Dear Wynn
Yours has safely reached me. you are I
believe aware that from my situation out of the city, it is
impossible to acknowledge a letter by return of post.
I am heartily glad that your opinion of the
Edinburgh attempt at Thalabacide
differs so little from my own. [1] for tho perhaps our lists
of bad expressions, lines & passages might differ, mine
would probably be the longest. On the whole I am fully
satisfied with the reception the poem has found, such
approbation in private as most gratifies me, & such
public censure as attracts attention, & <will>
makes the subject
remembered when the censure itself is forgotten. has the
Anti-Jacobin yet noticed it? [2] from the manner in which Wordsworths
poems were reviewed there, [3] I should have suspected Gifford of
writing there. I have read his life [4] – & forgiven him all his x sins – even his notes to
the Intercepted Letters. [5] his Juvenal
has been most infamously reviewed in the Critical. [6] by the passages selected there for abuse
I have little doubt that his opinion of poetical language
would agree very nearly with my own.
Coleridge has been lately with me. he is going
abroad for his health. he talks of making a poem upon the
Cids death. [7] I wish
it may be something more than talk.
I have a heavy job on hand – almost all the
Last Year Voyages & Travels to review! [8]
God bless you
R S.
Feb y. 4. 1803.
Notes* Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ Lincolns Inn/
London
Postmarks: FREE/ FEB 4/ 1803; [partial]
BRISTOL/ FEB
Endorsement: Feb. 4 1803
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. 306-307. BACK [1] The review of Thalaba the
Destroyer (1801) by Francis
Jeffrey in Edinburgh Review, 1
(October 1802), 63-83. BACK [2]
Thalaba the Destroyer
(1801) was not reviewed by the
Anti-Jacobin. However, it was
described in passing as a ‘monster of composition’,
Anti-Jacobin Review, 16 (October
1803), 205. BACK [3]
Lyrical Ballads (1800) was given a
brief, favourable review in the
Anti-Jacobin, 5 (April 1800), 434:
describing it as containing ‘genius, taste, elegance,
wit and imagery of the most beautiful kind’ and its
author as possessing ‘a mind at once classic and
accomplished’. The reviewer was William Heath
(1749-1854). BACK [4] William Gifford had published The
Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis (1802),
the ‘Introduction’ to which told his life story in some
detail. BACK [5] Probably Copies of Original
Letters from the Army of General Bonaparte in
Egypt (1798), which had gone into numerous
expanded editions since its first publication by the
loyalist bookseller and propagandist John Wright
(1770/71–1844; DNB). BACK [6]
Critical
Review, 36 (September 1802), 10-17, (October
1802), 188-192 and (November 1802), 316-327. Gifford
replied with An Examination of the Strictures of
the Critical Reviewers on the Translation of
Juvenal (1803), in turn savaged in the
Critical Review, 38 (July 1803),
337-341. BACK [7] Rodrigo
Diaz de Bivar (c. 1040-1099), Castilian nobleman and
military commander. He died peacefully at Valencia, the
city he had conquered. Coleridge did not carry out his
intention to write a poem on this subject. BACK [8]
Annual Review for
1802, 1 (1803), 7-30, 35-43, 45-56, 62-73,
89-101, 207-218, contained Southey’s reviews of the
following travel books: Martin Sauer (fl. 1802),
An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical
Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia … by
Commodore Joseph Billings (1802); Alexander
MacKenzie (1763/4-1820; DNB), A
Narrative, or Journal of Voyages and Travels through
the North-West Continent of America (1802);
Christian August Fischer (1771-1829), Travels in
Spain in 1797 and 1798 (1802); Giuseppe
Acerbi (1773-1846), Travels through Sweden,
Finland and Lapland, to the North Cape
(1802); Maria Guthrie (d. 1800), Tour, Performed
in the Years 1795-6 through the Taurida , or
Crimea (1802); Peter Simon Pallas
(1741-1811), Travels through the Southern
Provinces of the Russian Empire in 1793 and
1794 (1802-1803); Guillaume Antoine Olivier
(1756-1814), Travels in the Ottoman
Empire (1801); and Periodical
Accounts Relative to the Baptist Missionary
Society (1800-1801). BACK |
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