The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John May, 5 August 1810
“Keswick, August 5. 1810.
“My dear Friend,
“Whatever you may think of my part in the Register in other respects, you
will, I am sure, be well-pleased with the perfect freedom which inspires it. It
will offend many persons and will please no party: but my own heart is
satisfied, and that feeling would always be to me a sufficient reward. And even
if it should injure me in a political point of view (as it probably may), by
cutting off the prospect of ![]()
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obtaining anything from
Government beyond the pension . . . . . still I believe that even the balance
of selfish prudence, though Mr. Worldy-wiseman himself were to adjust the
scales, would prove in my favour. For I confidently expect that this work will
materially increase my reputation among the booksellers; and, indeed, as long
as I continue to be engaged in it, I shall need no other means of support. In
the second part of the volume you will see me abundantly praised and most
respectfully censured. I know not who the critic is, nor can I guess; he is
very showy and sufficiently shallow. . . . . . As for my contempt of the
received rules of poetry, I hold the same rules which Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton held
before me, and desire to be judged by those rules; nor have I proceeded upon
any principle of taste which is not to be found in all the great masters of the
art of every age and country wherein the art has been understood. When the
critic specifies parts of my writings to justify his praise, he overlooks every
thing which displays either a knowledge of human nature, or a power of
affecting the passions, and merely looks for a specimen of able versification.
. . . .
“God bless you!
Yours very affectionately,
R. S.”
John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of
Comus (1634),
Lycidas (1638),
Areopagitica (1644),
Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.
Edmund Spenser (1552 c.-1599)
English poet, author of
The Shepheards Calender (1579) and
The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).
