1990. Robert Southey to James Montgomery, 29 November 1811 ⁠* 

Keswick. Nov. 29. 1811.

Montgomery, I have just laid down your last volume [1]  with a feeling of regret, – not unmingled with something like self-reproach, that you & I should still be strangers to each other. My plans have twice been laid for taking Sheffield in the way to London, for the sole purpose of seeing you, & I each time they have been defeated by unforeseen circumstances; – but I might before this have told you what pleasure it would give me to shake you by the hand, & how proud I should be to do it under my own roof. Come & visit me as soon as the fair season returns. You will find plain fare, books, perfect liberty, & a sincere welcome from persons who already love & admire the poet. You shall have a bedroom from whence you will see the moonlight upon Derwentwater. I will row you upon the Lake, & be your guide upon the mountains.

When shall we see your World before the Flood? [2]  The Deluge is one of those subjects which I had chosen many years ago, before historical pursuits had in a great measure, weaned me from poetry. In 1801 when on my passage from Lisbon to England, the imaginations which had long been floating in my mind matured into something like a plan. [3]  To account for the universal corruption which deserved such a chastisement I supposed an universal monarchy, – such as Louis 14 [4]  or Buonaparte [5]  would establish, – an absolute Tyrant, & a persecuting & atheistic hierarchy. I conceived that the perversion of morals extended even to those who opposed this system, – & that while they were organizing a sort of Irish Rebellion [6]  against it, the Ruling Powers anticipated them, & by a general massacre like that of S^t Bartholomews day, [7]  filled up the measure of iniquity. Some striking characters & situations grew out of this conception, but two objections I laid it aside feeling how impossible it was to amalgamate in the readers xxxxx mind so much pure fiction with a history so familiar.

Josiah Conder told me your poem is in the couplet. I have no prejudice in favour of any one measure for narrative poetry, – the tone & character of the narrative always with me determine what the metre should be, – but of all measures the heroic couplet seems to me the most unsuitable for narration. You have broken yours by a free admixture of pauses in your West Indies, & in so doing you have gained much; still I dislike it, it continually seduces the writer to commit sins against good sense & good English, he aims at pointing his meaning instead of bringing it distinctly out, gets into all the tricks of antithesis, & when he should be thinking & feeling, passes off a sort of way-jolt of words both upon himself & <his> readers. Our poetry owes half its barbarisms to this metre. You will do with it all that can be done, & I have no doubt will avoid its natural faults as far as they can be avoided. Were I to use a regular rhymed measure for narration, I think it should be the trinal rhyme of Dante, [8]  breaking its endlessness by dividing it into xxxxxx paragraphs, & considering myself as beginning a new anew with every fresh one.

Of your last volume [9]  the Harp of Sorrow, the Cast Away Ship, & the last poem are what I most delight in. Some of the stanzas respecting the Blenheim [10]  are the finest things of the kind in all our poetry, – exceeding the Royal George of Cowper, [11]  which I have was before unrivalled. “On Indias long-expecting strand”, – & the concluding stanza are as fine as they can be. & those lines He sailed above his fathers head Unconscious where it lay, – are to my feelings perfectly sublime. The concluding poem carries me with it throughout. This is one of those pieces which in your own peculiar manner, a manner to which I have never seen any resemblance except in the odes of Klopstock, [12]  as they have been read to me in literal English. Like Klopstock I think you sometimes contemplate things in a solar microscope rather than in their natural proportions. The Mole-Hill [13]  is, to my according to my judgement, an instance of this over-stretch of imagination: – a I fault am perfectly sensible that the desire of avoiding this fault has sometimes led me into an opposite extreme.

You & I have not only contemplated the same subject for a poem, but we have thought upon the same manner of narration. Standert showed me some letters of yours in one of which you described your early notion of a lyrical epic, – I had the same th conception in writing both my romanc mythological poems, [14]  tho not to the full extent to which you seem to have carried it, – Our hopes, as well as our day-dreams, have the same directions. I feel as ardently as you do respecting the Missions, & I look <forward> as you do to a state of things on earth, when the perfect establishment of the system of Christ Jesus shall extinguish moral evil, & therewith that physical evil which is its result.

Come to me in the spring & let us talk over these things. Write to me sometimes, & let us tell each other of our embryo works, & censure them while censure can be useful. I have always one poem in hand, & another brooding. That which at present xxxx employs the little time I can afford for poetry, is upon the foundation of the Spanish Monarchy by Pelayo. [15]  It had long appeared to me a fine subject, & the deep interest which I take in Spanish affairs, induced me at this time to select it, because the circumstances are sufficiently similar to <resemble> those of the present contest to call forth the same feelings. In what spirit it is begun you shall see in my next, – if this should induce you to accept me for a correspondent.

farewell.

Yours with true esteem

Robert Southey.