The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part 2: 1798-1803 A Romantic Circles Electronic Edition Southey, Robert, 1774-1843 Lynda Pratt Romantic Circles General Editor, Neil Fraistat General Editor, Steven E. Jones Technical Editor Laura Mandell 2011-08-15 rce440 letterEEd.26.431 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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Huntington Library, HM 4823 . Previously published: J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), I, pp. 291–294 [in part].

These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer

For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.

A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.

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 NINES categories for Genre and Material Form at http://www.performantsoftware.com/nines_wiki/index.php/Submitting_RDF#.3Cnines:genre.3E on 2009-02-26 Architecture Artifacts Bibliography Collection Criticism Letters Drama Life Writing Politics Folklore Ephemera Fiction History Leisure Manuscript Reference Works Humor Education Music nonfiction Paratext Perodical Philosphy Photograph Citation Family Life Poetry Religion Review Visual Art Translation Travel Book History Law Southey Letters: Biographies Southey Letters: Places Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming after latest corrections Laura Mandell XSLT Transforming Averill Buchanan corrections from proofing Averill Buchanan Part II added
431. Robert Southey to William Taylor, [started before and continued on] 1 September [1799] Address: To/ Mr William Taylor Junr./ Surry Street./ Norwich./ SingleStamped: [partial] TERPostmark: [partial] A/ SEPMS: Huntington Library, HM 4823 Previously published: J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), I, pp. 291–294 [in part].
Stowey.
My dear friend

Since the first of your unanswered lettersThis letter is in answer to Taylor’s two letters of 23 June and 16 August 1799; see J.W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), I, pp. 283–291. reached me I have had the many employments of quitting one house – looking for another – & tramping over the country superadded to my ordinary round of business. what you said of Burnetts matrimonial attachment made me smile – but I knew what George thought of the Lady, & how manfully he had withstood all the first approaches & the battery of jellies, & blancmange when the axxxxlx sciatica had possession of his hip & she wanted possession of his heart.

By this you must have received the Annual Anthology Annual Anthology (1799). – unless Cottle has been more remiss than usual. you will find all your pieces there except the Sapphics.Taylor’s sapphics, ‘The Rovers Apology’ (sent to Southey on 25 March 1799; see J.W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), I, p. 270) was omitted from Annual Anthology (1799). But ‘A Topographical Ode’, pp. 1–9; ‘Dirge for him who will deserve it’, pp. 36–37; ‘To the Burnie Bee’, pp. 64–66; ‘To the Rainbow’, p. 201; ‘Lines written in the 16th Century’, pp. 205–206; ‘Parodied in the 18th Century’, pp. 206–207; and ‘The Seas’, pp. 233–236 were all published, under a variety of pseudonyms. these I meant to have returned you with some proffered smoothifications, but found no leisure – so they lie over. my own pieces you will probably discover under the anagrams Erthusyo & Theoderit, sundry alphabetical signatures & no signatures at all.‘Erthusyo’ is ‘R Southey’ and ‘Theoderit’ is ‘The Editor’. Southey also used the initials ‘R.S.Y.’, ‘R.’, ‘R.S.’ and ‘S.’ to sign some of his contributions to the Annual Anthology (1799). Others were left unsigned. the Volume has cork enough to float its lead. it wants a piece or two of more respectable length – & there is a lack of epigrams altogether. both these deficiencies will be guarded against in the next volume which I hope to have ready for publication in January. there is a want also of lyrical poems – your Topographical Ode‘Topographical Ode’, Annual Anthology (Bristol, 1799), pp. 1–9. stands alone. excepting that & The Seas‘The Seas’, Annual Anthology (Bristol, 1799), pp. 233–236. & some of my own Inscriptions, Annual Anthology (Bristol, 1799), pp. 67–76 contained seven inscriptions by Southey. x the serious pieces are very inferiour to those of a lighter cast. should you have recognized my hand in the amorous effusions of Abel Shufflebottom? Annual Anthology (Bristol, 1799), pp. 218–226 contained four ‘Love Elegies’ ascribed to Abel Shufflebottom.

The Dom DanielAn early version of Thalaba the Destroyer (1801); see Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 181–188. I have begun, & run the first heat of my course. a book & half are done & in the irregular blank verse which I have ever had a hankering after since I first fed upon Dr Sayers Sketches.Frank Sayers, Dramatic Sketches of the Ancient Northern Mythology (1790). I shall defend my choice with arguments unanswerable, to my conception. if I succeed in the remainder of the poem equally well, the metre will I think become popular, & involve me in the guilt of begetting numberless imitators.

Davy is an extraordinary young man & much may be expected from him. you will see by his poems (they are signed D.) Annual Anthology (Bristol, 1799), ‘The Sons of Genius’, pp. 93–99; ‘The Song of Pleasure’, pp. 120–125; ‘Ode to St Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall’, pp. 172–176; ‘The Tempest’, pp. 179–180. In addition, Davy signed his own name to ‘Extract from an unfinished Poem on Mounts-Bay’, pp. 281–286. germs of genius, & powers likely to lead their possessor to eminence however directed. they were written when he was very young – indeed he is now but just one & twenty. You have probably heard from Burnett an account of his most wonderful discovery, the wonder working gazeous oxyd of azoteNitrous oxide, or ‘laughing gas’. – for it is not yet christened & the old name must be used. I am affected by a smaller quantity than any person who has yet taken it. it produces first in me an involuntary & idiotic laughter, highly pleasurable & ridiculous. immediately a warmth & a fullness flows from my head thro every limb & my finger & toe-tips tingle & my teeth seemd to vibrate with delight. the last symptom is a feeling of strength & an impulse to exert every muscle. for the remainder of the day it left me with increased hilarity & with my hearing taste & smell certainly more acute. I conceive this gas to be the atmosphere of Mohammeds Paradise.According to Qu’ran 47: 15 the air of the Islamic Paradise is perfumed.

Sept. 1. Ottery St Mary. Devonshire.

This letter has lain unfinished while I have been rambling over this country. a country which appears to me to have received more encomiums than it deserves. after coming from the North of Somersetshire every thing appears flat & uninteresting. I am about to house myself at Exeter for a few weeks, till our habitation in Hampshire be vacant. there is a literary society at ExeterThe Exeter Reading Society, or Society of Gentlemen at Exeter, founded in 1792. Its members published Essays by a Society of Gentlemen at Exeter (1796). – D’Israeli – Hole – & Dr DownmansIsaac D’Israeli (1766–1848; DNB); Richard Hole (1746–1803; DNB); and Hugh Downman (1740–1809; DNB). The latter’s Poems to Thespia (1781) contain examples of his sonnets. who writes sonnets in blank verse. but they are a sort of monsters in literature, all furiously ministerial, even to intolerance of those who think otherwise – so the door is shut upon me, & I have no inclination to knock – even tho it should then be opened. with my own employment & the vicinity of Coleridge the want of society is not to be felt. – I was to tell you from Coleridge that a statue to the memory of Burger has been lately erected in some tea-gardens at Gottingen – badly designed & executed & in a strange place, but it shows his popularity.Gottfried August Burger (1748–1794), German poet. Coleridge described in detail the statue in his memory, representing the ‘Genius of Germany weeping over an urn’, in a letter to Taylor of 25 January 1800 (E.L. Griggs (ed.), Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 vols (Oxford, 1956–1971), I, p. 565). if this be worth mentioning in your necrology & not too late I will get for <you> the description of the monument which has escaped my memory. Coleridge is about to produce the Life of LessingGotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781). Coleridge did not finish his ‘Life of Lessing’. a subject which will comprehend the Literary history of Germany.

I am sorry you have abdicated the office of literary Director,Taylor had finished writing reviews for the Monthly Review. for the Republic has need of your services. a good Reviewer is the rarest of writers, for unless he have leisure & inclination the ablest hands scrawl thro it sadly. I have a sort of selfish sorrow too – for Coleridge & I mean to march an army of Hexameters into the country, & it will be unfortunate to have all the strong places in the hands of our enemies. we have chosen the story of MohammedColeridge and Southey’s plan for a jointly-written poem in hexameters on Muhammad (570–632), the Prophet of Islam, did not make much progress; see Common-Place Book, ed. John Wood Warter, 4 series (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 18–20. A fragment by Southey was published posthumously in Oliver Newman: a New-England Tale (London, 1845), pp. 113–116; and 14 lines by Coleridge in The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, 3 vols (London, 1834), II, p. 68. – N.B. no reflection on Klopstock.Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803) devoted 25 years to writing his epic poem, Messias (1773), about the life of Christ. the subject is very fine & we have squeezed it into a sufficient oneness. but remember this is a Secret Expedition till the Manifesto accompany the troops. <we must bully like Generals – but argue somewhat better.>

Gather me at your leisure a few flowers for the Anthology. Annual Anthology (1800).

God bless you – yrs truly Robert Southey.

direct at Mr Tuckers – Fore. Street Hill. Exeter.Possibly the retired stationer and bookseller Richard Tucker (fl. 1779–1784), whose business had occupied premises on Fore-Street, Exeter. I shall remain here till Michaelmas.Southey could not take possession of his rented house at Burton until 29 September 1799.