I can call Spirits from the vasty deep – said
Owen Glendower [1] – & Owen
Glendower believed that Sprits would come when he calld
them. [2] – I can invite Grosvenor Bedford –
but to believe that Grosvenor Bedford will come when I
invite him, is a stretch of belief which requires a more
gum-elastical faith than Heaven has allotted me. Now if you
were a dancing bear, & I had a string tied to the ring
in your bearships nose then perhaps there might be a slight
attraction to Bristol. Or if you were a piece of iron &
I a great loadstone. Or if I were a turtle & you an
Alderman [3] – but he will come
said I
[Southey leaves gap to imitate contents of the letter]
so after a longer gap of expectation than you
find in the letter – I eat up the laver. [4]
But Poole will send me some more – so make haste
Grosvenor –
What have I more to say? simply nothing. to
register the rising & fallings of my health –
Fahrenheit, were but to teize you with my own uncomfortable
feelings & disappointed expectations, – & I am
leading a life of idleness. come you & vary it.
I have heard nothing of Carlisles
Icarization. [5] how ended it? was the bird
never hatchd, or did he fall with feeble wings? I have a
great desire to have these experiments succeed – it would be
a fine thing for people with corns Grosvenor – & a man
in the gout might take the air – then in wet weather the
saving of umbrellas by getting above the clouds – & to
catch larks instead of bat-fowling – every man his own hawk
–
Of our Westminster Library [6] I have heard good news – as how it has
played the whale with the Jonah of the city. [7] do you know the man who
told me this – a Mr Beloe [8]
– not one <he> of the
British Critic [9] gang of thick & thin – believers – but
an odd man who talks in a dialect of his own, which puzzled
my me confoundedly.
One of your last letters Grosvenor hinted at
possibilities that gave me hopes or expectations too serious
to be trifled with – as if you had a view of settling. with
all my heart I wish this – I want you anchored – not for
ever floating before every wind with no port in view.
God bless you
Robert Southey
Jany. 28.
1800
Notes
* Address: To/ Grosvenor C. Bedford Esqr / Exchequer / Westminster /
Single
Postmark: B / JAN 29 / 1800
Endorsement:
28 Jany 1800
MS: Bodleian
Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23
Previously published:
John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the
Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London,
1856), I, pp. 90–91. BACK
[1] Owen
Glendower (1350s–c. 1416; DNB), last
independent ruler of Wales. BACK
[2]
Henry IV Part One, Act 3, scene 1,
lines 52–54. BACK
[3] Aldermen
were proverbially fond of turtle soup (provided at
ratepayers’ expense). BACK
[4] Laver is a type of edible
seaweed. Southey did not write a poem on its origin, but
see Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood
Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, p. 21 for his
note on the possibility of a poem on ‘Laver; how it was
ambrosia’. BACK
[5] Anthony Carlisle had a long-standing interest in the
possibility of mechanical flight. He collected data on
flight in birds and mammals and also theorised about and
sketched flying apparatus; see Henry Wilkinson,
‘Aërostation’, Notes and Queries, 2 (14
September 1850), 251. BACK
[6] The London Library Society,
a non-profit making subscription library founded in
1785, merged with the Westminster Library in early
1800. BACK
[7] In the Book of
Jonah, the whale swallowed Jonah, in the
same way that the Westminster Library incorporated the
London Library Society. BACK
[8] The Mr Beloe who gave
Southey this information is unidentified. He was not, as
Southey makes clear, William Beloe (1758–1817;
DNB), clergyman, author and joint
proprietor of the British Critic. BACK
[9] A
conservative periodical that ran between 1793 and
1813. BACK
