The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 19 February 1804
“Greta Hall, Feb. 19. 1804.
“Parson-son,*, the Piscis Piscium sive
Piscissimus, left us to-day. . . . . He is piping-hot from
Bristol, and brimful of admiration for Beddoes, who, indeed, seems to have done so much for Mrs. C., that there are good hopes of her
speedy recovery. He is in high spirits about the Slave Trade, for the West
India merchants will not consent to its suspension for five years, to prevent
the importation of hands into the newly conquered islands; and what from that
jealousy, and from the blessed success of the St. Domingo negroes, I believe we
may hope to see the traffic abolished. . . . .
“If I were a single man and a Frenchman, I would
![]()
![]()
| 264 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 29. |
![]()
go as a missionary to St. Domingo, where a world of good
might be done in that way: the climate may be defied by any man in a high state
of mental excitement I know not whether I sent you some curious facts
respecting vivaciousness, but I have met with enough to lead to important
physiological conclusions, and in particular to explain the sufficiently common
fact of sick persons fixing the hour of their deaths and living exactly to that
time; the simple solution is, that they would else have died sooner. In proceeding with my History, I continually find something
that leads to interesting speculation: it would, perhaps, be better if there
were always some one at hand, to whom I could communicate these discoveries,
and who should help me to hunt down the game when started; not that I feel any
wish for such society, but still it would at times be useful. It is a very odd,
but a marked, characteristic of my mind,—the very nose in the face of my
intellect,—that it is either utterly idle, or uselessly active, without
its tools. I never enter into any regular train of thought unless the pen be in
my hand; they then flow as fast as did the water from the rock in Horeb, but
without that wand the source is dry. At these times conversation would be
useful. However, I am going on well, never better. The old cerebrum was never
in higher activity. I find daily more and more reason to wonder at the
miserable ignorance of English historians, and to grieve with a sort of
despondency, at seeing how much that has been laid up among the stores of
knowledge, has been neglected and utterly forgotten.
![]()
| Ætat. 29. |
OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. |
265 |
![]()
“Madoc goes on well; the whole detail of the alteration is
satisfactorily completed, and I shall have it ready for the press by Midsummer.
I wish it could have been well examined first by you and William Taylor; however, it will be well
purged and purified in the last transcription, and shall go into the world, not
such as will obtain general approbation now, but such as may content most men
to read. I am not quite sure whether the story will not tempt me to have a
cross in the title-page, and take for my motto. In
hoc signo. . . . .
“If Μακρος Αυθρωπος agrees with me about the Specimens, it will oblige
me to go to London. Perhaps we may contrive to meet. . . . .
“I am sorry, sir, to perceive by your letter that
there is a scarcity of writing-paper in London; perhaps, the next time you
write, Mr. Rickman or Mr. Poole* will have the goodness to
accommodate you with a larger sheet, that you may have the goodness to
accommodate me with a longer letter; and if, sir, it be owing to the weakness
of your sight that you write so large a hand, and in lines so far apart, there
is a very excellent optician, who lives at Charing Cross, where you may be
supplied with the best spectacles, exactly of the number which may suit your
complaint.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient humble servant,
Robert Southey.”
Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808)
English chemist; he married a sister of Maria Edgeworth and in Bristol was a political
associate of Joseph Cottle, Robert Southey, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Catherine Clarkson [née Buck] (1772-1856)
An abolitionist who married Thomas Clarkson in 1796 and became a close friend of Dorothy
Wordsworth. Charles Lamb described her as “one of the friendliest, comfortablest
women we know.”
Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846)
English abolitionist educated at St Paul's School and St John's, Cambridge; he was an
associate of William Wilberforce.
Thomas Poole (1766-1837)
Of Nether Stowey; he was a farmer, tanner, and the early friend of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.
John Rickman (1771-1840)
Educated at Magdalen Hall and Lincoln College, Oxford, he was statistician and clerk to
the House of Commons and an early friend of Charles Lamb and Robert Southey.
William Taylor of Norwich (1765-1836)
Translator, poet, and essayist; he was a pupil of Anna Letitia Barbauld and correspondent
of Robert Southey who contributed to the
Monthly Magazine, the
Monthly Review, the
Critical Review, and
other periodicals.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Madoc. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805). A verse romance relating the legendary adventures of a Welsh prince in Wales and
pre-Columbian America.
