Dear Wynn
From your long silence I was beginning to be
apprehensive that you might be ill. I now write under an
apprehension of a different nature – lest you should have
sent me a draft which has miscarried – as in the Falmouth
case. the last you gave me was in London, & my finances
are now drained.
Thank you for the extracts. I have not the
books you refer to at hand, & must leave the finish of
the Welsh part [1]
till to be compleated
somewhere else whenever the poem be printed – an event to
which I now look on as my first ononymous labour. It gives
me an awful kind of feeling – for it is now fifteen years
since I first took up the subject – & almost as long
since you first heard of it. so many hours have been devoted
to it – it has occupied so many of my thoughts &
feelings – & when it is once gone forth I shall feel as
if my harvest was got in & the winter hard at hand.
I do not leave this place this winter as you
seem to imagine. indeed if my health stands the spring I
know not where better to pitch my tent for this is a lovely
country. Some six months hence I must perhaps move to see
Madoc thro the press – & in that case shall prefer
Edinburgh to London, being nearer, & because I have
never seen it – & my brother Harry
will be there. My plan is to print the book myself & get
subscriptions – that is names, not publishing this
intention, till I have first felt whether or not it be
likely to succeed. the price shall be a guinea – it shall be
printed in quarto if that price will allow it – if not in a
smaller size. I am puzzled for a device for your arms – if
you were CWWW of Mathrafal [2] – one might
have a view of the place & hang the shield from an old
oak.
God bless you.
R S.
Friday Nov. 11.
Keswick.
I have Bayleys Poems to review. if my gentleman had been
aware of this he would not have struck the first blow.
he quotes heathen Greek upon me & I will have my
revenge in plain English. [3]
I have found a name for our present government in
Milton. [4] –
a Duncery. does it not suit
admirably?
Notes
* Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr. M.P./ Wynnstay/
Wrexham
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Endorsement: Nov
11/ 1803
MS: National Library of Wales, MS
4811D
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Southey had finished a version of Madoc
in 1797-1799 and was revising it for publication. It did
not appear until 1805. BACK
[2] The ancestral home of the Kings and
Princes of Powys. It featured in Madoc,
hence Southey’s lament that it was not connected to
Wynn, to whom the poem was dedicated. BACK
[3] Peter Bayley (1778-1823;
DNB), Poems
(1803). The first poem in the collection, ‘An
Apology for Writing’, lines 46-55 and Note, attacked
Southey’s Joan of Arc (1796) and
(1798), deploying a quotation in Greek from Plato.
Southey contributed a coruscating review of the book
to the Annual Review for 1803, 2
(1804), 546-552. BACK
[4] John
Milton (1608-1674; DNB),
Reason of Church-Government Urg’d Against
Prelaty (London, 1642), p. 40. BACK
