The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 8 January 1800
“Jan. 8. 1800.
“My dear Coleridge,
“I have thought much, and talked much, and advised much
about Thalaba, and will
endeavour to travel without publishing it: because I am in no mood for running
races, and because I like what is done to be done so well, that I am not
willing to let it go raggedly into the world. Six books are written, and the
two first have undergone their first correction.
“I have the whim of making a Darwinish note at the close of the poem, upon
the effects produced in our globe by the destruction of the Dom Daniel.
Imprimis, the sudden falling
in of the sea’s roots necessarily made the maelstrom; then the cold of
the north is accounted for by the water that rushed into the caverns, putting
out a great part of the central fire; the sudden generation of steam shattered
the southern and south-east continents into archipelagos of islands; also the
boiling spring of Geyser has its scarce here,—who knows what it did not
occasion!
“Thomas
Wedgewood has obtained a passport to go to France. I shall
attempt to do the same, but am not very anxious for success, as Italy seems
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tainly accessible, or at least Trieste is. Is it
quite impossible that you can go? Surely a life of Lessing may be as well written in Germany as in England, and
little time lost I shall be ready to go as soon as you please: we should just
make a carriage-full, and you and I would often make plenty of room by walking.
You cannot begin Lessing before May, and you allow
yourself ten months for the work. Well, we will be in Germany before June; at
the towns where we make a halt of any time, something may be done, and the
actual travelling will not consume more than two months; thus three months only
will be lost, and it is worth this price: we can return through France, and, in
the interim, Italy offers a society almost as interesting. Duppa will fortify me with all necessary
directions for travelling, &c.: and Moses* will be a very mock-bird as to languages; he shall talk
German with you and me, Italian. with the servants, and English with his
mother and aunt; so the young Israelite will become
learned without knowing how.
“. . . . . Beddoes advertised, at least six weeks ago, certain cases of
consumption, treated in a cow-house; and the press has been standing till now,
in expectation of—what think you? only waiting till the patients be
cured! This is beginning to print a book sooner than even I should venture.
Davy is in the high career of
experience, and will soon new-christen (if the word be a chemical one), the
calumniated azote.
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| Ætat. 25. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 41 |
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They have a new palsied patient, a complete case,
certainly recovering by the use of the beatifying gas.
“Perhaps when you are at a pinch for a paragraph*, you
may manufacture an anti-ministerial one oat of this passage in Bacon’s Essays:—
“‘You shall see a bold
fellow many times do Mahomet’s miracle. Mahomet made
the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it
offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled;
Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and
again, and when the hill stood still, he was never a bit abashed, but said,
If the hill will not come to Mahomet,
Mahomet will go to the hill. So these men, when
they have promised great matters and failed most shamefully, yet (if they
have the perfection of boldness), they will but
slight it over, make a turne, and no more adoe.’
“I am glad I copied the passage, for, in so doing, I
have found how to make this a fine incident in the poem.†
“Maracci’s Refutation of the Koran, or rather his
preliminaries to it, have afforded me much amusement, and much matter. I am
qualified in doctrinals to be a Mufti. The old father groups together all the
Mohammedan miracles: some, he says, are nonsense; some he calls lies; some are
true, but then the Devil did them; but there is one that tickled his fancy, and
he says it must be true of some Christian saint, and so stolen by the Turks.
After this he
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| 42 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 25. |
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gives, by way of contrast, a specimen of Christian
miracles, and chooses out St. Januarius’s blood and
the Chapel of Loretto! God bless you.
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.
Hartley Coleridge [Old Bachelor] (1796-1849)
The eldest son of the poet; he was educated at Merton College, Oxford, contributed essays
in the
London Magazine and
Blackwood's, and
published
Lives of Distinguished Northerns (1832).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
English physician and philosophical poet, the author of
The Loves of
the Plants (1789); his interests in botany and evolution anticipated those of his
more famous grandson.
Sir Humphry Davy, baronet (1778-1829)
English chemist and physicist, inventor of the safety lamp; in Bristol he knew Cottle,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey; he was president of the Royal Society (1820).
Richard Duppa (1768-1831)
Writer and antiquary; a contributor to the
Literary Gazette; he
published
A Journal of the most remarkable Occurrences that took place in
Rome (1799) and other works.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Germman playwright and critic who extolled Shakespeare in opposition to French models; he
was the author of
Emelia Galotti (1779) and
Nathan
der Weise (1779).
Mahomet (570 c.-632)
Founder of the Muslim religion.
Luigi Marracci (1612-1700)
An Italian priest who translated the Qur'an into Latin in 1698 with a commentary.
Edith Southey [née Fricker] (1774-1837)
The daughter of Stephen Fricker, she was the first wife of Robert Southey and the mother
of his children; they married in secret in 1795.
Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805)
Chemist and third son of Josiah Wedgewood; he was the patron of Godwin and Coleridge and
of his former tutor, Sir John Leslie.
Morning Post. (1772-1937). A large-circulation London daily that published verse by many of the prominent poets of
the romantic era. John Taylor (1750–1826), Daniel Stuart (1766-1846), and Nicholas Byrne
(d. 1833) were among its editors.
