1085. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [14 July 1805]*
Dear Wynn
Frank the inclosed for me – to Miss Southey, Bishops Lydiard, near Taunton.
I have found a very curious passage in Socrates Scholasticus. L1. C. 17.1 which affords strong presumption that the oldest & most prevalent of the Oriental superstitions is posterior to Xtianity. – that of Boodha, – which prevails in Japan & China, x is established in Siam & Ceylon, & in a certain degree retained by the Hindoos, tho their mythology has in PART conquered it. If the Buddas of Socrates be Boodha, the antiquity of all these superstitions is destroyed, & their immaculate conceptions (for they all have them) clearly borrowed from from the Xtians.
The Bishop of Llandaff has sent to say he is sorry I should have been two years in the country, without his having seen me.
God bless you RS.
Sunday.
Notes
Address: To/ C W Williams Wynn Esqr M. P./ [Deletions and
readdress in another hand] Lincolns Inn/ London/ Oswestry/ N. Wales
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298; Chancery
Lane
Postmarks: [partial] FREE/ JUL 17; [partial] JUL/ 1805
Endorsement: July 1805
MS: National Library of Wales MS
4812D. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.
Dating note: Southey dates this letter ‘Sunday’, and the Sunday before the postmarked
date of 17 July
1805 was 14 July. Back
1. Socrates Scholasticus (c. 380–c. 450): Byzantine church historian, who recorded early church history in his Historia Ecclesiastica (c. 439). Back