Robert southey, the critical heritage

ROBERT SOUTHEY: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE


THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES

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 writer’s 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 writer’s
death.


ROBERT SOUTHEY
THE CRITICAL HERITAGE

Edited by

LIONEL MADDEN

London and New York

First Published in 1972
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
&
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001

Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1972 Lionel Madden

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 0-203-19727-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-19730-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-13444-7 (Print Edition)


To Mary



General Editor’s Preface
The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and nearcontemporaries 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 writer’s 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 quality—
perhaps 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 writer’s 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
author’s 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.

vii



Contents

xv
xvii
xix
1
35

PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
NOTE ON THE TEXT

The Fall of Robespierre (1794)
1 Unsigned review, Critical Review, November 1794
2 Unsigned notice, British Critic, May 1795

37
38

3 A Bristol view of Southey, 1795(?)

38

Joan of Arc (1796)
4

WORDSWORTH, from a letter to William Matthews, March

1796

5 JOHN AIKIN, unsigned review, Monthly Review, April 1796
6 From an unsigned review, Critical Review, June 1796
7 LAMB, from a letter to Coleridge, June 1796
8 Unsigned notice, Monthly Magazine, July 1796
9 From an unsigned review, Analytical Review, 1796
10 COLERIDGE, from three letters, November and December
1796, March 1797
Poems by Robert Southey (1797, 1799)
11 COLERIDGE, from two letters, December 1796 and April 1797
12 JOHN AIKIN, unsigned review, Monthly Review, March 1797
13 Parodies in the Anti-Jacobin, November and December 1797
14 LAMB, letter to Southey, March 1799
Thalaba the Destroyer (1801)
15 Unsigned review, British Critic, September 1801
16 Unsigned review, Monthly Mirror, October 1801
17 From an unsigned review, Monthly Magazine, January 1802
18 FRANCIS JEFFREY, unsigned review, Edinburgh Review, October
1802
19 WILLIAM TAYLOR, unsigned review, Critical Review, December
1803
ix

40
41
43
45
46
47
49
51

54
55
61
63
64
67
68
91


CONTENTS

Amadis of Gaul (1803)
20

WALTER SCOTT on Southey as translator, Edinburgh Review,

October 1803
21 From an unsigned review, British Critic, November 1804

96
97

Madoc (1805)
22

WORDSWORTH, from two letters to Sir George Beaumont,

June, July 1805

100

23

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH, from a letter to Lady Beaumont,

24

JOHN FERRIAR, unsigned review, Monthly Review, October

25
26
27
28

1805
From an unsigned review, Imperial Review, November 1805
From an unsigned review, Eclectic Review, December 1805
From an unsigned review, Literary Journal, 1805
From an unsigned review, General Review of British and
Foreign Literature, June 1806

June 1805

101
102
104
106
108
111

Metrical Tales and Other Poems (1805)
29 From an unsigned review, Critical Review, February 1805
30 WILLIAM TAYLOR, unsigned review, Annual Review, 1806

113
115

Specimens of the Later English Poets (1807)
31 From an unsigned review, Universal Magazine, July 1807

117

Letters from England (1807)
32

FRANCIS JEFFREY, unsigned review, Edinburgh Review, January

33

CHRISTOPHER LAKE MOODY, unsigned review, Monthly Review,

1808

121

April 1808

124

The Remains of Henry Kirke White (1807, 1822)
34 Southey as editor, Cabinet, March 1808

127

The Chronicle of the Cid (1808)
35
36
37

COLERIDGE, from a letter to Humphry Davy, December

1808

128

MRS THRALE on Southey, August 1808
BYRON, satire in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 1809

129
130

The Curse of Kehama (1810)
38 From an unsigned review, Monthly Mirror, February 1811
39 From an unsigned review, Critical Review, March 1811
x

132
134

CONTENTS

40 JOHN FOSTER, unsigned review, Eclectic Review, April 1811
41 From an unsigned review, Literary Panorama, June 1811
The History of Brazil (1810–19)
42 From an unsigned review, Eclectic Review, September 1810
43 JOSEPH LOWE, unsigned review, Monthly Review, December
1812
44
45
46
47
48

138
146
148
150

SHELLEY on Southey, 1811–12
BYRON on Southey, 1811–13
HENRY CRABB ROBINSON on Southey, 1811–15
JAMES SMITH, parody of Southey, 1812
WALTER SCOTT recommends Southey as Poet Laureate,

154
157
158
161

September 1813

169

The Life of Nelson (1813)
49 From an unsigned review, Critical Review, July 1813
50 From an unsigned review, British Critic, October 1813
51 From an unsigned review, Eclectic Review, June 1814
Roderick, The Last of the Goths (1814)
52 From an unsigned review, Theatrical Inquisitor, December
1814
53 JOHN HERMAN MERIVALE, unsigned review, Monthly Review,
March 1815
54 GROSVENOR CHARLES BEDFORD, unsigned review, Quarterly
Review, April 1815
55 JOHN TAYLOR COLERIDGE, unsigned review, British Critic,
April 1815
56 LAMB, from a letter to Southey, May 1815
57 From an unsigned review, Christian Observer, September
1815
58 From an unsigned review, British Review, November 1815
Carmen Triumphale for the Commencement
of the Year 1814 (1814)
59 From an unsigned review, Critical Review, February 1814
60 From an unsigned review, Scourge, February 1814
61 Unsigned review, Eclectic Review, April 1814
Odes to…the Prince Regent,
…the Emperor of Russia, and…
the King of Prussia (1814)

62 From an unsigned review, British Critic, July 1814
xi

171
173
174

175
176
179
183
186
188
190

194
196
198

204


CONTENTS

The Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo (1816)
63 From an unsigned review, Critical Review, May 1816
64 From an unsigned review, Monthly Review, June 1816
65 From an unsigned review, Augustan Review, July 1816
66 JOSIAH CONDER, unsigned review, Eclectic Review, August
1816

206
207
208
210

The Lay of the Laureate. Carmen Nuptiale (1816)
67

FRANCIS JEFFREY, unsigned review, Edinburgh Review, June

1816
68 WILLIAM HAZLITT, unsigned review, Examiner, July 1816
69 From an unsigned review, Augustan Review, August 1816
70 Unsigned notice, New Monthly Magazine, August 1816
71 JAMES HOGG, parody in The Poetic Mirror, 1816

215
219
222
224
225

Wat Tyler (1817)
WILLIAM HONE, Reformists’ Register, February 1817
WILLIAM HAZLITT, unsigned review, Examiner, March 1817

72
73
74

75
76
77
78

From a debate in the House of Commons, March 1817
From an unsigned review, Black Dwarf, March 1817
Unsigned notice, Literary Gazette, March 1817
BYRON, from a letter to John Murray, May 1817
Southey, satirized: The Changeling, 1817

79

LEIGH HUNT, ‘Extraordinary Case of the Late Mr. Southey’,

232
233
236
239
240
242
243

A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P. (1817)
Examiner, May 1817
80 Unsigned notice, Monthly Review, June 1817
81 Unsigned notice, New Monthly Magazine, June 1817

246
253

255

82 GEORGE TICKNOR meets Southey, May 1817
83 COLERIDGE on Southey, 1817
84 BYRON, dedication of Don Juan, 1818
85 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK on Southey, 1818
86 ‘The nine-pin of reviews’, BYRON on Southey, 1819

256
258
261
265
266

The Life of Wesley and the Rise and
Progress of Methodism (1820)
87 Unsigned notice, Monthly Magazine, June 1820
88 RICHARD WATSON, a Methodist view, 1820
89 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART, unsigned review, Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine, February 1824

272
273

xii

279


CONTENTS

A Vision of Judgement (1821)
90 From an unsigned review, Literary Gazette, March 1821
91 From an unsigned review, Literary Chronicle and Weekly
Review, March 1821
92 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH, from a letter to Mrs Clarkson,
March 1821
93 From an unsigned review, Monthly Review, June 1821
94 BYRON, The Two Foscari, 1821

286
287
290

95 Southey satirized: Peter Pindar’s Ghost, 1821
96 BYRON’s Vision of Judgment, 1822

293
295

284
285

History of the Peninsular War (1823–32)
97 From an unsigned review, Literary Gazette, December 1822
98 From an unsigned review, Monthly Censor, March 1823
99 From an unsigned review, Eclectic Review, July 1823
100 WORDSWORTH, from a letter to Southey, February-March
1827
The Book of the Church (1824)

101 From an unsigned review, Universal Review, March 1824
102 From an unsigned review, British Critic, May 1824
103 From an unsigned review, Examiner, October 1824

309
310
311

104

314

WILLIAM HAZLITT, The Spirit of the Age, 1824

303
305
307
308

A Tale of Paraguay (1825)
105 From an unsigned review, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine,
September 1825
323
106 From an unsigned review, Eclectic Review, 1825
324
107
108
109
110

111
112
113
114

WILLIAM BENBOW, A Scourge for the Laureate, 1825(?)
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK, ‘Fly-by-Night’, 1825–6
WILLIAM HAZLITT on Southey’s prose style, 1826
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN on Southey’s epics, 1829

326
328
331
332

Sir Thomas More, or, Colloquies on the
Progress and Prospects of Society (1829)
WORDSWORTH, from a letter to George Huntly Gordon, May
1829
334
From an unsigned review, Monthly Review, 1829
335
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, unsigned review, Edinburgh
Review, January 1830
341
From an unsigned review, Fraser’s Magazine, June 1830
380
xiii

CONTENTS

115
116

JOHN STUART MILL on Southey, October 1831
BULWER-LYTTON on Southey, 1833

386
387

117

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART, unsigned review, Quarterly Review,

118

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON on The Doctor, 1836–8

The Doctor (1834–47)
March 1834

390
394

395
119 THOMAS CARLYLE meets Southey, February 1835
120 GEORGE TICKNOR, reunion with Southey, September 1835 396
121 Evaluation by HENRY CRABB ROBINSON, January 1839
397

122 HERMAN MERIVALE on Southey’s poetry, Edinburgh Review,
January 1839
398
123 Reminiscences by THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 1839
408
124 WORDSWORTH’s epitaph, 1843
416
125 LORD SHAFTESBURY on Southey’s character, March 1843
417
126 WORDSWORTH on Southey and Coleridge, October 1844
418
127 JOSEPH COTTLE on Southey in early life, 1847
419
128 JOHN ANSTER, unsigned review, North British Review,
February 1850
420
129 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN on Southey’s epics, March 1850
422
130 CHARLOTTE BRONTË on Southey, April 1850
423
131 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, Fraser’s Magazine, December 1850 424
132 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART and WHITWELL ELWIN, Quarterly
Review, December 1850
430
133 WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE, Edinburgh Review, April 1851 440
134 WALTER BAGEHOT on Southey, 1853
448
135 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE on Southey, 1855
449
136 SAMUEL ROGERS on Southey, 1856

450
137 Southey as essayist and reviewer, Bentley’s Miscellany, 1856 451
138 Southey’s character: a tribute from THACKERAY, 1860
454
139 GEORGE BORROW on Southey, 1862
456
140 LEWIS CARROLL parodies Southey, 1865
457
141 THOMAS CARLYLE’s reminiscences of Southey, JanuaryMarch 1867
459
142 JOHN DENNIS on Southey’s prose, 1876
467
143 GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS on the versification of Thalaba, 1878 473
144 EDWARD DOWDEN on Southey, 1879
474
483
485

BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

xiv


Preface
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 Southey—himself a
writer who has been too little studied—but also of the critical ideals and

prejudices of early nineteenth-century reviewers.
There is no need to argue large claims for Southey’s 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 Southey’s 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 Southey’s
Life and Correspondence in 1850. A few—notably Carlyle’s
reminiscences and the evaluation by Edward Dowden which closes this
volume—date from the following two decades.

xv



Acknowledgments
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, 1790–1815; and John
O.Hayden, The Romantic Reviewers, 1802–1824.
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.

xvii



Abbreviations
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.
Curry

New Letters of Robert Southey, ed. by Kenneth Curry (2 vols,

New York, 1965).
Life
The Life and Correspondence of the Late Robert Southey, ed.
by his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey (6 vols, 1849–
50).
Simmons Jack Simmons, Southey (1945).
Warter Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, ed. by his sonin-law, John Wood Warter (4 vols, 1856).

xix



Introduction
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.

This was Southey’s description of himself as a professional author in
1804.1 Nine years later Byron wrote in his journal: ‘His appearance is
Epic, and he is the only existing entire man of letters. All the others have
some pursuit annexed to their authorship’ (No. 45). Byron proceeded to
praise Southey’s ‘talents of the first order’, finding them displayed in his
‘perfect’ prose and in those passages of his poems which are ‘equal to
any thing’. To the modern reader this seems high commendation from
one who had already gibed at Southey in English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers and who was later to appear as his most powerful satirist and
critic. The contradictions in Byron’s attitude to Southey, however, may
be seen as indicative of the complex ambiguity of contemporary
responses to his work.

For most of the twentieth century Southey has been largely ignored
by literary critics, though he has continued to hold an apologetic place
in literary histories. For serious readers in the first half of the nineteenth
century he was an influential figure whose writings demanded critical
assessment. Although he ridiculed ‘the absurdity of those critics who
have classed together three writers so utterly unlike as [Coleridge] and
Wordsworth and myself, for the convenience of abuse’,2 he both suffered
and gained as a poet from the determination of critics to assume a
convenient conspiracy of intention between the ‘Lake Poets’. Even Scott
followed the Edinburgh Review in thinking that Wordsworth and
Southey were engaged in founding a new school of poetry.3
After his early outpourings of revolutionary enthusiasm Southey’s
political position changed under the stress of European experiences. To
the younger radicals he became the symbol of the political time-server,
willing to surrender his ideals for sordid and selfish motives. His reasons
for accepting the Laureateship in 1813 were widely misinterpreted. The
fact that his earlier earnest attempts at epic poetry were succeeded by
adulatory Tory verses seemed to lend support to the radical attacks. The
publication by his enemies of his early unpublished revolutionary Wat
1


SOUTHEY

Tyler, at a time when he was advocating in the Quarterly Review
repressive measures against revolutionaries, fixed his image as a figure
of scorn and contempt among a large section of the population.
It is paradoxical, yet indicative of Southey’s immense variety and
vitality, that, at the very time when he was being bitterly reviled as
Poet Laureate, his strongest energies were being channelled into prose

writings. He himself knew that his impulse to write poetry was dying
and he had begun consciously to seek fame as a historian. During the
early Laureate years he was hard at work on his great History of Brazil
and full of plans for future historical activities. His Life of Nelson was
published during the year in which he became Poet Laureate and The
Life of Wesley appeared shortly before A Vision of Judgement. His
transition from serious poet to prose-writer posed problems of
adjustment for contemporary critics. Certainly the more perceptive of
them were quick to recognize the superior claims of Southey’s prose
over much of his poetry. General opinion reacted slowly, however, and
perhaps the dominant impression of Southey as in some way a rival
and reflector of Wordsworth has never finally been superseded.
The problem of assessing Southey’s importance was made especially
severe by the enormous bulk and variety of his output. There is certainly
a strong element of fatal facility in Southey’s literary career. As a poet he
attempted a wide range of short verse forms, ballads, verse-dramas,
epics and occasional pieces. He was, too, an inveterate experimenter in
versification—a trait which made him a particularly attractive target
for parody. As a prose-writer he was an ambitious historian, biographer
and social commentator as well as a regular and hard-working
periodical reviewer and essayist. In addition, he published a novel and
undertook a large amount of work as editor and translator. His more
ambitious works were extensively and seriously reviewed, his
controversial pieces were satirized and defended with heat, and his
editions and translations were evaluated in accordance with the
standards of the time. It is therefore not surprising that most
contemporaries found it difficult to reach a balanced view of his
achievement and that the debate about his merits continued to live on
after his death.
As early as 1804 Southey was claiming immunity from the pains

inflicted by reviewers: ‘as for being vexed at a review—I should as soon
be fevered by a flea-bite!’4 He told his friend John Rickman: ‘I look upon
the invention of reviews to be the worst injury which literature has
received since its revival.’5 As a regular reviewer himself, however, he
2


THE CRITICAL HERITAGE

could scarcely be totally insensitive to the influence of criticism.
Nevertheless, he does seem to have possessed a fundamentally selfcontained character, writing his various works with little regard for
contemporary opinion under the twin impulses of desire for ultimate
fame and immediate financial necessity.
The motive of financial necessity is especially important in Southey’s
life because he possessed a generous nature which readily recognized the
duty to provide for dependants. In 1844, shortly after Southey’s death,
Wordsworth wrote a penetrating comparison of the poetic achievement
of Coleridge and Southey in which he stated (No. 126):
Now I do believe…that no man can write verses that will live in the hearts of his
Fellow creatures but through an over powering impulse in his own mind,
involving him often times in labour that he cannot dismiss or escape from,
though his duty to himself and others may require it.

Southey could never absolve himself from his duty to others for the sake
of his art. For this reason he undertook much arduous and souldestroying work which inevitably dulled his imagination and restricted
his freedom. In 1807 he wrote of himself, perhaps drawing a contrast
with Coleridge: ‘No person can be more thoroughly convinced that
goodness is a better thing than genius, and that genius is no excuse for
those follies and offences which are called its eccentricities.’6 The
sentiment is worthy and Southey’s principles were undoubtedly noble.

No reader of his letters, indeed, can fail to esteem him very highly as a
man. Nevertheless, it is clear that, by deliberately choosing a life of
systematic application and by shunning the exhausting excitement of
imaginative involvement in favour of calm and dispassionate
detachment, Southey effectively crushed his own ambitions of major
poetic achievement. The process by which critics gradually assessed the
strengths and limitations of his varied activities is traced in the following
pages.

EARLY REPUTATION
Southey’s earliest ambitions were poetic, his earliest politics
revolutionary. His career commenced effectively in the autumn of 1794
when he made his first appearance in the London press with a poem—
one of his ‘Botany Bay Eclogues’—in the Morning Chronicle. In the
same year the hastily written verse-drama, The Fall of Robespierre, was
published at Cambridge under the name of Coleridge, though Southey
3


SOUTHEY

himself had contributed two of the three acts, and Poems by Robert
Lovell and Robert Southey was published at Bath. Both volumes
received encouraging if temperate praise.
During 1794 Southey also submitted for publication by
subscription an epic poem of revolutionary sentiments. The
subscription plan was unproductive but in the following year Joseph
Cottle, the young Bristol bookseller, heard part of the poem and
immediately offered Southey favourable terms for its publication.
Joan of Arc, published in 1796, brought Southey a modest degree of

fame. Its political ideas attracted laudatory reviews from the
Analytical, Monthly and Critical Reviews, all of which had
revolutionary sympathies. John Aikin, in the Monthly Review, found
the sentiments ‘uniformly noble, liberal, enlightened, and breathing
the purest spirit of general benevolence and regard to the rights and
claims of human kind’ (No. 5). The Critical Review predicted for
Southey a place ‘in the first class of English poets’ (No. 6), a judgment
echoed by the less politically partisan Charles Lamb, who stated: ‘On
the whole, I expect Southey one day to rival Milton’ (No. 7).
Wordsworth, however, found the preface ‘a very conceited
performance’ and the poem ‘on the whole of very inferior execution’
(No. 4), while Coleridge acutely recognized two basic critical points in
any assessment of Southey’s poetry, now or later—his ‘natural,
perspicuous, & dignified’ language on the one hand and his lack of
‘that toil of thinking, which is necessary in order to plan a Whole’ (No.
10).
If sterner critics expressed their doubts in private correspondence,
however, the favourable tone of the reviews ensured that Southey’s
subsequent poetry would receive serious consideration. The following
year saw him busy revising Joan of Arc for a new edition. In 1797, too,
Cottle published a volume of Poems by Robert Southey. Both this and a
second volume of Poems in 1799 had successful sales. The Critical
Review and the Monthly Review again united to praise Southey, Aikin
asserting in the latter that ‘Genius is a despotic power, and irresistibly
commands homage’ (No. 12). Commendation again proved easier to
win from the reviews than from Coleridge, who remarked to Cottle that
‘Wordsworth complains, with justice, that Southey writes too much at
his ease’, a criticism which Coleridge endorsed in his own analysis of
Southey’s ‘fluency’ and ‘facility’. The same letter to Cottle contains an
interesting early attack upon Southey’s tendency to show too strong an

interest in the mere mechanics of plot for its own sake (No. 11).
4