1438. Robert Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, [March 1808] ⁠* 

My dear Wynn

I congratulate you on the birth of a child, [1]  & will not condole with you because <tho> it is a daughter, because there are a thousand & one reasons why it is best that daughters should come first. You do not seem to have understood by my letter of annunciation that I should have left Keswick before your reply could x reach it. I have been nearly a month from home, – a few days Tom & I past at Liverpool seeing Roscoe, Rathbone, [2]  Shepherd [3]  &c – & had it been quite sure that we should have found you at no inconvenient season, perhaps I might have crost the river, – in which case had there come on a storm so as to endanger the ferry boat, I xxxx <could> not have prayed to the Lord to have Mersey upon me. – What a face of abomination you will make at that pundigrion!

We halted two days with Sir Ed. Littleton in Staffordshire, & then Tom & I parted, – he going to Bristol to put himself under the surgeons hand, – I to Lichfield, where I made a short stay with Miss Seward. Then I hastened to town, & here I have been since Monday week, packing up books – trampling over the streets of this vile city. As usual the atmosphere has provd a complete malaria to me. How indeed should it be otherwise, when it is a compound of fen-fog, chimney smoke, smuts & pulverised horse-dung! The little leisure I have is employed in blowing my nose with interludes of coughing.

My Uncle is trying to get some preferment in the place of that he has lost, & if Freres [4]  activity were equal to his good will he will have good chance of success. As it is, neither he xx I nor I have any sanguine hopes. – My own affairs are not in the pleasantest way. It cannot quite be said of me laudatur & alget, [5]  – but if I do not wholly give myself up to writing in reviews & magazines,& once more spinning verses for the newspaper it will very soon come to it. One edition of Espriella [6]  has sold, – it requires the sale of a second to balance my account with Longman, – & it is most likely that the second will sell. The small edition of Madoc [7]  has not yet paid its expences. – the quarto copies [8]  are waste paper. Palmerin [9]  has just paid. I have that, the Madoc (which will in time drop off) – & the yet unpublished Cid [10]  to look to for the supplies of the current year. – Whatever Brazil [11]  may produce is anticipated. – it will go to discharge a debt contracted for Harry during the last 7 years. [12]  – Do not xx <however> suppose that I am either out of humour with the world, or out of heart myself. The 200 £ a year which is necessary for my expenditure is within my reach – the Annual Review will yield me from 70 to 80; – the Athenaeum 30, – & I am solicited to become poet to the Courier at a guinea per week. [13]  This offer I have declined, xxxxxx & chuse rather to work by the piece, than trust to periodical exertion, which very probably it might not be in my power to command. Verses however for that respectable paper I shall assuredly soon begin to write, – for this efficient reason that it is the only way in which they will pay me for the paper on which they are written.

There is a buz of envy xxxx beginning against Walter Scott, & the world are looking for blemishes in Marmion as eagerly as they hunted for beauties in the Lay. [14]  The whole edition of 2000 was subscribed for among the booksellers, & they would have taken more could they have had them. .. yet unless I am much mistaken Scott has killed the goose which laid the golden eggs. The story is enough for a ballad & not for more, & the poet is made subservient to the antiquarian not the antiquarian to the poet. It has beautiful parts, – yet – before it appeared I thought within myself how glad I should be to write such a poem at half-price, – now that it has and I have seen it x no such wish remains.

I am afraid we shall miss each other. I stay a fortnight longer in town, then go down to Taunton to see if by any power of persuasion I can get some help for Harry out of Mr T. Southey, whom you may perceive I disown as uncle by that formal & right proper appellation. On my way back I shall be too homesick to halt anywhere, – even if I could spare the time. Come in the summer & see me in my glory, with my books about me & my three children, – & see how thoroughly happy a man can be who is satisfied with that the objects of pursuit which he has chosen are such as it becomes him to pursue.

God bless you.

RS.

Friday.