1228. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 17–18 October 1806. ⁠* 

My dear Wynn

I received yours & its enclosure yesterday – the day on which it could not be acknowledged. – I tried the double writer last night [1]  – some contrivance is wanted to keep the under paper from slipping, tho perhaps the habit of using it may render it less needful. The invention has the merit of being very simple, & I expect sometimes to find it very useful.

I am deeply obliged by what you have done for my brother. He is now at Taunton with his Uncle & namesake. The estate which has been left to a stranger lets for 500£ a year, & this it seems is what I was heir at law to, for in the Vale of Taunton, where the rest of the land lay Borough English prevails. My younger brother is therefore presumptive heir – whose history I may as well bring down to the present time – After thrice leaving the navy he obtained a commission in the Caermarthenshire Militia, from which he has now been dismissed – it is said for plundering some French prisoners under his guard!, – & is now turned strolling player under the name of Smith. – What a career for one who is not yet 18!

Surely this rocket expedition is something more than foolish. The French have only to take sure aim with these very rockets [2]  – (for it is absurd to suppose any such invention can be kept secret) – & half a dozen gun boats may destroy our fleet. Our seventy-four [3]  in the Gut of Gibraltar [4]  have often been endangered by gun boats which they cannot strike, & to which they present a dead mark. Only let them learn to send their firey-arrows from a balista [5]  – & our naval superiority is at an end.

Do not forget to make enquiries respecting the duty on books. You must know better than I whether the P. court is to remove [6]  – I am strongly inclined to think xxx <it> will & that in consequence my Uncle’s library must ere long be sent over to England.

The fact respecting Palmerin seems to be this – that the French & Italian translations were printed before the Port: original. [7]  If certain blunders in the English version be in there also the point will be decided, & this I can get Horace to examine for me as to the French copy – that being in the Museum. If you could procure for me the dates of the editions in Lord Spencers library [8]  it would be of use. I have finished one volume of four to which the new edition will extend – translating anew a full half: so completely have I been taken in in a job which I undertook for the lucre of gain: To be sure I like the book as well as ever D Quixote did. [9] 

The little one & his mother go on well.

God bless you

RS

Friday Oct. 17. 1806.

I know not my dear Wynn how you will like these lines, or whether you will like them at all, – but I threw them off, such as they are, an hour after I heard of the old mans death, & now your double-paper has induced me to copy them fair & add the last six lines.

You will not wonder that I want to have another long poem in hand. it is something to think about in a solitary walk. & something to dream about if one lies awake at night. – which fills up the time till sleep comes, & does not prevent sleep – as the thoughts of any reasoning composition would do – because ideas come like breathing without any sensible effort. & one rather seems to receive than to produce them. I hesitate between three subjects – the Deluge, Pelayo the restorer of the Spanish Goths, [10]  & the first deliverance of Portugal from Castille – in which the Battle of Aljubarrota would be the main action.  [11]  William Taylor favours the first subject, – my Uncle would probably prefer the last, but I am inclined to think Pelayo the best of the three, tho I would far rather have an English story than either.

You do not perhaps know this history intimately enough to see its capabilities. Nothing more is required as data than one splendid event, characters of sufficient interest, & a final issue of sufficient importance. This is all which one need ask from history. My characters would be these. Pelayo – a hero of fifty, – on whom I could throw a new interest by making him not so much a Goth as a Cantabrian, – an ancient-Briton-Spaniard, – for which there is authority enough for my purpose. His daughter Ormisinda, Munuza the tributary governor who chuses to have her for his wife, & so irritates Pelayo to revolt. Young Alonso, who married her & became King in her right, Count Julian & Oppas among the Moors. Egilona the Queen of Rodrigo, now wife of a Moorish chief. Rodrigo himself as a hermit, & Florinda – in a state of half derangement, finally killing herself in her fathers sight. The storming of Gijon, the death of Munuza & the marriage of Alonso would form the conclusion. [12]  If machinery be worth a trial there is the Cave of Toledo, [13]  – & in this story that fable can hardly be omitted, – else I might use Catholick faith & work possible miracles by it.

In all this I have a second-sight of so many situations in which strong passions are called out. So much zeal, so much patriotism, so much intrepidity, remorse & hope, – such pictures of mountain solitude, religious caverns, desolated convents, & of that pervading life & spirit which historical truth would communicate to the whole – that to use a common phrase my fingers itch to be at it. And it is some inducement that I have already acquired so much knowledge of the whole temper, laws, & manners of the time & place.

If you tell Lord H. that I think of this & of Aljubarrota he will lift up his hands & eyes in deprecation of the Portugueze story, – for they completely Castillianized him in Spain. But he will like the thoughts of Pelayo. Yet in the Portugueze story there is one finer character, one finer incident than I can feign, & I have the advantage of knowing the ground, & all the accompaniments –

God bless you – I have written later than usual –

RS

Sunday night Oct 18. 1806