Sales catalogue 525: Maggs Bros

Date:
1929
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/80
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 525: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Southey (Robert)—coxtinued. has obvicusly no relation whatever to Thalaba, nor can there be a stronger proof of want of discernment or want of candour, than in grouping together those men so different in style as Wordsworth & Coleridge & myself under one head. The fault of Coleridge has been a too-swelling diction. You who know his poems know whether they ought to be abused for mean language. Of Thalaba the language rises & falls with the subject & is always in a high key. I wish you would read the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth, some of them are very faulty, but indeed I would risk my whole future fame on the assertion that they will one day be regarded as the finest poems in our language. I refer you particularly to The Brothers, a poem on Tintern Abbey, & Michael. Now with Wordsworth I have no intimacy, scarcely any acquaintance, in whatever we resemble each other, the resemblance has sprung, not I believe from chance, but because we have both studied poetry, & indeed it is no light or easy study, in the same school, in the works of Stature, & in the heart of Man. : ‘¢ T have had an unpleasant affair with my publishers. I engaged to make a version of Amadis of Gaul anonymously, for which I have sixty pounds, forty more on the sale of the edition, & 30 on the sale of a second edition. They very in- cautiously, tho certainly: with no mean motive, mentioned my name, & it got into the new spapers. I have been therefore obliged to make a new ‘agreement, to avow the work, receive £100 instead of the 60, fifty when the editisn is sold, & half the profit ‘of the after editions.’ Etc. eve I looked in your letter for some mention of the books by the last convoy & was disappointed. My hope is that they may be certain works which will be of use to the Chronicle of the Cid, at which I have worked vigorously for the last week. If you will send me tidings what they are I shall then know whether it be advisable to have them down here. : *€ Arthur Aikin I observe in the last Annual, has twice made me unintellig- ible by omitting extracts, disfigured me as usual by clumsy misprints so like the real word that none but he who wrote it rightly, would know why the sentence was faulty, & as usual drawn his expurgatorial pen over many of those things which would have most amused his readers. It amuses me to think of the self complacency which he feels in the use of that pen expurgatorial, & how fortunate he, no doubt, considers it for Wm. Taylor & for me that our reviewals are to be revised by him before they appear before the public.’? Etc. 1823 SOUTHEY (ROBERT). merOGRAPH “LETTER SIGNED TO REM PHOMAS BAKER. I$ pp., 4to. Keswick, 29th June, 1835. £2 10s Cha ea My knowledge of Dr. Bell’s character is founded upon an intimacy of twenty years & the most ample documents relating to the whole ‘course of. his life. With my review of it Mr. Bamford is well acquainted if he has received a letter upon that specific subject which I addressed to him about six weeks ago. ‘‘The extracts from your own letters shall be communicated to you at a convenient time, for any alteration or omissions that you may think proper. Meantime permit me again to assure you that age & experience have made me a cautious writer : that one of my first wishes in this work is to render honour where honour is due; that no person who deserved well of Dr. Bell will find me unjust to his deserts, or backward in acknowledging them.”’ Etc.