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Beinecke Library, GEN MSS 298, Series I, Box 1, folder 7. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 261–265.Dating note: the letter can be dated 28 October 1809 from internal evidence. Southey is writing in reply to a letter from Coleridge dated 20 October 1809, in which he requested him to ‘look over the eight numbers’ of The Friend and to write a letter ‘in a lively style’ on the obscurity of the material within them. See Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 259–260 [in part]. The first letter Southey wrote in answer to this request is Letter 1702 (dated Thursday 26 [October 1809]) in which he says he will write on ‘Saturday’, the day Southey gives at the bottom of this letter.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
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To the Friend.
I know not whether your subscribers have expected too much from you, but it appears to me that you expect too much from
your Subscribers, & that however accurately you may understand the diseases of the Age, you have certainly mistaken its temper. In
the first place Sir your Essays are too long. ‘Brevity, says a contemporary journalist, is the humour of the times; a tragedy must not
exceed fifteen hundred lines; a fashionable preacher must not trespass above fifteen minutes upon xxxxxx xxx his
congregation. We have short waistcoats & short campaigns; every thing must be short, – except law suits, speeches in Parliament
& Tax Tables.’was <is> expressly stated in the prospectus of a collection of Extracts called the Beauties of
Sentiment, that the Extracts would <shall> always be complete sense, & not very long.Lignum Vitæ
than the fashionable reader is who takes up one of your Papers from the <breakfast table,
parlour window, Sofa, Ottoman or Chaise-longue, thinking to amuse himself with a few minutes light-reading. We are informed upon the
authority of no less a man than Sir Richard Phillips, how ‘it has long been a
subject of just complaint among the lovers of English Literature that our Language has been deficient in Lounging or Parlour-window
books’ ana; under the general
title of ‘Lounging Books, or Light Reading.r Friend that your predecessors would never <would
never have> obtained their popularity because they unless their essays had been of this description, ‘Ομοιον ομοιψ
φιλον;
You have yourself observed that few converts were made by Burke,logical reasoning & metaphysical discussions, neither knew in what his arguments began nor in what they ended. You
have told me that the straightest line must be the shortest, – but do not you yourself sometimes nose out your nose out your
way hound-like in pursuit of truth, turning & winding & doubling & running roundabout, when the same object might be reachd
in a tenth part of the time by darting straight forward, like a greyhound, to the mark? – Burke failed of effect upon the people for
this reason; – there was the difficulty of mathematics without the precision in his writings; – you looked thro the process without
arriving at the proof. It was the fashion to read him, because of his rank as a political partizan; otherwise he would not have been
read. Even in the House of Commons he was admired more than he was listened to, – not a sentence came from him which was not pregnant
with seeds of thought, if it had fallen upon good ground; – yet his speeches convinced nobody, while the mellifluous orations of Mr Pittthe orations <because
they> were easily understood & as easily forgotten what mattered it to him that they were as easily forgotten? –
The Reader Sir must think before you he can understand you; – is it not a little unreasonable to require
from him an effort which you have yourself described as so very painful a one? & is not this effort not merely difficult
<but> in many cases impossible? All brains Sir were not made for thinking; – modern philosophy has thought taught us
that they are galvanic machines, & thinking is only an accident belonging to them. Intellect is in our
day not essential to the functions of life, – in the ordinary purposes <course> of life
<society> it is very commonly dispensed with; & we have lived Mr Friend, to witness experiments for
carrying on Government without it. This is surely a proof that it is a rare commodity, – & yet you are xxxxxxxxxx enough
to expect that <it> in all your subscribers? –
Give us your moral medicine in a more ‘elegant preparation’.r Solomon prefers the medium of a cordial,r Ching
exhibits his in Gingerbread nuts,r Barton in
wine.r Friend come with a tonic bolus,
___
My dear Coleridge
All this were it not for the Sir & the Mr Friend – is like a real letter from me to you, – I
fell into the strain without intending it, – & would not send it were it not to show you that I have attempted to do something.
xxxx From jest I got into earnest, & trying to pass from earnest to jest, very nearly became seditious. It was
against the grain & would not do. I had reread the ten eight last numbers, & the truth is they left me no heart for
jesting or for irony. – In time they will do their work, – it is the form of publication only that is unlucky, & that cannot now be
remedied. But this evil is merely temporary, – Give two or three amusing numbers & you will hear of admiration from every side –
Insert a few more poems, – any that you have except Christabel,which <for that> is of too much value, – There is scarcely any thing you could do which would excite so much notice as
if you were now to write the character of Buonaparte, announced in former times for ‘tomorrow’ & tomorrow
& tomorrow;on what grounds they have for hope.
I send you a letter of Stuarts – written in reply to an
application which I made to him for the foreign papers.t Pasley?
Saturday morning