2463. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 30 July 1814 ⁠* 

In B. 20. you have either mistaken or miswritten Orpas for Eudon. It is Eudon who does not recognize Julian in his turban, having probably never seen him in it before. The drift of the book & of the 22^d you must now perfectly understand, & will see that they are indispensable in producing & preparing for the catastrophe. [1] 

Line 179 B. 21. cannot be spared, & ‘offspring of hot Africa’ is a fit expression for Julian, well acquainted as he was with the climate & the people. [2] 

266. Roderick is hurried on, & ought to be so. [3]  As for purely selfish feelings, his feelings are surely pure from all selfishness. And his great purpose was accomplished in the acclamation of Pelayo, after which he would have had no object in life, if circumstances which he had neither sought nor foreseen had not thus led him brought him into contact with Julian. You will see that this was prepared for in the 15^th book.

285. I like the effect of epithets thus placed

320 – For an answer to your objection to the word dearest [4]  I refer you to the Mag: Rots defence of famous in the Ode to the Czar. [5] 

326. This Miracle [6]  is the reconversion for which she prays, & which he tells her will be her work

Nothing can be more accurate than the epithet rolling as applied to the moon whose motion is so visible & rapid as to produce precisely this appearance. [7] 

I do no think that the last speech of Florinda [8]  distracts the attention, but it certainly does not conclude the book well. The necessary progress of the whole scene is from passion to a tranquillity arising beginning in exhaustment & then taking the character of thoughtfulness. – I have added about thirty lines to wind the book up in this tone, & the improvement is very great.

Your notions of metre will always often be confounded in my blank verse unless you remember that I am entitled to the same allow that Shakespere & Milton are the authorities by which that measure should be used, & that their example justifies the principle of making occasionally two short syllables stand in the place of one long one

Pray send the concluding books as soon as possible.

_____

Barbarous as it may appear to decline Grosvenor, õras, it would be absurd to translate it & convert you in imitation of Nimrod into a mighty hunter. [9] 

It would be ill judged to put the insertion in the Bag & Sword copy of the odes, [10]  because it would be xx xxx telling the Prince that the poems were written in a hurry & printed without correction. [11]  The whole business you know is a mere matter of form, & has nothing of which the worst part is that I must pay for binding a few leaves which will never be opened

I have made out a sort of Dramatis or Poematis Personæ as far as historical characters personages are mentioned in the poem, & having done this am really at a loss for any thing to say in the way of preface. The book therefore will very probably go without one. [12]  For if I were to say that the poem is called a tragic poem because it in the greater part of it the interest & manner are rather dramatic than narrative <epic>, – because it busies itself more with the passions than with actions, with the inward heart of man than with his outward works, this is what the judicious reader will find out for himself, – & for the injudicious one it would be only setting his cat-call.

My table is covered with Yankee books, from which I am about to begin collecting notes for Oliver Goffe, [13]  – a stage stage of the process which may be compared to mixing the colours in or preparing the palate in the painters business. I am lamentably undecided about the metre, whether Thalaban [14]  or rhymed. It must not be blank verse

God bless you

RS.

M^r & M^rs Raymond [15]  dined with us on Sunday last. Miss Barker has Miss Linwood [16] . with her at this time, Magna Leœna. [17]  – The Moon has been shorn of his beams by John Fisher, [18]  in a manner which <it is thought> will diminish the splendour of his appearance at the M^r Yewdale’s [19]  Ball on Friday next, when he is to exhibit among other performances in what he calls his hornpipe. As I have no less than three children in this exhibition I think I will must send you ‘a bill of the play’.

30 July 1814. Keswick.