1088. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 26 July [1805] ⁠* 

Dear Rickman

The inclosed letter to the Capitaneus  [1]  is to ask him to review Clerks Naval Tactics, [2]  which Aikin, honestly enough, will not put into ignorant hands.

There is among the small Portugueze quartos one whose parchment covers are very much cracked, & lettered longways in uncouth letters Epanaphoras Tragicas de D. Francisco Manoel. [3]  either thus, or with some abridgement of these words. If you can see this any time before Xmas xxxx send it or drop it at Longmans to be forwarded here, – for this good reason, Bowles the poet has manufactured a poem out of that worst of all possible books Clarkes Hist. of Maritime Discovery, [4]  – & has given the cock & a-bull story about Madeira which the said Clarke calls Alcofarados. [5]  Now that the whole story is a romance is clear enough from internal evidence, – & unless my memory play me falser than it is wont to do, there is no better authority than this work of D Franciscos which I believe to be nothing more than novelas founded upon history – or tradition. This can be ascertained from the book – I have no doubt myself about it, – but one must not proceed upon recollection & opinion only, open proof is to be had. And in reviewing Lisle Bowles, a good name for a small poet in Cumbria, [6]  I should like to supply the deficiency in my account of Clarkes miserable quarto.

This is, as you will guess, my idle season. I am peripateticating with Danvers, & getting xxxxxx <an appetite> for xxx xxxxx fireside repose, & friends in folio. – I have however hit upon a passage which seems to be worth something. Socrates Scholasticus L1. C.17. [7]  says that Manes xxx possessed the books of one Buddas, who invented a sort of amalgama of Egyptian & Xtian dogmas & went to preach in the East, calling himself the son of a Virgin. Buddas is so very like Buddha – or Buddha – <(who told the same story. of his generation)> that I am strongly inclined to believe this to have been the imposter whose doctrines have spread to China or Japan, are established in Siam & Ceylon, & retained in Hindostan because the Bramins tho they conquered, could not extirpate them. – You may see the passage in an old translation which I have of the Greek Ecclesiastical Historians. [8]  It is worth something, if the my speculation be at all probable, for it would knock down the whole fabric of Indian chronology, & xxxx make all their existing mythologies posterior to Xtianity.

I am even more pleased to see Lord S^t Vincent exposed than at the downfall of L^d Melville. [9]  Dundas is only a rogue, but that other fellow is black at the core. I know some wicked facts which came to me from Tom, thoroughly authenticated.

Sharon will wonder that I do not thank him for his book [10]  – but I want to read it first, & cannot do that till it comes. he once expressed a sort of intention of going on with the Hist. of England. I am more inclined to stimulate him to a Hist. of Wales, because English history after the conquest requires rather vigour of mind, than industry. At least the most important of the early reigns has been <so> well done by Lyttleton [11]  that little is left there for any industry to discover. But Wales is unbroken ground (Warrington is worth so little that it may fairly pass as such [12] ) & tho it be savage history still they are our own savages & we ought to know every thing about them.

God bless you –

RS.

July 26