615. Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor
Coleridge [fragment], 16
October 1801
*
Dublin,
Oct. 16. 1801.
Dear Coleridge,
The map of Ireland is a beautiful map –
mountains, and lakes, and rivers; which I hope one day to
visit with you. St. Patrick’s Purgatory [1]
and the Giant’s Causeway lie in the same corner. Where
‘Mole, that mountain hoar,’ is, I cannot find, though I have
hunted the name in every distortion of possible
orthography. [2] A journey in Ireland has, also, the
great advantage of enabling us to study savage life. I shall
be able to get letters of introduction, which, as draughts
for food and shelter in a country where whiskey-houses are
scarce, will be invaluable. This is in the distance: about
the present, all I know has been just written to Edith; and the
sum of it is, that I am all alone by myself in a great city.
From Lamb’s letter to Rickman I learn
that he means to print his play, which is the lukewarm
John, [3] whose
plan is as obnoxious to Rickman as it was
to you and me; and that he has been writing for the
Albion, [4] and now writes for the Morning Chronicle,
where more than two thirds of his materials are
superciliously rejected. [5]
Stuart would
use him more kindly. Godwin, having had a second tragedy rejected, has
filched a story from one of De Foe’s novels for a
third, and begged hints of Lamb. [6]
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Last evening we talked of Davy. Rickman also
fears for him; something he thinks he has (and excusably,
surely) been hurt by the attentions of the great: a worse
fault is that vice of metaphysicians – that habit of
translating right and wrong into a jargon which confounds
them; which allows everything, and justifies everything. I
am afraid, and it makes me very melancholy when I think of
it, that Davy
never will be to me the being that he has been. I have a
trick of thinking too well of those I love, better than they
generally deserve, and better than my cold and containing
manners ever let them know: the foibles of a friend always
endear him, if they have coexisted with my knowledge of him;
but the pain is, to see beauty grow deformed – to trace
disease from the first infection. These scientific men are
indeed, the victims of science; they sacrifice to it their
own feelings, and virtues, and happiness.
Odd and ill-suited moralisings, Coleridge, for a man who has left the lakes and
the mountains to come to Dublin with Mr. Worldly Wisdom! [7] But my moral education,
thank God, is pretty well completed. The world and I are
only about to be acquainted. I have outgrown the age for
forming friendships.
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God bless you!
R. Southey.
Notes* MS: MS untraced; text is taken from
Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and
Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols
(London, 1849-1850)
Previously published: Charles
Cuthbert Southey (ed.) Life and Correspondence of
Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850),
II, pp. 171-173. BACK [1] An ancient pilgrim site on
Station Island in Lough Derg, County Donegal. Southey’s
poem, ‘St Patrick’s Purgatory’, appeared in the
Morning Post, 8 May 1798. The Giant’s
Causeway is further east, on the Antrim coast. BACK [2] Edmund Spenser (1552-1599; DNB), ‘Colin
Clout’s Come Home Again’ (1595), line 57. It is not
surprising that Southey could not locate this mountain
as the name ‘Mole’ was an invention of Spenser’s to
describe the Ballyhoura and Galty Hills near his home in
county Cork. BACK [3] Charles
Lamb, John Woodvill (1802). BACK [4] The
short-lived London newspaper the Albion and
Evening Advertiser, edited by John Fenwick
(d. 1820). Lamb claimed to have contributed to its
demise by publishing a scurrilous epigram on Charles
(‘Citizen’) Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope (1753-1816;
DNB); see Charles Lamb to Thomas
Manning, [? 22 August 1801], The Collected
Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb, ed.
E.W. Marrs, 3 vols (Ithaca and London, 1975-1978), II,
p. 13. BACK [5] Southey had misremembered. Lamb had told
Rickman that ‘More than 3.4ths’ of what he sent to the
London newspaper the Morning Chronicle
was rejected; see Charles Lamb to John Rickman, 16
September 1801, The Collected Letters of Charles
and Mary Anne Lamb, ed. E.W. Marrs, 3 vols
(Ithaca and London, 1975-1978), II, p. 21. BACK [6] William Godwin’s play
Antonio (1800) had been so badly
received that he could not find a producer for his next
one, Abbas, King of Persia (1801). His
third novel was Fleetwood (1805), but
Southey is referring to Godwin’s Faulkener, a
Tragedy in Prose (1807), which was based on
a story in the second edition of Daniel Defoe (c.
1659-1731; DNB), Roxana
(1745). For Lamb’s advice see his letter to Godwin, 16
September 1801, The Collected Letters of Charles
and Mary Anne Lamb, ed. E.W. Marrs, 3 vols
(1975-1978), II, pp. 17-20. BACK [7] John Bunyan (1628-1688;
DNB), The Pilgrim’s
Progress (1678-84). Mr. Worldly Wiseman,
from the City of Carnal Policy, meets Christian as he
emerges from the Slough of Despond and directs him to
the house of Legality. BACK |
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