Lionel Madden - Robert Southey

General Editor: B. C. Southam

The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writers work and its place within a literary tradition.

The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries.

Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writers death.

Edited by

Lionel Madden

First Published in 1972

Reprinted in 1995 by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane

London EC4P4EE

&

29 West 35th Street

New York, NY 10001

Compilation, introduction, notes and index 1972 Lionel Madden

Printed in Great Britain by

TJ Press, Padstow, Cornwall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN 0-415-13444-7

DOI: 10.4324/9780203197271

To Mary

The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near-contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writers historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures.

The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Clearly, for many of the highly productive and lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative qualityperhaps even registering incomprehension!

For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writers lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear.

In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the authors reception to what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged.

B.C.S.

This selection from the extensive body of contemporary writing about Robert Southey is intended as a contribution to our understanding of the Romantic period in English literature. It is hoped that the documents will help to increase our knowledge not only of Southeyhimself a writer who has been too little studiedbut also of the critical ideals and prejudices of early nineteenth-century reviewers.

There is no need to argue large claims for Southeys literary achievement in order to justify a study of this nature. There is obvious interest and value in examining the judgments of his early reviewers and commentators. His contemporaries saw Southey as a central figure whose work as poet, historian, biographer, social critic, reviewer and novelist demanded serious attention. This selection is designed to illustrate as far as possible the range of his writings and the attitudes adopted by contemporaries to his work and, to a lesser extent, his personality.

The bewildering variety of Southeys writings made any attempt at a balanced assessment particularly difficult during his lifetime. However, the lack of modern estimates of his literary achievement makes any such early assessments especially interesting. It has therefore been decided to include a small selection of important judgments written after his death in 1843. Several of these were inspired by the publication of Southeys Life and Correspondence in 1850. A fewnotably Carlyles reminiscences and the evaluation by Edward Dowden which closes this volumedate from the following two decades.

I should like to acknowledge permission received from the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for the extracts from The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley and The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and from Messrs J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd for the extracts from The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb and Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and their Writers. I am very grateful for financial assistance in the form of a grant from the University of Leicester Research Board.

Like all students of Southey I have derived considerable help from the work of Dr Geoffrey Carnall, Professor Kenneth Curry and Professor Jack Simmons. In the task of identifying contributors to periodicals I have benefited especially from three works: the first volume of The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, edited by Walter Houghton; B. C. Nangle, The Monthly Review, second series, 17901815, and John O. Hayden, The Romantic Reviewers, 18021824.

During the preparation of this volume I have received much valuable assistance and kind encouragement, especially from Professor Jack Simmons, Professor Philip Collins, Dr Lois Potter and Mr Edward Rushworth of the University of Leicester and Professor Joel Wiener of the City University of New York. Mrs Win Abell has assisted generously with the typing. As with my previous books my wife Mary has given both general support and the benefit of her own specialized knowledge in the preparation and checking of the manuscript.

Abbreviations have been kept to a minimum. The following short entries are used for works to which frequent reference is made in notes to the Introduction and in the headnotes.

CurryNew Letters of Robert Sotithey, ed. by Kenneth Curry (2 vols, New York, 1965).LifeThe Life and Correspondence of the Late Robert Southey, ed. by his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey(6 vols, 184950).SimmonsJack Simmons, Southey().WarterSelections from the Letters of Robert Southey, ed. by his son-in-law, John Wood Warter (4 vols, 1856).

DOI: 10.4324/9780203197271-0

Imagine me in this great study of mine from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, and from tea till supper, in my old black coat, my corduroys alternately with the long worsted pantaloons and gaiters in one, and the green shade, and sitting at my desk, and you have my picture and my history.

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