3680. Robert Southey to John Murray [fragment], [c. 4 May 1821]
3680. Robert Southey to John Murray [fragment], [c. 4 May 1821]*
My dear Sir
I shall send you the first part of Cromwell [1] in a few days, – & the remaining part will be the better if you can send me Whitelocks Memorials, [2] Hollis’s Memoirs, [3] Hobbes’s Behemoth (not his Leviathan) [4] & the Eikon Basilike Icon Basiliké. [5] – It will make a very interesting life.
An edition of Dr Zouch’s work is announced by Wrangham, [6] – who by the bye stole the Life of Nelson from the Q. R. for his British Plutarch in a very unhandsome way. [7] – This will afford opportunity for a life of Sir Philip Sidney. [8]
[remainder of MS missing]
Notes
* Address: To/ John Murray Esqre
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: [partial] E/ MY 7/
1
Endorsement: R. Southey Esq/ May 4– 1821
MS: National Library of
Scotland, MS 42552. AL; 2p.
Unpublished. BACK
[2] Bulstrode Whitelock (1605–1675; DNB), Memorials of the English Affairs: or, an Historical Account of what Passed from the Beginning of the Reign of King Charles I, to King Charles II, His Happy Restoration (1732), no. 2912 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. BACK
[3] Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles (1599–1680; DNB), Memoirs of Denzil Lord Holles, Baron of Ifield in Sussex, from the Year 1641, to 1648 (1699). BACK
[4] Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679; DNB), Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England, and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were Carried on from the Year 1640 to the Year 1660 (1681). An edition of Hobbes’s treatise on psychology, politics and religion, Leviathan (1651), was no. 1423 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. BACK
[5] Eikon Basilike, The Portraicture of His Sacred Majestie in His Solitudes and Sufferings (1649), which claimed to be the spiritual reflections of Charles I (1600–1649; King of England 1625–1649; DNB) in the period leading up to his execution; a copy was no. 987 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. BACK
[6] The biographer and Anglican clergyman, Thomas Zouch (1737–1815; DNB). Francis Wrangham’s (1769–1842; DNB) edition was the Works of the Rev. Thomas Zouch: With A Memoir of His Life (1820). Southey acquired a copy, no. 3058 in the sale catalogue of his library. BACK
[7] ‘The Life of Viscount Nelson’ in Wrangham’s The British Plutarch, 6 vols (London, 1816), VI, pp. 425–488. Although this (p. 425 n*) acknowledged some indebtedness to the essay (written by Southey) in the Quarterly Review, 3 (February 1810), 218–262, Southey clearly felt Wrangham had not been entirely honest. BACK