2341. Robert Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 5 December 1813
2341. Robert Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 5 December 1813 *
My dear Harry
In return for the pains which I have taken in thus transcribing for you my first Peelery-poem, [1] I will beg you to call on Sir William Parsons 22. Somerset Street, Portman Square. The distance is short, – the business not very troublesome, – & there is no harm in being introduced to the MusDoc of St James’s. – I have sent him the 1st 2d, 6th & 14th stanzas of the poem, – telling him however that as I know nothing of music I may very possibly have made an injudicious selection, & therefore that you will call on him, & submit the whole to his perusal, that he may, if he thinks fit, chuse any other part of it.
I have now to write my address [2] to the Prince in time, if possible, to publish it with the Ode on the first of January. Otherwise it must accompany a series of National Inscriptions for the events of the peninsular war, – beginning at Vimeiro [3] & ending at the Pyrenees. [4]
The boxes are arrived. – The last vol: of the Medical Review [5] is lying in numbers at the bookbinders at Ulverstone, [6] delayed there because it wants title page & index. It will not return from thence, till he has other books to send with it, – & I make up a parcel for him next week. When it arrives I will send you the whole set. – My next shall contain medical matter –
RS.
Sunday. Dec 5. 1813.
Notes
[1] Southey’s first Laureate ode Carmen Triumphale, published, after much revision, as a quarto of 30 pages on 1 January 1814. BACK
[3] The British victory at Vimeiro, 21 August 1808, ended the first French invasion of Portugal. The French were driven back to the Pyrenees by October 1813. Southey did write ‘For a Monument at Vimeiro’, but never reached the Pyrenees. BACK
[4] Only 18 of the proposed 30 inscriptions were written and they were not collected until 1837–1838, when they appeared in the last lifetime edition of Southey’s poems. BACK
[7] Southey and Taylor’s correspondence had diminished markedly by this time. Only two letters exchanged by them in 1813 survive and it is highly probable that no more were sent. The letter mentioned here is probably Taylor’s of 19 January 1813, which began with commendations of Henry Herbert Southey, see J. W. Robberds (ed.), A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich, 2 vols (London, 1843), II, pp. 412–414. Southey had written to Taylor on 18 November 1813, announcing his acceptance of the Laureateship (II, pp. 415–419), but Taylor did not reply until 13 March 1814 (II, pp. 419–422). BACK
