The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John May, 1 October 1831
“Keswick, Oct 1. 1831.
“My dear Friend,
“. . . . . The prospect before me is not so clear as
it was. The state of politics has affected every branch of business, and none
more than that upon which I have to depend. It cannot be long before it be
determined whether the Quarterly
Review will continue to pay me at its former rate; or whether I must
withdraw from it, and look about for other means of support. Other employment
equally profitable and certain in its profit, as this has hitherto been, it may
not be easy to find; but I have no fear of getting on well at last, and my
disposition saves me from all disquietude which is produced by needless
anxiety.
“Your own cares at this time can have left you little
leisure for those fears which the moral, political, and physical state of
Europe awaken in every one who has leisure to look before him and around him.
The spirit of insubordination, connected with every thing that is most false
and perilous in po-![]()
| 160 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 57. |
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litics, morals and religion has
extended so widely, so all but generally, throughout the working classes, that
the white inhabitants in Jamaica are not in more danger from the negroes, than
we are from our servile population. This spirit has been greatly aided by the
agitation which the Reform Bill has excited; and whatever plan of reform may be
at length agreed on, and to whatever extent it may be carried, the consequences
of such a ferment must long be felt. One issue leads to certain revolution, the
other gives only a chance of averting it. With these prospects at home, and the
cholera rapidly advancing to the opposite coast of the Continent (it is daily
expected at Hamburgh), I do not think that England, since it was England, has
ever been threatened by such serious dangers. For any pestilence must be more
dreadful than in former times, in proportion to the increased density of our
population and the rapidity of communication throughout the country. And any
revolution, instead of throwing down (as in former convulsions) a few high
towers and old houses like a storm of wind, would rend and overthrow the
foundations of society, like an earthquake. These reflections occur to me so
frequently and with so much force, that the deprecations in the Litany which
apply to these specific dangers, have for some time made part of my prayers at
night and morning.
“My occupations of late have been the Peninsular War, of which I
hope to see the end in a few weeks after my return; the Colloquies on the
vulgar Errors of the Age, for which Westall has made some ![]()
| Ætat. 57. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 161 |
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most beautiful
drawings; and a review
of Moore’s Life and Death of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, which I must take with me to finish in Shropshire. The
reprint of my Essays might
have been completed long since, if Murray had pleased. But he is the most incommunicable of men;
and the book hitches upon some notion of his that the papers upon the Catholic
question, which were intended to conclude the volumes, would injure their sale.
I tell him that those who hate my opinions will not buy my books whether those
papers are included or not; and that those who agree with me will like to have
what the collection professes to be, the whole of my Political Essays. But here
the matter rests, and the press stands still.
“One thing I had nearly forgotten to tell you. A
selection from Wordsworth’s poems
for young persons has answered so well, that a similar volume from mine is now in
the press; and if this succeeds, as it may almost be expected to do, there will
be a companion to it of prose selections. In this way I may derive some little
profit, now that the sale of the works themselves is at a dead stop. And in
this way some good will be done, as far as the selections circulate. Two
mottoes have fallen in my way for them, which I think you will deem applicable:—
‘Nullo imbuta Veneno
Carmina,’ |
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is the one; both are from Janus
Douza: the other, ![]()
| 162 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 57. |
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‘Quales filiolis suis
parentes,
Quales discipulis suis magistri, Tuto prælegere et docere possint.’ |
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“Believe me always, my dear and excellent Friend,
Yours most affectionately,
Robert Southey.”
Johan van der Does [Janus Dousa] (1545-1604)
Dutch poet and historian who traveled to England to seek the aid of Queen Elizabeth
against the Spanish. His son Janus Dousa (d. 1596) was also a scholar.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
William Westall (1781-1850)
Topographical painter and engraver; he was the younger brother of the painter Richard
Westall and a friend of Robert Southey.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the
Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the
Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.
