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British Library, Add MS 47553. TR; 3p. . Previously published: Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 359–360 [undated]. Note on MS: The letter is a reply to that sent by Shelley, 26 June 1820. Southey’s letter survives in an undated transcript by Edith May Southey, which was sent by Southey to John Taylor Coleridge on 19 January 1821. Our copy text is taken from this. The text contains very minor verbal differences from the version published in Dowden. These differences do not affect the sense. Dating note: Dating from content and from information in other surviving correspondence; see Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 29 July 1820, Letter 3516.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt
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You have done me justice in believing that I am not the author of the criticism in the Quarterly
Review upon the Revolt of Islam.now know
about him, it would be indeed a disgusting picture that we should exhibit, but it would be an unanswerable comment
on our text; it is not easy for those who read only, to conceive how much low pride, how much
cold selfishness, how much unmanly cruelty are consistent with the laws of this “universal” and “lawless love.”
But we must only use our knowledge to check the groundless hopes which we were once prone to entertain of him’
(471). The article had, moreover, described Shelley as ‘an unsparing imitator’ and
I reply to you Sir because I cannot think of you without the deepest compassion. Eight years ago
you were somewhat displeased when I declined disputing with you upon points which are beyond the reach of the human
intellect telling you that the great difference between us was, that you were then nineteen & I was eight &
thirty. Would that the difference were no greater now! You wrote to me when you sent me your Alastor that as you
tolerated my opinions, you supposed I should tolerate yours.
The tone of your letter gives me a right to address you thus & there is one passage in it
which induces a hope that I may not be addressing you in vain, for it appears that deadly as your principles have
proved, they have not yet wholly hardened your heart. Attend I beseech you to its warnings. Do not let any feeling
of pride withold you from acknowledging to yourself how grievously & how fatally you have erred. You rejected
Christianity before you knew, before you could possibly have known, upon what evidence it rests: how utterly unlike
in this & in every other respect to the superstitions & fables of mens devices with which you in your
presumptuousness have classed it. Look to that evidence while you are yet existing in time, – & you may yet
live to bless God for any visitations of sickness xx & suffering which by bringing you to a sense of
your own miserable condition may enable you to hope for forgiveness & teach you where to look for it. God in
his infinite mercy bring you to this better mind!
This is not the language of party animosity or of personal ill will. Of the latter you will at once acquit me, – & if you do not acquit me as readily of the former it is because you do not know me enough, & are too much under its influence yourself. I can think of you only as of an individual whom I have known & of whom I once entertained high hopes, admiring his talents & giving him credit for good feelings & virtuous desires, & whom I now regard not more with condemnation than with pity. Believe me therefore to be