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 rce774 letterEEd.26.765 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester, Robert Southey Papers A.S727. Not previously published.

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
765. Robert Southey to John May, 9 March 1803 Address: To/ John May Esqr/ Richmond Green/ Surry/ SingleStamped: BRISTOLPostmarks: [partial] B / MAR/ 1803; 1803/ o’ClockMS: Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester, Robert Southey Papers A.S727Unpublished. My dear friend

You have indeed had a trying season – but I trust it is not now prematurely done when I thank God that it has ended no worse. the loss of a childJohn May’s second son, Richard, was born on 11 February 1803, but died ten days later. is at all times a serious loss, but the earlier it happens the less is the calamity. it is th in your case rather a subtraction from future, than from present happiness. it is better to see the bud wither, than to behold the blossom cankered, or the fruit blighted. You have had so much to apprehend that the real loss is comparatively little. Your letter did not quite say that Mrs MaySusanna Frances Livius (1767-1830). was out of danger – & in such cases one looks with some reliance for the regular formula of words. your next will I trust be to this effect – & do not let it be long before it arrives.

I have no connection with the Literary JournalThe Literary Journal (1803-1806) began publication on 6 January 1803 as a sixteen-page weekly magazine and was edited by James Mill (1773-1836; DNB). John May had possibly identified the ‘R.S.’, author of an article on ‘Manners’, Literary Journal, 1 (6 January 1803), 15-20, as Southey, who had used this signature elsewhere. whereof you speak. the Prospectus pleased me & I bought the first number which did not. they set out by the grave information that man is an animal who requires food & clothing Literary Journal, 1 (6 January 1803), [1]. – that same wise sentence has been so often xxxxx <repeated> in print, that the repetition now offends me almost as much as the inanity of the thing itself. In that the notice they take of poetry Literary Journal, 1 (6 January 1803), 13, criticised ‘a tendency to corruption in our taste, which obviously appears in an affected novelty of versification and sentiment, which seems daily to gain ground’. in that number they make a sort of declaration of war against me – which they are welcome to do & with perfect safety – I being a very Quaker in literature. At present I am prest hard to supply the new Annual Review, Annual Review for 1802, 1 (1803). which will probably be more honestly done than any of the other critical journals. William Taylor is doing something for this also. You will find me close to my text, very conscientious in good or evil censure, always analytical, & to the best of my judgement selecting the most characteristic, or most important, or most interesting passages of every book under xx examination. this is profitable labour, but not pleasant for one capable of & aspiring to better things. When I am dead, & my works estimated with no personal reference, it will be regretted that I should ever have been obliged to review dull books & write dull verses for a newspaper. yet I would not exchange such journey-work for any professional employment.

I shall not defend myself versus the Scotch ReviewThe review of Thalaba the Destroyer (1801) by Francis Jeffrey in Edinburgh Review, 1 (October, 1802), 63-83. before any court but you – but in that court I shall cast the plaintiff. in every specific accusation against the plan of Thalaba the critic is wrong. Is he less so in his general attack of my system of poetry? This is to be considered.

There certainly is a design in the most part of my poems to force into notice the situation of the poor, & to represent them as the victims of the present state of society. the object is to make my readers think & feel – as for the old Antijacobine cry that it is to make the poor rebellious that is too absurd to require answer. the Poor do not read books of poetry upon fine paper, nor are the poems addressed to their capacities of understanding. the charge which the Scotch critic makes applies to me far more than to Coleridge & Wordsworth – for it is I who in the language of Mr CanningGeorge Canning (1770-1827; DNB), Foreign Secretary 1807-1809, 1822-1827, Prime Minister 1827. A leading contributor to the Anti-Jacobin 1797-1798. & Mr CobbetWilliam Cobbett (1763-1835; DNB), editor of the Weekly Political Register 1802-1835 and at this time a Tory. am κατ εξοχηνThe Greek translates as ‘Par excellence’. the Jacobine poet. but you possess every poem which I have every published. except some of those verses which appeared without a name in the Morning Post & were never collected into the Anthology Annual Anthology (1799) and (1800). because they were too worthless – & very few indeed of these <have> any political or moral tendency, if they had I should have reprinted them. I will particularize my most marked poems – there is the first Botany Bay Eclogue, the Soldiers Wife & the Widow – in the first volume. Poems (Bristol, 1797), pp. 77-82; 145-146; 147-148. in the second the Complaints of the Poor – the Victory Poems, 2 vols (Bristol, 1799), II, pp. 81-84; 174-176. which poem has been printed at Carlisle on a halfpenny sheet & sold about the North by the hawkers – & this I consider the highest & most valuable mark of approbation that any of my poems have ever yet received) & that English Eclogue called the Funeral, one of my very best productions.‘The Funeral’, Poems, 2 vols (Bristol, 1799), II, pp. 202-205. in the Anthology the Wedding. Annual Anthology (London, 1800), pp. 119-126. these have all one object in view. now have I in any of these exaggerated human misery? or ascribed it to wrong causes? or attempted to palliate the crimes of the poor by the plea of necessity? a doctrine which I do not hold.

So much for the life & soul of the poetry. as for the body & garb of it I & the Scotchmen differ about that also – tho in their last number they assert all that I want them to admit, in their Review of Boyds Dante.Henry Boyd (1748/9-1832; DNB), The Divina Commedia, Consisting of the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, Translated into English Verse (1802); reviewed in the Edinburgh Review, 2 (January 1803), 307-314. that poetry is distinct from metre, & may & does exist without it. it follows that prose & poetry are not antithetic terms, but instead prose & metre. But the majority of Critics are for passing an act of uniformity for all metrical language. & my system is to “suit the word to the action.” for dialogue – for the language <expression> of natural feeling, natural language must be appropriate, & it should be as little distorted from the natural sequence as possible. When the Poet himself speaks it is different – my palace-work – my jewelry – my paradise – my music – if these have not a gala-dress of language, I know not in what PotosiCity in South America famous for the wealth of its silver mines. the riches of language are to be found.

The single phrases to which they object are not worth defending. I could point out fifty worse instances, for they have overlooked the real defects & blotches in the poem, & some of the passages to which they object are in themselves very good.

I have taken him food for charity And never a word he spake. But yet so ghastly he lookd That I have awakend at night – Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Book 8, lines 12-15; censured by Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850; DNB) in Edinburgh Review, 1 (October, 1802), 69.

xxx this passage they have selected for censure – & here they have left off without adding the line which finishes the sentence & gives it all its force – “With the dream of his [MS torn] <ghastly eyes”> Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), Book 8, line 16. this is dishonest criticism – wilfully dishonest – it is as if some atheistical anatomist were to examine a leg distinct from the body, & abuse the mechanism of the disjointed lim[MS torn]

My Uncle has been confined with a cold & cough since Xmas – to which, he said in his last letter, he saw no end. This has made me anxious about him – let me hear if you receive any accounts of him. Edith is better than she has for some time been. your goddaughter in excellent health, spirits & temper. a better tempered child I never saw – & her spirits are almost too high – she is all life & motion.

I hope soon to hear of Mrs Mays more certain & more speedy amendment. possibly to see her in April – for it is possible that I may be obliged to visit London Libraries before I can write finish the preface to AmadisSouthey’s translation of Amadis of Gaul (1803). – but this I shall endeavour to avoid.

God bless you – your affectionate friend Robert Southey.

I also read the Iris.Norwich newspaper which William Taylor had begun publishing on 5 February 1803.

March 9. 1803.