In such a case, what is to be done? ‘but to raise some poor annuity amongst his friends.’ It is not likely to be wanted long. He has an hereditary disposition to a liver complaint, a disease of all others, induced by distress of mind, and he feels the whole bitterness of his situation. The palsy generally comes back to finish what it has begun. Lamb will give ten pounds a year. I will do the same, and we both do according to our means, rather tham our will. I have written to Michael Castle to exert himself; and if you know where his friend Porter is, I pray you communicate this information to him. We will try what can be done in other quarters….”
“Keswick, June 25, 1823.
My dear Cottle,
… I must finish my ‘Book of the Church.’ Under this title a sketch of our ecclesiastical history is designed. One small volume was intended, and behold it will form two 8vos. The object of the book is, to give those who come after us a proper bias, by making them feel and understand, how much they owe to the religious institutions of their country.
Besides this, I have other works in hand, and few things would give me more pleasure than to show you their state of progress, and the preparations I have made for them. If you would bring your sister to pass a summer with us, how joyfully and heartily you would be welcomed, I trust you both well know. Our friendship is now of nine and twenty years’ standing, and I will venture to say, for you, or for us, life cannot have many gratifications in store greater than this would prove. Here are ponies accustomed to climb these mountains which will carry you to the summit of Skiddaw, without the slightest difficulty, or danger. And here is my boat, the ‘Royal Noah,’ in the lake, in which you may exercise your arms when you like. Within and without I have much to show you. You would like to see my children; from Edith May, who is taller than her mother, down to Cuthbert, who was four years old in February last. Then there are my books, of which I am as proud as you are of your bones. They are not indeed quite so old, but then they are more numerous, and I am sure Miss C. will agree with me that they are much better furniture, and much pleasanter companions.
Not that I mean to depreciate your fossil remains. Forbid it all that is venerable. I should very much like to see your account of them. You gave me credit for more than is my due, when you surmised that the paper in the Quarterly (on the presumed alteration in the plane of the ecliptic) might have been mine. I write on no subject on which I have not bestowed considerable time and thought; and on all points of science, I confess myself to be either very superficially informed, or altogether ignorant. Some day I will send you a list of all my papers in that Journal, that you may not impute to me any thing which is not mine; and that, if you have at any time such a desire, you may see what the opinions are that I have there advanced. Very few I believe in which you would not entirely accord with me. God bless you.
Yours affectionately,
Robert Southey.”
“Keswick, April 7, 1825.
My dear Cottle,
You have indeed had a severe loss, I know not how the heart could bear, if it were not for the prospect of eternity, and the full sense of the comparative nothingness of time, which that prospect produces. If I look on the last thirty years, things seem as but yesterday; and when I look forward, the end of this mortal journey must be near, though the precise point where it will terminate is not in sight. Yet were you under my roof, as I live in hope that one day you will be, you would recognize just as much of the original Robert Southey as you would wish to see remaining; — though the body is somewhat the worse for wear.
I thought I had written to thank you for your ‘Strictures on the Plymouth Antinomians;’ which were well deserved, and given in a very proper spirit. Ultra-Calvinism is as little to my liking as it is to yours. It may be, and no doubt is held by many good men, upon whom it produces no worse effects than that of narrowing charity. But Dr. Hawker, and such as the Hawkers, only push it to its legitimate consequences.
At present I am engaged in a war with the Roman Catholics, a war in which there will be much ink shed, though not on my part, for when my ‘Vindiciae’ are finished, I shall leave the field. When you see that book, you will be surprised at the exposure of sophistries, disingenuousness, and downright falsehoods, which it will lay before the world; and you will see the charge of systematic imposture proved upon the papal church.
I must leave my home by the middle of next month, and travel for some weeks, in the hope of escaping an annual visitation of Catarrh, which now always leaves cough behind it, and a rather threatening hold of the chest. I am going therefore to Holland, to see that country, and to look for certain ecclesiastical books, which I shall be likely to obtain at Brussels, or Antwerp, or on the way thither.
A young friend, in the Colonial office, is to be one of my companions, and I expect that Neville White will be the other. It is a great effort to go from home at any time, and a great inconvenience, considering the interruption which my pursuits must suffer; still it is a master of duty and of economy to use every means for averting illness. If I can send home one or two chests of books, the pleasure of receiving them on my return is worth some cost.
How you would like to see my library, and to recognize among them some volumes as having been the gift of Joseph Cottle, seven or eight and twenty years ago. I have a great many thousand volumes, of all sorts, sizes, languages, and kinds, upon all subjects, and in all sorts of trims; from those which are displayed in ‘Peacock Place,’ to the ragged inhabitants of ‘Duck Row.’ The room in which I am now writing contains two thousand four hundred volumes, all in good apparel; many of them of singular rarity and value. I have another room full, and a passage full; book-cases in both landing places, and from six to seven hundred volumes in my bed-room. You have never seen a more cheerful room than my study; this workshop, from which so many works have proceeded, and in which among other things, I have written all those papers of mine, in the Quarterly Review, whereof you have a list below.
The next month will have a paper of mine on the ‘Chuch Missionary Society,’ and the one after, upon the ‘Memoir of the Chevalier Bayard,’ which Sarah Coleridge, daughter of S. T. Coleridge, has translated.
Write to me oftener, as your letters will always have a reply, let whose may go unanswered. God bless you, my dear old friend.
Yours most affectionately,
Robert Southey.”
“Keswick, Feb. 26, 1826.
My dear Cottle,
I have sent you my Vindication of the ‘Book of the Church,’ in which though scarcely half of what was intended to be comprised, enough is done to prove the charge of superstition, impostures, and wickedness, upon the Romish Church. Whether I shall pursue the subject, in that form, depends on circumstances. I have employment enough in other ways, and would rather present my historical recollections in any form than that of controversy…. The revelations of sister Nativity are mentioned in my ‘Vindiciae.’ You will see an account of this impious Romish imposture in the next Quarterly. Such an exposure ought to open the eyes of those who are duped with the belief that the Roman Catholic religion is become innocent and harmless.
Have I written to you since I was bug-bitten in France, and laid up in consequence, under a surgeon’s hands in Holland? This mishap brought with it much more immediate good than evil. Bilderdyk, whose wife translated ‘Don Roderic’ into Dutch, and who is himself confessedly the best poet, and the most learned man in that country, received me into his house, where I was nursed for three weeks by two of the very best people in the world. But the effects of the accident remain. On my way home, owing perhaps to the intense heat of the weather, erysipelas showed itself on the wounded part. The foot also has been in a slight degree swollen, and there is just enough sense of uneasiness to show that something is amiss. My last year’s journey succeeded in cutting short the annual catarrh, which had for so many years laid me up during the summer months. I shall try the same course as soon as the next summer commences.
Will you never come and visit
me, and see how that hair looks, which I doubt not keeps its colour so well in Vandyke’s portrait? now it is three parts grey, but curling still as strong as in youth. I look at your portrait every day and see you to the life, as you were thirty years ago! What a change should we see in each other now, and yet how soon should we find that the better part remains unchanged.
The day before yesterday I received your two volumes of ‘Malvern Hills, Poems, and Essays,’ fourth edition, forwarded to me from Sheffield, by James Montgomery. You ask my opinion on your ninth essay (on the supposed alteration in the planes of the equator and the ecliptic suggested by an hypothesis in the Quarterly). I am too ignorant to form one. The reasoning seems conclusive, taking the scientific part for granted, but of that science, or any other, I know nothing. This I can truly say, that the essays in general please me very much. That I am very glad to see those concerning Chatterton introduced there; — and very much admire, the manner, and the feeling, with which you have treated Psalmanazar’s story. You tell me things respecting Chatterton which were new to me, and of course interested me much. It may be worth while, when you prepare a copy for republication, to corroborate the proof of his insanity, by stating that there was a constitutional tendency to such a disease, which places the fact beyond all doubt….
Thank you, for the pains you have taken about ‘Bunyan.’ The first edition we cannot find, nor even ascertain its date. The first edition of the Second part we have found. An impudent assertion, I learn from ‘Montgomery’s Essay,’ was published, that the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ was a mere translation from the Dutch. I have had the Dutch book, and have read it, which he who made this assertion could not do. The charge of plagiarism is utterly false, not having the slightest foundation. When you and I meet in the next world, we will go and see John Bunyan, and tell him how I have tinkered the fellow, for tinker him I will, who has endeavoured to pick a hole in his reputation. God bless you, my dear old friend,
Robert Southey.
P. S. There are two dreams that may be said to haunt me, they recur so often. The one is, that of being at Westminster school again, and not having my books. The other is, that I am at Bristol, and have been there some indefinite time; and unaccountably, have never been to look for you in Brunswick Square, for which I am troubled in conscience. Come to us, and I will pledge myself to visit you in return when next I travel to the south.”
In a letter to Mr. Southey, I mentioned that a relation of Wm. Gilbert had informed me that he was hurt with Mr. S. for having named him, in his ‘Life of Wesley,’ as being tinctured with insanity; a fact notorious. Mr. G. had often affirmed that there was a nation of the Gilbertians in the centre of Africa, and expressed a determination of one day visiting them. In the year 1796, he suddenly left Bristol, without speaking to any one of his friends; and the inference drawn, was that he was about to commence his African expedition. I had also mentioned that Sir James Mackintosh had expressed an opinion that Mr. Southey had formed his style on the model of Horace Walpole. These preliminary remarks are necessary to the understanding of the following letter.
“Keswick, Feb. 26.
My dear Cottle,
What you say about poor Gilbert has surprised me. You know we lost sight of him after he left Bristol, with, according to our apprehension, the design of going to Liverpool, and from thence to procure a passage to Africa. On that occasion, after consulting with Danvers, and I think with you, I wrote to Roscoe, apologizing, as a stranger, for the liberty, requesting him to caution any captain of a ship, bound to the African coast, from taking a person in his state of mind on board. Roscoe replied very courteously, and took the desired precaution, but Gilbert never appeared at Liverpool. Some time afterward it was told me that he was dead, and believing him so to be, I mentioned him in the life of Wesley, (Vol. 2. p. 467.) speaking of him as I had ever felt, with respect and kindness, but in a way which I should not have done if I had not been fully persuaded of his death.
Mackintosh’s notice, as you inform me, that my style is founded on Horace Walpole, is ridiculous. It is founded on nobody’s. I say what I have to say as plainly as I can, without thinking of the style, and this is the whole secret. I could tell by what poets my poetry has successively been leavened, but not what prose writers have ever in the same manner influenced me. In fact, I write as you may always have remarked, such as I always converse, without effort, and without aiming at display.
… Poor Morgan, you know, was latterly supported by a subscription, which Charles Lamb set on foot, and which was to have been annual, but he died within the year.
Just now I am pressed for time to finish the ‘Life of Cowper.’ This Life will interest you, not merely because you (I know) would read with partial interest anything of mine, but because many circumstances are there stated which have never before been made public.
You may have heard that a new edition of my ‘Life of Wesley’ is promised. Such an accumulation of materials has been poured upon me by a Mr. Marriott, well known among the Methodists, that I shall have to add a fourth, or perhaps, a third part of new matter, besides making many corrections and alterations. I have also got possession of the remaining papers of Mr. Powley, who married Miss Unwin. His widow died last year; and thus they became accessible. There were in the collection a good many letters of Mr. Newton, whose letters to Mr. Thornton, I have had before, and made great use of them in the 1st vol. of Cowper. From these papers I shall learn much concerning the first proceedings of the evangelical clergy, and expect to collect some materials for the ‘Biographical Notes,’ which must accompany ‘Cowper’s Letters’; and still more for the religious history of ‘Wesley’s Times,’ as connected with the progress of Methodism. God bless you, my dear old friend,
Robert Southey.”
“Keswick, Nov. 4, 1828.
My dear Cottle,
Shame on me that your last friendly letter should have remained so long unanswered, and that the direct motive for writing now should be a selfish one; one however, in which I know you will take some interest, on more accounts than one.
Major, in Fleet Street, is about to publish an edition of the Pilgrim’s Progress, for which I have undertaken to write an introductory life of the author. You need not be told how dearly I love John Bunyan. Now he has made inquiries among public and private libraries for the first edition, and can nowhere discover a copy. It has occurred to me that it may be in the Bristol Baptist Library, and if you will make this inquiry for me, and in case it be there, ascertain whether it differs from the folio edition of Bunyan’s works, you will do me a great kindness…. That I should be somewhat the worse for the wear was to be expected, but I am not more so than you would look to see me; still active, cheerful, with a good appetite for books, and not an ill one for work. Some things I shall have to send you both in prose and verse, before the winter passes away….
Remember me in the kindest manner to —— , and to —— , and to —— . When I think of you all, old times return with the freshness of a dream. In less time than has elapsed since we were all young together, we shall be together again, and have dropped the weight of years and mortality on the way.
If my old acquaintance, Isaac James be living, remember me to him with cordial good will. God bless you, my dear old friend.
Robert Southey.”
“Keswick, March 22, 1831.
My dear Cottle,
Your package arrived safely yesterday afternoon. I shall get the books with which you presented me furbished up, and write in each that it was your gift; — a pleasant memorandum which is found in others on these shelves. I like to give books this incidental value, and write therefore, the date, and place, in every fresh acquisition. Many recollections do they call up, which otherwise would have passed away. You who have known me from the beginning of my authorial life, ought to see this library of mine. As I think no man ever made more use of his books, so I am sure that no man ever took more delight in them. They are the pride of my eyes, and the joy of my he
art; an innocent pride, I trust, and a wholesome joy.”
* * * * *
The reader’s attention will now be directed to Mr. Coleridge, by introducing a letter from Mr. C. to Mr. Wade, who had written to him for advice respecting a meditated excursion to Germany.
“March 6, 1801.
My very dear friend,
I have even now received your letter. My habits of thinking and feeling, have not hitherto inclined me to personify commerce in any such shape, so as to tempt me to tarn pagan, and offer vows to the goddess of our isle. But when I read that sentence in your letter, ‘The time will come I trust, when I shall be able to pitch my tent in your neighbourhood,’ I was most potently commanded to a breach of the second commandment, and on my knees, to entreat the said goddess, to touch your bank notes and guineas with her magical multiplying wand. I could offer such a prayer for you, with a better conscience than for most men, because I know that you have never lost that healthy common sense, which regards money only as the means of independence, and that you would sooner than most men cry out, enough! enough! To see one’s children secured against want, is doubtless a delightful thing; but to wish to see them begin the world as rich men, is unwise to ourselves, for it permits no close of our labours, and is pernicious to them; for it leaves no motive to their exertions, none of those sympathies with the industrious and the poor, which form at once the true relish and proper antidote of wealth.
… Is not March rather a perilous month for the voyage from Yarmouth to Hamburg? danger there is very little, in the packets, but I know what inconvenience rough weather brings with it; not from my own feelings, for I am never sea-sick, but always in exceeding high spirits on board ship, but from what I see in others. But you are an old sailor. At Hamburgh I have not a shadow of acquaintance. My letters of introduction produced for me, with one exception, viz., Klopstock, the brother of the poet, no real service, but merely distant and ostentatious civility. And Klopstock will by this time have forgotten my name, which indeed he never properly knew, for I could speak only English and Latin, and he only French and German. At Ratzeburgh, 35 English miles N. E. from Hamburgh, on the road to Lubec, I resided four months; and I should hope, was not unbeloved by more than one family, but this is out of your route. At Gottingen I stayed near five months, but here I knew only students, who will have left the place by this time, and the high learned professors, only one of whom could speak English; and they are so wholly engaged in their academical occupations, that they would be of no service to you. Other acquaintance in Germany I have none, and connexion I never had any. For though I was much entreated by some of the Literati to correspond with them, yet my natural laziness, with the little value I attach to literary men, as literary men, and with my aversion from those letters which are to be made up of studied sense, and unfelt compliments, combined to prevent me from availing myself of the offer. Herein, and in similar instances, with English authors of repute, I have ill consulted the growth of my reputation and fame. But I have cheerful and confident hopes of myself. If I can hereafter do good to my fellow-creatures as a poet, and as a metaphysician, they will know it; and any other fame than this, I consider as a serious evil, that would only take me from out the number and sympathy of ordinary men, to make a coxcomb of me. As to the inns or hotels at Hamburgh, I should recommend you to some German inn. Wordsworth and I were at the ‘Der Wilde Man,’ and dirty as it was, I could not find any inn in Germany very much cleaner, except at Lubec. But if you go to an English inn, for heaven’s sake, avoid the ‘Shakspeare,’ at Altona, and the ‘King of England,’ at Hamburgh. They are houses of plunder rather than entertainment. ‘The Duke of York’ hotel, kept by Seaman, has a better reputation, and thither I would advise you to repair; and I advise you to pay your bill every morning at breakfast time: it is the only way to escape imposition. What the Hamburgh merchants may be I know not, but the tradesmen are knaves. Scoundrels, with yellow-white phizzes, that bring disgrace on the complexion of a bad tallow candle. Now as to carriage, I know scarcely what to advise; only make up your mind to the very worst vehicles, with the very worst horses, drawn by the very worst postillions, over the very worst roads, and halting two hours at each time they change horses, at the very worst inns; and you have a fair, unexaggerated picture of travelling in North Germany. The cheapest way is the best; go by the common post wagons, or stage coaches. What are called extraordinaries, or post-chaises, are little wicker carts, uncovered, with moveable benches or forms in them, execrable in every respect. And if you buy a vehicle at Hamburgh, you can get none decent under thirty or forty guineas, and very, probably it will break to pieces on the infernal roads. The canal boats are delightful, but the porters everywhere in the United Provinces, are an impudent, abominable, and dishonest race. You must carry as little luggage as you well can with you, in the canal boats, and when you land, get recommended to an inn beforehand, and bargain with the porters first of all, and never lose sight of them, or you may never see your portmanteau or baggage again.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 333