792. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [5 June 1803] ⁠* 

I have just gone thro the Scottish Border Ballads. [1]  Walter Scott himself is a man of great talent & genius – but wherever he patches an old Poem it is always with new bricks. Of the modern Ballads his own fragment [2]  is the only good one & that is very good. I am sorry to see Leyden’s [3]  so good for little. Sir Agilthorn [4]  is flat, foolish, Matthewish, Gregoryish, Lewisish. I have been obliged to coin vituperative adjectives on purpose, the language not having terms enough of adequate abuse. I suppose the word Flodden-field entitled it to a place here. but the scene might as well have been laid in El-dorado or Tothill Fields, or the country of Prester John [5]  for any thing like costume which it possesses. It is odd enough that almost every passage which Scott has quoted from Froissart [6]  should be among the extracts which I had made.

In all these modern ballads there is a modernism of thoughts & language-turns, to me very perceptible & very unpleasant – the more so for its mixture with modern words – polished steel & rusty iron! this is the case in all Scotts Ballads. His Eve of S John [7]  is a better Ballad in story than any of mine but it has this fault. Elmsley once asked me to versify that or the Glenfinlas – to try the difference of style – but I declined it as waste labour & an invidious task. Mathew G Lewis Esq M.P. sins more grievously in this way. he is not enough versed in old English to avoid it – Scott & Leyden are, & ought to have written more purely. I think if you will look at Q Urraca [8]  you will perceive that without being a Canto from our old ballads it has quite the ballad character of language.

Scott it seems adopts the same system of metre with me, & varies his tune in the same stanza from iambic to anapæstic ad-libitum. [9]  In spite of all the trouble that has been taken to torture Chaucer into heroic metre I have no doubt whatever that he wrote upon this system, common to all the balladwriters. Coleridge agrees with me upon this. the proof is that read him thus & he becomes every where harmonious but expletive syllables en’s & y’s & e’s only make him halt upon ten xxxx lame toes. I am now daily drinking at that pure Well of English undefiled. to get historical manners – & to learn English & poetry.

This volume of the Border Songs is more amusing for its prefaces & notes than its poetry. the Ballads themselves were written in a very unfavourable age & country. the costume less picturesque than chivalry, the manners more barbarous. I shall be very glad to see the Sir Tristram which Scott is editing. [10]  the old Cornish Kt has been one of my favourite heroes for fifteen years. xxxx Those Romances that Ritson published [11]  are fine studies for a poet. this I am afraid will have more Scotch in it than will be pleasant. I never read Scotch Poetry without rejoicing that we have not Welch-English into the bargain & a written brogue.

Tell me by return of post where your Bucellas [12]  is to be directed – & I will write for it by this next packet. Rickman tells me there will be no army sent to Portugal – that it is understood the French may over-run it at pleasure, & that then we lay open Brasil & Spanish America. If indeed the Prince of Brasil [13]  could be persuaded to go over there & fix the seat of his government in a colony fifty times as large & five hundred fold more valuable than the mother country, England would have a trade opened to it far more than equivalent to the loss of the Portugueze & Spanish ports. but if he remains under the protection of France & is compelled to take a part against England, any expedition to Brasil must be for mere plunder. conquest is quite impossible.

Most likely I shall xxx go up to town in about a week or ten days.

God bless you.

R S.