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 rce775 letterEEd.26.766 Romantic Circles, http://www.rc.umd.edu, University of Maryland College Park, MD August 15, 2011

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MS untraced; text is taken from Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850). Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850), II, pp. 201-204 [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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766. Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor Coleridge [fragment], 14 March 1803 MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850)Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850), II, pp. 201-204 [in part].
Bristol,
March 14. 1803. Dear Coleridge,

It is nearly a week now since Danvers and I returned from Bownham;The Gloucestershire estate of Thomas and Elizabeth Smith. and now the burthen will soon fall off my shoulders, and I shall feel as light as old Christian when he had passed the directing post:An incident in John Bunyan (1628-1688; DNB), The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678-1684). forty guineas’ worth of reviewing has been hard work.Southey had been reviewing for Annual Review for 1802, 1 (1803).           .            .            .            .            .            .            .            .            .            The very unexpected and extraordinary alarm brought by yesterday’s papersRumours that France was preparing to invade Britain. may, in some degree, affect my movements, for it has made Tom write to offer his services; and if the country arm, of course he will be employed. But quid Diabolus The Latin translates as ‘What the Devil’. is all this about? Stuart writes well upon the subject, yet I think he overlooks some circumstances in Bonaparte’sNapoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821, First Consul 1799-1804, Emperor of the French 1804-1814). conduct, which justify some delay in yielding Alexandria and Malta: that report of Sebastiani’sHorace François Bastien Sebastiani de La Porte (1771-1851), French diplomat and soldier. His report, published in Le Moniteur Universal, 30 January 1803, which suggested that France could still re-conquer Egypt, was a major factor in worsening Anglo-French relations. was almost a declaration that France would take Egypt as soon as we left it. You were a clearer-sighted politician than I. If war there must be, the St. DomingoFrance had lost effective control of its colony of Haiti after a series of slave revolts. A fleet and army were despatched in December 1801 to re-conquer the colony. While Haiti was still under French occupation at this time, the French army was being worn down by disease and further revolts that broke out in October 1802. business will have been the cause, though not the pretext, and that rascal will set the poor negroes cutting English throats instead of French ones. It is true, country is of less consequence than colour there, and these black gentlemen cannot be very wrong if the throat be a white one; but it would be vexatious if the followers of ToussaintToussaint L’Ouverture (1743-1803), leader of the slave revolt in Haiti, effective ruler of the colony 1796-1802, and the whole island of Hispaniola 1801-1802; deported to France in 1802 and died 7 April 1803. should be made the tools of Bonaparte.

Meantime, what becomes of your scheme of travelling? If France goes to war, Spain must do the same, even if the loss of Trinidad In the Treaty of Amiens (1802) Spain had been required to cede Trinidad to Britain. did not make them inclined to it. You must not think of the Western Islands or the Canaries; they are prisons from whence it is very difficult to escape, and where you would be cut off from all regular intercourse with England: besides, the Canaries will be hostile ports. In the West Indies you ought not to trust your complexion. When the tower of Siloam fell, it did not give all honest people warning to stand from under. Luke 13: 4 ‘Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?’ How is the climate of Hungary? Your German would carry you there, and help you there till you learnt a Slavonic language; and you might take home a profitable account of a country and a people little known. If it should be too cold a winter residence, you might pass the summer there, and reach Constantinople or the better parts of Asia Minor in the winter. This looks like a tempting scheme on paper, and will be more tempting if you look at the map; but, for all such schemes, a companion is almost necessary.

The Edinburgh Review will not keep its ground. It consists of pamphlets instead of critical accounts. There is the quantity of a three-shilling pamphlet in one article upon the Balance of Power, in which the brimstone-fingered son of oatmeal says that wars now are carried on by the sacrifice of a few useless millions and more useless lives, and by a few sailors fighting harmlessly upon the barren ocean: these are his very words. Edinburgh Review, 2 (January 1803), 345-381; at 348 in a review of Louis Philippe de Segur (1753-1830), Politique de tous les Cabinets de l’Europe, pendant les regnes de Louis XV et de Louis XVI (1801).           .            .            .            .            .            He thinks there can be no harm done unless an army were to come and eat up all the sheep’s trotters in Edinburgh. If they buy many books at Gunville,Eastbury House, in the Dorset village of Tarrant Gunville, was the home of Thomas Wedgwood 1800-1805. let them buy the Engleish metrical romancees published by Ritson;Joseph Ritson (1752-1803; DNB), Ancient Engleish Metrical Romancees (1802). it is, indeed, a treasure of true old poetry: the expense of publication is defrayed by Ellis. Ritson is the oddest, but most honest, of all our antiquarians, and he abuses PercyThomas Percy (1729-1811; DNB), clergyman, writer and antiquarian. and PinkertonJohn Pinkerton (1758-1826; DNB), antiquarian and promoter of many eccentric theories, including the Gothic origins of the Picts. with less mercy than justice. With somewhat more modesty than Mister Pinkerton, as he calls him, he has mended the spelling of our language, and, without the authority of an act of parliament, changed the name of the very country he lives in into Engleland. The beauty of the common stanza will surprise you.

Cowper’s LifeWilliam Hayley (1745-1820; DNB), The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper (1803). Its publisher was Joseph Johnson (1738-1809; DNB). is the most pick-pocket work, for its shape and price, and author and publisher, that ever appeared. It relates very little of the man himself. This sort of delicacy seems quite groundless towards a man who has left no relations or connections who could be hurt by the most explicit biographical detail. His letters are not what one does expect, and yet what one ought to expect, for Cowper was not a strong-minded man even in his best moments. The very few opinions that he gave upon authors are quite ludicrous; he calls Mr. ParkThomas Park (1758/9-1834; DNB), antiquary and bibliographer.

. . . . ‘that comical spark, Who wrote to ask me for a Joan of Arc.’Thomas Park had asked Southey for a copy of Joan of Arc (1796) and, rather reluctantly, Southey had agreed, Southey to Joseph Cottle, 26 April 1797, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part One, Letter 212.

‘One of our best hands’ in poetry.William Cowper (1731-1800; DNB) to Samuel Rose, 30 March 1792, in William Hayley, The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper 2 vols (London, 1803), II, p. 30. Cowper described Thomas Park as ‘one of our first hands’. Poor wretched man! the Methodists among whom he lived made him ten times madder than he could else have been.            .            .            .            .           

God bless you! R. S.