2974. Robert Southey to William Gifford, 11 April 1817
2974. Robert Southey to William Gifford, 11 April 1817*
My dear Sir
I shall bring this article round to its purpose like a rondeau. [1] You would have had it sooner had I not been called off by some vexatious interruptions, – besides the necessity xxxx xxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx of xxx discharging my obligations to Mr Wm Smith. [2] – The remainder however is in forwardness, & will in all likelihood reach you before I come to town myself. If the proof should be ready before Saturday next (the 19) please to direct them to Warcop Hall – near Brough – Yorkshire. at which place the mail coach is to take me up on Tuesday the 22d.
There is only a paragraph wanting to compleat the article upon Mariner – I concluded it is not wanted for the present number, & therefore neglected it for more pressing concerns. [3]
God bless you my dear Sir. From the books & pamphletts which Murray sends me I see that you & I are pretty frequently yoked together for vituperation, – & if men could either grow fat upon abuse or make their fortune by it, we should at this time be two of the most wealthy & most corpulent of his Majestys subjects. But just at present I should be the richer & the fatter of the two.
Believe me
Yrs most truly
R Southey.
Keswick. 11 April. 1817.
Notes
* Address: To/ Wm
Gifford Esqre
MS: Berg Collection, New York Public
Library. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Southey’s article ‘Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection’, Quarterly Review, 16 (January 1817), 511–552 (published 20 May 1817). BACK
[2] Smith had denounced Southey in the House of Commons on 14 March 1817 in the debate on the Seditious Meetings Bill, condemning ‘the settled, determined malignity of a renegado’ and comparing Southey’s arguments against radical views in the Quarterly Review, 16 (October 1816), 227, with those expressed in Wat Tyler (1817), Act 2, lines 103–112. Southey had responded with his A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P. (1817). BACK
[3] Southey reviewed, among other books on the Tonga islands, John Martin (1789–1869; DNB), An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean, with an Original Grammar and Vocabulary of their Language (1817) in Quarterly Review, 17 (April 1817), 1–39. This book told the story of the ship’s boy William Mariner (1791–1853) who lived in the Tonga islands from 1806 to 1810 after the local people attacked his ship and killed his crewmates. BACK
