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Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 212–215.
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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Yesterday I received your note inclosing the specimen of your poem. I have perused that specimen, but my advice cannot be comprized in a few words.
A Literary as well as a medical opinion Mr Elliott must needs be blindly given unless the age, &c of the person
who requires it is known. When I advised Henry White to publish a second volume of
poems, it was because he had fixed his heart upon a university education, & this seemed to be a feasible method of raising
funds for that end, – his particular circumstances rendering that prudent which would otherwise have been very much the reverse.
For poetry is not a marketable article, unless there be something strange or peculiar to give it a fashion; & in his case what
money might properly have been raised would in almost every instance, have been considered rather as given to the author, than
paid for his book. Your poem would not find purchasers, except in the circle of your own friends; out of that circle not twenty
copies would be sold, – <I believe> probably not half that number.
You are probably a young man Sir, – & it is plain from this specimen that you possess more than one of those
xxx powers which form the poet, & <those> in a far more than ordinary degree. Whether your plans of life
are such as to promise leisure for that attention (almost it might be said that devotement) without which no man can ever become a
great poet, – you yourself must know. If they should, you will in a very few years have outgrown the poem, & will
<would> then be sorry to see it in print, irrecoverably given to the public, because you would feel it to be an inadequate
proof of your own talents. If on the other hand you consider poetry as merely an amusement or ornament of youth, to be laid aside
in riper years for the ordinary pursuits of the world, with still less indulgence will you then xxx regard the printed
volume, for you will reckon it among the follies of which you are ashamed. In either case it is best not to publish.
It is very far from my wish to discourage or depress you. There is great promise in this specimen, – it has all the
faults which I should wish to see in the writings of a young poet, as the surest indications that he has that in him which will
enable him to become a good one. But no young man can possibly write a good narrative poem, tho I believe he cannot by any
xxxx <other means> so effectually improve himself as by making the attempt. I myself published one at the age
of six & twenty,bo we have both been right in our feelings,
yet to feel against ones own country can only be right upon great & transitory occasions, – & none but our contemporaries
can feel with us; – none but those who remember the struggle at the time & took their part in it. And you are more
unfortunate than I was, – for America was acting at this time unnaturally towards England, & every reader will [MS torn] this,
& his sense of what the Americans are now will make him fancy that you paint falsely in describing them as they were
then.they would be produced upon your friends. They who are so only in name will derive a provoking
pleasure from seeing you laughed at & abused; they who love you will feel more pain than you yourself, because you will &
must have a higher confidence in yourself, & a stronger conviction of injustice than they can be supposed to possess.
The sum of my advice is, – do not publish this poem, – but if you can without grievous imprudence afford to write poetry continue so to do, because hereafter you will write it well. As yet you have only green fruit to offer – wait a season & there will be a fair & full gathering when it is ripe.
I do not know how to send back your manuscript.