The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Neville White, 29 April 1814
“Keswick, April 29. 1814.
“My main employment at present is upon Roderick. The poem is
drawing towards its completion; in fact, the difficulty may be considered as
over, and yet a good deal of labour remains, for I write slowly and blot much.
However, land is in sight, and I feel myself near enough the end of this voyage
to find myself often considering upon what course I shall set sail for the
next. Something of magnitude I must always have before me to occupy me in the
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| 72 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 40. |
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of other pursuits, and to think of when nothing
else requires attention. But I am less determined respecting the subject of my
next poem than I ever was before when a vacancy was so near. The New England
Quaker story is in most forwardness, but I should prefer something which in its
tone of feeling would differ more widely from that on which I am at present
busied. As to looking for a popular subject, this I
shall never do; for, in the first place, I believe it to be quite impossible to
say what would be popular, and, secondly, I should not willingly acknowledge to
myself, that I was influenced by any other motive than the fitness of my story
to my powers of execution.
“The Laureateship will certainly have this effect upon
me, that it will make me produce more poetry than I otherwise should have done.
For many years I had written little, and was permitting other studies to wean
me from it more and more. But it would be unbecoming to accept the only public
mark of honour which is attached to the pursuit, and at the same time withdraw
from the profession. I am therefore reviving half-forgotten plans, forming new
ones, and studying my old masters with almost as much ardour and assiduity as
if I were young again. Some of Henry’s papers yonder strikingly resemble what I used to
do twenty years ago, and what I am beginning to do again.
“Thank you for Lord
Byron’s Ode*: there is in it, as in all his poems, great life, spirit, and
ori-
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| Ætat. 40. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 73 |
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ginality, though the meaning is not always brought out with
sufficient perspicuity. The last time I saw him he asked me if I did not think
Bonaparte a great man in his villany.
I told him, no,—that he was a mean-minded villain. And Lord
Byron has now been brought to the same opinion. But of politics
in my next. I shall speedily thank Josiah
Conder for his review, and comment a little upon its contents. Some of his own
articles please me exceedingly. I wish my coadjutors in the Quarterly had thought half as much upon poetry,
and understood it half as well.
“God bless you!
Yours affectionately,
R. Southey.”
Josiah Conder (1789-1855)
Poet, bookseller, and proprietor of the
Eclectic Review
(1814-1837).
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Henry Kirke White (1785-1806)
Originally a stocking-weaver; trained for the law at Cambridge where he was a
contemporary of Byron; after his early death his poetical
Remains
were edited by Robert Southey (2 vols, 1807) with a biography that made the poet
famous.
John Neville White (1785 c.-1845)
The elder brother of Henry Kirke White; after working in medicine he was educated at
Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and was rector of Rushall (1828) and Tivetshall in Norfolk
(1832-45). The rumor that he died a suicide was denied in the
Gentleman's
Magazine.
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.
