22. Robert Southey to Charles Collins, [c. summer/ autumn 1792]*
Collins, if yet remembrance can remainIf Friendship still may plead, nor plead in vainIf yet this hand is dear — attend — attendAnd lay aside your Homer for your friend.
Still still does study with unceasing rageDevour the Grecian & the Roman page?Still shall the classics feed your greedy eyesWhilst Ossian1 on the shelf neglected liesWhilst Gibbon2 with a careless look you seeAnd Spenser’s only read by Rough & me.
Behold yon hothouse — see each anxious hourThe curious florist guards his favorite flower —From India Italy — no matter whereTis placd in Englands cold ungenial air —Too weak to stand the chilly winds that flyAlong Britannias bold & bracing skyRaisd with unceasing care in artful bedIt rears in artificial bloom its headSome half a dozen friends the plant admireAnd soon both master friends & plant expire.
Now view yon violet — its fragrance roundPerfumes the air & ornaments the groundOf every flower the sweetest & the bestEach village tenant wears it in her breast.Say Collins which is best? or which shall claimWith most desert the honord due of fame?
The moral comes — intent the letter’d sageBrunck3 or the Scholias4 turns the Grecian page —Full many a year behold him studious poreTill sense & learning can correct no more.The new edition comes — its merit see.Perhaps a δε for μεν or μεν for δε!5
Who knows not Petrarch?6 many a studious dayHe wove intent the Latin epic lay.The Latin lay despised forgotten lies.Yet have his sorrows bathd the readers eyesYet has the Bard in native language knownDeservd & gaind the immortal laurel crown.
Why then my friend shall Genius blaze in vainWhy pour her rapid flow in Latin strain.Canst thou my friend the narrow praise desire?D’Oyley may equal — Vincent will admire —Smedley7 may view you with approving eyesAnd Dunces ask their bible exercise!
But say — say Collins will the Doctors nameExpand the portals of the pile of Fame?What from such labors can such Genius hopeWhen even Bentley only lives in Pope?8
Yet deem not even Southeys dreaded strainHolds learning useless — or thinks study vainTho’ he who sways with wig & rod the schoolProclaims me impious insolent & fool.Yet I have felt enrapt the great delightWhen Hector9 rages in the field of fightYes I have wept when poor & tempest tostThe suffering monarch10 reachd his native cost —Without one blush een I can dare relateThat I have wept when Argus11 bowd to fate.Yet still my native tongue demands my laysAnd there & there alone I seek for praise —
Let not thy once lovd friends request be vainWrite soon in verse & English be the strain.If I may beg & beg without offenceThat you will stoop awhile to Common Sense.12
—————
Monday.No 9 Duke Street Bath
Notes
Address: Mr C Collins/ opposite
the lying-in hospital/ Lambeth/ near/ Westminster Bridge
Stamped: BATH
Postmark: [partial] 26/ 9
MS: Huntington Library, HM 44799. AL;
4p.
Previously published: Roland Baughman, ‘Southey the Schoolboy’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 7 (1944), 264 [in part]; and
Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2
vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 1–4.
Dating note: Baughman gives this
a tentative date of 26 August 1792; Curry suggests a period between 1792–summer
1793. Internal evidence and the fact that the letter was written at 9 Duke Street,
Bath, suggests a date of summer/autumn 1792, when Southey was at his parents’
house. Back
1. The controversial series of poems purportedly written by the ancient bard Ossian (son of Fingal), published by James Macpherson (1736–1796; DNB). Back
2. Edward Gibbon (1737–1794; DNB), historian, whose works include The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788). Back
3. Richard François Philippe Brunck (1729–1803), a French classical scholar notorious for cavalier handling of the texts he edited. Back
4. An editor who made commentaries in the margins of Latin or Greek texts. Back
5. Southey is playing games, reversing the order of the tags that every student of Greek soon knows simply mean, depending on their place in the sentence, ‘on the one hand’ and ‘on the other’. Back
6. Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), Italian poet and humanist. His unfinished Latin epic Africa was little read in the eighteenth century, whilst his sonnets in Italian still commanded a wide audience. Back
7. Edward Smedley (1750–1825), an Usher at Westminster School 1774–1820. Back
8. Richard Bentley (1662–1742; DNB), classical scholar caricatured by Alexander Pope (1688–1744; DNB) in the Dunciad. Bentley, infamously, published a revised (presumably, he thought, improved) version of Milton’s Paradise Lost in 1732. Back
9. In the Iliad, a Trojan hero, killed by Achilles. Back
10. The Greek hero Odysseus. Back
11. In the Odyssey, Book 17, Odysseus’ dog, who recognises his master on his return home after twenty years and then dies. Back
12. Thomas Paine (1737–1809; DNB), Common Sense (1776), a key tract in support of the American Revolution. Back