
[8] Jean Jacques Regis de
Cambaceres (1753–1824) a lawyer and consistent moderate
during the French Revolution; Second Consul
1799–1804. BACK
[9] Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes
(1748–1836) French revolutionary politician; member of
the five-man Directory May–November 1799 and key
organiser of the Brumaire coup, November 1799;
Provisional Consul November–December 1799; outmanoeuvred
by Napoleon. BACK
[10] In
1799, Lloyd had been forced to apologise to Hays for
spreading a malicious and untrue story that she was in
love with him; see Southey to Edith Southey, 15 May
1799, Letter 409 BACK
[12] James Jennings’s sonnets
‘Metaphor’ and ‘Personification’, Annual
Anthology (Bristol, 1799), pp. 148–149.
Jennings published ‘Designed for a Tablet over the Grave
of my Little Boy’ and ‘Written at Tenbury’ in
Annual Anthology (Bristol, 1800), pp.
287, 289–290, under the pseudonym ‘Edmund
Everard’. BACK
[13] Zoroaster (11th/10th century BC) Prophet and founder of
Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion in Persia until
the Muslim conquest in the 7th century; Muhammad
(570–632), Prophet of Islam. BACK
[14] Sierra Leone had been founded in 1787 as a home for
freed slaves. French ships sacked Sierra Leone’s
capital, Freetown, in September 1794 and in 1798–9, four
of six British ships sent to the colony were captured by
the French. BACK
