433. Robert Southey to Humphry Davy, [4 September 1799]*

Your Mounts-Bay, my dear Davy, disappointed me in its length.¹ I expected more & wishd more, because what there is is good. there is a certain swell – an elevation in the flow of the blank verse, which I know not how, produces an effect like the fullness of an organ-swell upon the feelings. I have felt it from the rythm of Milton² – & sometimes of Akenside³ – a pleasure wholly independant of that derived from the soul of the poetry, arising from the beauty of the body only – I believe a man who did not understand a word of it would feel pleasure & emotion at hearing such lines read with the tone of a poet. the character drawn of Theora is I think out of place – it is not a common character. & the story is no ways influenced by it. the passion to be excited is pity, not admiration.

I must not press the subject of poetry upon you – only do not lose the feeling, & the habit of seeing all things with a poets eye. at Bristol you have a good society – but not a man who knows any thing of poetry. Dr Beddoes’ taste is very pessimism. Cottles only likes what his friends & himself write. Every person fancies himself competent to pronounce upon the merits of a poem. & yet no trade no science requires so long an apprenticeship, or involves the necessity of such multifarious knowledge. I want an equal reader to judge my poems, one whose knowledge & taste is commensurate with mine, who has thought as much upon the subject – or else one who pretends not to criticise but will surrender his feelings to me & follow the impulse they receive.

It gave me pain to see Dr Beddoes’s Domiciliary Verses inserted in the Anthology.⁴ when I left Bristol a variance subsisted between myself & Coleridge. I had therefore reason on the score of delicacy not to make myself the means of publishing any thing designed as a ridicule either upon him or his friend Wordsworth, & those lines at the time they were written were handed about as such. this I requested Cottle to mention to Dr B. as a reason for not inserting them. he did so & Dr B replied that unless they were inserted, nothing of his should. the epigram⁵ was then already printed & Cottle did right not to offend the Doctor himself. But had I been then in Bristol, his poems should have been immediately returned & what was already printed cancelled. I respect Dr Beddoes – but in this instance he has acted with an indelicacy & a kind of arrogance which I never before experienced. for the second volume⁶ of course no application shall be made to him.

The second volume I hope to send to press early in November. sometimes remember this, & let it prevent <save> a poetizing impulse from being repelled.

I have been long idle, or rather lying fallow. after writing to you I walkd to the Valley of Stones & to Ilfracombe. on my return we remained a fortnight at Stowey with Coleridge, where Edith gradually recovered, & where with walking & talking I was compleatly occupied. we travelled together to Ottery St Mary – & after vainly seeking lodgings on the coast or in the villages near I found lodgings on Monday last at Mr Tuckers. Fore-Street-Hill. Exeter.⁷ whither direct. Coleridge is eleven miles distant at his brothers. he will pass some time here. we have formed the plan of a long poem to execute in hexameters. but this you had better not mention as it will need a strong preliminary attack to bully people out of their prejudices against innovations in metre. our story is Mohammed.⁸

At Lymouth I saw Tobins⁹ friend Williams¹⁰ who opened upon me with an account of the gazeous oxyd.¹¹ I had the advantage of him, having felt what he it seems, had only seen. Lymouth where he is fixd is certainly the most beautiful place I have seen in England – so beautiful that all the after scenes come flat & uninteresting. it may xxxxxx the Valley of Stones is about half-a-mile distant, as a strange & magnificent which ought to have filled the whole neighbourhood with traditions of giants & devils & magicians. but I could find none – not even a lie preserved. I know too little of natural history to hypothesize upon the cause of this valley: it appeard to me that nothing but water could have so defleshed & laid bare the bones of the earth. that any inundation which could have overstopped these heights must have deluged the kingdom – but the opposite hills are clothed with vegetable with vegetable soil & verdure – therefore the cause must have been partial. a water-spout might have occasioned it perhaps – & there my conjectures rested – or rather took a new direction to the Preadamite Kings,¹² the fiends who married Diocletians fifty daughters – their giant progeny¹³ – old Merlin¹⁴ & the builders of the Giants Causeway.¹⁵

For the next Anthology I project a poem on our Clifton Rocks.¹⁶ the scenery is fresh in my sight – & these kind of poems derive a more interesting cast as recollections than as immediate pictures.

farewell yours truly Robert Southey.

Exeter. Thursday May¹⁷ 4. 99.