My dear Wynn
You give me very great pleasure by saying you
would gladly assist me in the legal department [1] if you thought
yourself equal to the task – for that ‘if’ will be no insurmountable obstacle (do you
remember poor Bunbury & your theme upon Pride?)
Old law is no uninteresting study – it is too
closely connected with the history of manners. I shall go
thro the laws of Ina [2] (if as I
think, they have been printed) & make a compendium of
them. it will be a good preliminary study to the Codigo
Gothico [3]
which I have been so long expecting from Madrid – the
Partidas, [4] &
the various codes that have sprung from the same Gothic
root, the root of all that is valuable in European policy.
to Hoel Dha [5] I must
do the same propter Madocum [6] – & I rather expect some interesting
result from a comparison of Celtic with Gothic
jurisprudence. you know that, maugre Madoc, my prejudices
are all Gothic, & that I bless the Romans first &
the Saxons for redeeming the Britons from the original sin
of carrotty hair – red freckled faces more broad than long,
& brains of the same flat character.
Now as for being equal to the task – I should
feel myself quite equal to stating out of Glanvil, [7] Fleta [8] &c what
was the law in their time – but to know what has been lopt
away & what is overgrown by young shoots, that is beyond
me. but it certainly is in your power. Crede quod habeas et
habes. [9] if you will read them as a lawyer, I shall,
in pure book gluttony, look thro them for whatever is not
law– & if any thing should escape us, it will hardly
pass thro Turners sieve who will go thro them in his plan
of going on with the history of England.
I thought you would like the plan of the
Bibliotheca. it has made me quite happy in the future tense,
& given a present value to all stray reading. all the
dormant capital of knowledge in my cerebrum & cerebellum
is about to be made productive. & my old stall gleanings
seem to be sprouting out like potatoe-rinds, into an
uncalculated return.
What became of the library of the Chandos
family? [10]
Warton [11] had heard that it
contained a copy of the Antiocheis of Joseph of Exeter [12] –
which poem – if that copy do not exist – is lost. I would
give one of my ears to recover it.
——
Your sisters [13] correct me well. I meant the
song to the old recitative sort of tune – like the song of
Gregory Gubbins in the Battle of Hexham [14]
God bless you
RS.
Notes* Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ To R Southey/ Worcester/
Worcester/ Bristol
Postmark: BRISTOL/ JUL 25
1803
Endorsement: July 23/ 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. 320-321 [where it is dated [23 July
1803]].
Dating note: Dated from the postmark and
endorsement. BACK [1] Southey had asked Wynn to
assist him with the ‘Bibliotheca Britannica’, a plan for
a chronological account of literature written in
Britain, which the prospective publishers Longman and
Rees abandoned in August 1803. BACK [2] Ine, King of Wessex 688-726. He issued a code of laws
in 694. This code was first translated in Aylett Sammes
(1636-1679; DNB), Britannia
Antiqua Illustrata (1676), no. 2405 in the
sale catalogue of Southey’s library. BACK [3] The
Visigothic Code of laws, promulgated in 642 and 654 and
translated into Spanish in the 13th century. BACK [4] The Siete Partidas (1265),
a centrally important code of Spanish law. BACK [5] William
Wotton (1666-1727; DNB),
Cyfreithjeu Hywel Dda (1730), used in
the notes to Madoc (1805). BACK [6] The Latin translates as ‘For the sake of
Madoc’. BACK [7] Ranulf de Glanville
(c. 1120-1190; DNB), reputed author of
Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni
Anglie (c. 1187-1189), a manual on royal
judicial procedure. BACK [8] Fleta (fl. 1290-1300;
DNB), name used to designate the author
of a Latin treatise on common law. BACK [9] The Latin
translates as ‘Believe that you have it, and you have
it’. BACK [10] The
Dukedom of Chandos became extinct in 1789, but much of
the family library had been sold in 1747. BACK [11] Thomas
Warton (1728-1790), The History of English
Poetry, 4 vols (London, 1774-1781), I, pp.
150-154, deals with the Antiocheis but
does not mention its location. BACK [12] Joseph of Exeter (fl.
1180-1194; DNB),
Antiocheis, an epic poem on the Third
Crusade, of which only a fragment survives. BACK [13] Wynn’s
sisters Charlotte (d. 1819), Henrietta (d. 1854), and
Frances (d. 1857). BACK [14] Gubbins was a character in
George Colman, the younger (1762-1836;
DNB), The Battle of
Hexham (1789). Southey probably means
Gubbins’s song ‘What’s a valiant hero?’; see
Songs, Choruses, &c. in The Battle of
Hexham; or, Days of Old (London, 1789), pp.
5-7. BACK |
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