Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T02:05:09.617Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Robert Southey and the Language of Social Discipline

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Philip Harling
Get access

Extract

Robert Southey is probably still best remembered as a versifying turncoat, the most reactionary and least anthologized Lake poet. He owes this reputation to the reformers of his own day, who took it amiss when he renounced his youthful dreams of radical egalitarianism and appeared to exchange them for the £300 a year he made by scribbling Court-ordered odes as Poet Laureate. By the late 1810s, opposition M.P.s were scolding him on the Commons floor for urging the suppression of just the sort of republican sentiments that he himself had committed to paper in the 1790s. Byron memorably sent him up as an apostate hack:

He had written praises of a regicide;

He had written praises of all kings whatever;

He had written for republics far and wide,

And then against them bitterer than ever;

He had sung against all battles, and again

In their high praise and glory; he had call'd

Reviewing “the ungentle craft,” and then

Become as base a critic as e'er crawl'd–

Fed, paid, and pamper'd by the very men

By whom his muse and morals had been maul'd:

He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,

And more of both than anybody knows.

Despite being the target of such devastating attack, Southey nevertheless has had plenty of defenders over the last century and a half. Most of them have stressed his consistent commitment to humanitarian interventionism. Cuthbert Southey established this far more positive critical tradition by stressing the reforms that his father had repeatedly advocated in print: reduction of child labor in factories; addition of Anglican churches and clergymen, especially in poor urban districts; public works schemes in times of distress; land allotments for poor laborers; cultivation of waste lands by paupers; reduction of the Bloody Code and of corporal punishment in the military, along with some of the more punitive measures enshrined in the poor laws and game laws; establishment of savings banks, emigration schemes, Protestant sisterhoods of charity, and, most importantly, a national system of Anglican, state-aided popular education.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , Winter 1998 , pp. 630 - 655
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates 25: 1090—94 (14 03 1817)Google ScholarPubMed.

2 Byron, , The Vision of Judgment (1822), in Madden, Lionel, ed., Southey: The Critical Heritage (London and Boston, 1972), pp. 299–300Google Scholar. See also Hayden, John O., The Romantic Reviewers 1802—1824 (Chiaigo, 1969), pp. 118–19Google Scholar. For Byron's hatred of Southey as the man who had labeled him the master of the Satanic School of poetry, see e.g. Smiles, Samuel, ed., A Publisher and his Friends: Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray, 2 vols. (London, 1891), 1: 399–400Google Scholar, Byron to Murray, 24 Nov. 1818.

3 Southey, C. C., ed., The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols. (London, 1849–1850), 5: 5–6 (hereafter cited as Life and Correspondence)Google Scholar.

4 Quoted in Madden, , Southey: The Critical Heritage, p. 417Google Scholar, from Shaftesbury's diary entry of 24 March 1843. See also Carnall, Geoffrey, Robert Southey and His Age: The Development of a Conservative Mind (Oxford, 1960), pp. 188–90Google Scholar.

5 Dicey, A. V., Lectures on the Relation Between the Law and Public Opinion, (2nd ed.; London, 1926), p. 224Google Scholar.

6 Cobban, Alfred, Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century (London, 1929), pp. 207, 229Google Scholar.

7 Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society: 1780—1950 (London, 1958), pp. 22–23Google Scholar.

8 Eastwood, David, Robert Southey and the Intellectual Origins of Romantic Conservatism, English Historical Review 104 (1989): esp. 310–13, 325–28, 330–31Google Scholar; quoted from 331. See also Brinton, Crane, The Political Ideas of the English Romanticists (London, 1926), pp. 203, 208Google Scholar; Bernhardt-Kabisch, Emest, Robert Southey (Boston, 1977), pp. 164–65Google Scholar.

9 Curry, Kenneth, Southey (London, 1975), p. 10Google Scholar; Carnall, , Robert Southey and His Age, pp. 14–16Google Scholar.

10 See esp. Holmes, Richard, Coleridge: Early Visions (London, 1989), ch. 4Google Scholar; Carnall, , Robert Southey and His Age, pp. 28–31Google Scholar.

11 Madden, , Southey: The Critical Heritage, p. 155Google Scholar, Shelley to Elizabeth Hitchener, 7 Jan. 1812.

12 For attributions to Southey, I have relied on Hill, and Shine, Helen Chadwick, The Quarterly Review Under Gifford (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1949)Google Scholar, and on Houghton, Walter, ed., The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824—1900, 5 vols. (Toronto, 1966–1989), 1: 703–20Google Scholar.

13 I confess to being one of the perpetrators of this managerial image. See e.g. Harling, Philip, The Waning of Old Corruption: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1779—1846 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 150–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Derry, John, Governing Temperament under Pitt and Liverpool, in Cannon, John, ed., The Whig Ascendancy: Colloquies on Hanoverian England (New York, 1981), pp. 125–45Google Scholar; Derry, John, Reaction and Reform: England in the Early Nineteenth Century (London, 1968), p. 91Google Scholar; Thompson, Neville, Wellington After Waterloo (London, 1986), p. 3Google Scholar; Gash, Norman, Lord Liverpool and the Foundation of Conservative Policy, in Butler, Lord, ed., The Conservatives: A History from their Origins to 1965 (London, 1977), pp. 51–53Google Scholar; Brock, W. R., Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism 1820 to 1827 (Cambridge, 1939), pp. 1–4Google Scholar; Brady, Alexander, William Huskisson and Liberal Reform (Oxford, 1928), pp. 170–72Google Scholar.

14 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (1963), esp. chs. 14–15Google Scholar.

15 See e.g. Graham, Walter, Tory Criticism in the Quarterly Review 1809—1853 (London, 1921), pp. 2–5, 8–9Google Scholar; Grierson, H. J. C., ed., Letters of Sir Walter Scott, 12 vols. (London, 1932–1937), 2: 127–30Google Scholar, Scott to George Ellis, 18 Nov. 1818.

16 Gordon, Mary Wilson, Christopher North: A Memoir of John Wilson, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1862), 2: 73Google Scholar, John Gibson Lockhart to John Wilson [1824].

17 Warter, J. W., ed., Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols. (London, 1856), 3: 87Google Scholar, Southey to Grosvenor Bedford, 6 Jan. 1818. See also Life and Correspondence, 4: 15Google ScholarPubMed, Southey to Neville White, 25 Jan. 1813; ibid., 3: 59, Southey to Grosvenor Bedford, 29 Jan. 1814.

18 Smiles, , ed., A Publisher and his Friends, 1: 285Google Scholar, Gifford to John Murray, ? May 1815.

19 Quoted in Curry, , Southey, p. 130Google Scholar.

20 Eastwood, David, “Robert Southey and the Meanings of Patriotism,” Journal of British Studies 31 (1992): 286–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 “Evelyn's Memoirs,” Quarterly Review 19 (04 1818): 54 [hereafter cited as QR]Google Scholar.

22 “Life and Services of Captain Beaver,” QR 41 (11 1829): 386–87Google Scholar.

23 Eastwood, David, “Patriotism Personified: Robert Southey's Life of Nelson Reconsidered,” Mariner's Mirror 77 (1991): 143–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 “Coxe-Life of Marlborough,” QR 23 (05 1820): 72Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., p. 23.

26 “Life of Wellington,” QR 13 (07 1815): 470Google Scholar.

27 “Life of Wellington,” QR 13 (04 1815): 274Google Scholar.

28 “Great Britain in 1833,” QR 50 (10 1833): 150Google Scholar.

29 “Life of Wellington,” QR 13 (07 1815): 479Google Scholar.

30 Life and Correspondence, 1: 46Google ScholarPubMed, Southey to Rickman, 9 Jan. 1800. See also Carnall, , Robert Southey and His Age, pp. 55–59Google Scholar.

31 “Parliamentary Reform,” QR 16 (10 1816): 232Google Scholar.

32 “Life of Wellington,” QR 13 (04 1815): 230Google Scholar.

33 “Miot's Mémoires de l'Expédition en Egypte,” QR 13 (04 1815): 54Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., pp. 38–39.

35 “Life of Wellington,” QR 13 (07 1815): 481Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., 482–83, 486–88.

37 “Miot's Mémoires de l'Expédition en Egypte,” QR 13 (04 1815): 38–39Google Scholar.

38 “The Portuguese Observer,” QR 4 (08 1810): 23Google Scholar.

39 “Life of Wellington,” QR 13 (04 1815): 260Google Scholar.

40 Simmons, Jack, Southey (New Haven, 1948), pp. 164–65Google Scholar; Carnall, , Robert Southey and his Age, pp. 215–20Google Scholar; Madden, , Southey: The Critical Heritage, p. 154Google Scholar, Percy Bysshe Shelley to Elizabeth Hitchener, 26 Dec. 1811.

41 See e.g. Life and Correspondence, 4: 294Google Scholar, Southey to Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, 1 Jan. 1818.

42 Ibid., 4: 155–56, Southey to Sharon Turner, 2 Apr. 1816.

43 See e.g. “History and Present State of America,” QR 2 (11 1809): 327–28Google Scholar.

44 “Prince Polignac–Revolution of the Three Days,” QR 48 (10 1832): 284Google Scholar.

45 See e.g. “Dymond-On the Principles of Morality,” QR 44 (01 1831): 92–3Google Scholar.

46 See e.g. “On the Evangelical Sects,” QR 4 (11 1810): 488–505Google Scholar; “History of the Dissenters,” QR 10 (10 1813): 132–4Google Scholar

47 See e.g. Smiles, , ed., Memoir and Correspondence, 2: 269–70Google Scholar.

48 Lang, Andrew, ed., Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, 2 vols. (London, 1897), 2: 33Google Scholar.

49 “The Roman Catholic Question-Ireland,” QR 38 (10 1828): 560Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., p. 551.

51 Ibid., p. 591.

52 “History of the Vaudois,” QR 33 (12 1825): 153, 158–69Google Scholar; “Memoir of Felix Neff,” QR 49 (04 1833): 68Google Scholar.

53 “Bibliothèque Chrétienne,” QR 36 (10 1827): 313–14Google Scholar.

54 “On the Evangelical Sects,” QR 4 (11 1810): 514Google Scholar.

55 “Memoirs of Bayard,” QR 32 (10 1825): 368–69Google Scholar.

56 “Head and Miers on Buenos Ayres and Chile,” QR 35 (01 1827): 141Google Scholar.

57 “Moore's Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald,” QR 46 (11 1831): 242–43Google Scholar.

58 “The Poor,” QR 15 (04 1816): 218–20Google Scholar.

59 Ibid.

60 “Memoir of Felix Neff,” QR 49 (04 1833): 80–81Google Scholar.

61 “Elementary Teaching,” QR 39 (01 1829): 138Google ScholarPubMed. See also “The Poor,” QR 15 (04 1816): 224–26Google Scholar.

62 “Elementary Teaching,” QR 39 (01 1829): 123Google Scholar.

63 “Inquiry into the Poor Laws,” QR 8 (12 1812): 353Google Scholar. See also “The Poor,” QR 15 (04 1816): 226–27Google Scholar.

64 “Inquiry into the Poor Laws,” QR 8 (12 1812): 319Google Scholar.

65 Life and Correspondence, 3: 334Google ScholarPubMed, Southey to Grosvenor Bedford, 14 May 1812.

66 Williams, Orlo, Lamb's Friend the Census Taker: Life and Letters of John Rickman (Boston, 1912), p. 161Google Scholar, Rickman to Southey, 16 May 1812.

67 Life and Correspondence, 3: 335Google ScholarPubMed, Southey to Grosvenor Bedford, 14 May 1812.

68 Ibid., p. 337, Southey to Grosvenor Bedford, 14 May 1812.

69 Ibid., pp. 342–43, Southey to Rickman, 18 May 1812.

70 See Carnall, , Southey, pp. 148–49Google Scholar.

71 “The Poor,” QR 15 (04 1816): 201–02Google Scholar.

72 Quoted in Carnall, , Robert Southey and his Age, p. 152Google Scholar.

73 “Works on England,” QR 15 (07 1816): 564Google Scholar.

74 “On the Poor Laws,” QR 18 (01 1818): 305Google Scholar.

75 “Inquiry into the Poor Laws,” QR 8 (12 1812): 343Google Scholar.

76 Quoted in Brinton, Crane, English Romanticists, p. 143Google Scholar.

77 See e.g. Jones, Stanley, Hazlitt: A Life, from Winterslow to Frith Street (Oxford, 1989), pp. 240–41Google Scholar.

78 “Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection,” QR 16 (01 1817): 545–47Google Scholar; “New Churches,” QR 23 (07 1820): 578Google Scholar; “Moral and Political State of the British Empire,” QR 44 (01 1831): 302Google Scholar.

79 “On the Means of Improving the People,” QR 19 (04 1818): 113Google ScholarPubMed.

80 “Moral and Political State of the British Empire,” QR 44 (01 1831): 300–02Google Scholar.

81 “Works on England,” QR 15 (07 1816): 569–70Google Scholar.

82 “Moral and Political State of the British Empire,” QR 44 (01 1831): 304Google Scholar.

83 “Parliamentary Reform,” QR 16 (10 1816): 275Google Scholar.

84 Life and Correspondence, 4: 239Google Scholar, Southey to Grosvenor Bedford, 15 Feb. 1817.

85 Ibid., p. 233, Southey to Grosvenor Bedford, 4 Jan. 1817.

86 British Library, Additional Manuscript 38367, fos. 8—10 (Liverpool Papers), [Southey] to Liverpool, 19 March 1817 (copy).

87 Life and Correspondence, 4: 311Google Scholar, Southey to Grosvenor Bedford, 6 Sept. 1818.

88 Warter, J. W., ed., Selections, 3: 100–01Google Scholar, Southey to John Rickman, 10 Oct. 1818.

89 Ibid., p. 162, Southey to Rickman, 3 Dec. 1819.

90 Ibid., p. 161, Southey to Rickman, 3 Dec. 1819.

91 Ibid., p. 172, Southey to John Kenyon, 15 Jan. 1820.

92 Ramos, Charles, ed., The Letters of Robert Southey to John May 1797 to 1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), p. 185Google Scholar, Southey to May, 22 Feb. 1820.

93 Sack, James J., From Jacobite to Conservative: Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain c. 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1993), passim, but esp. chs. 1, 8–9Google Scholar.

94 “Moral and Political State of the British Empire,” QR 44 (01 1831): 276–78Google Scholar.

95 Ibid., p. 292.

96 Life and Correspondence, 6: 179Google ScholarPubMed, Southey to John May, 18 Feb. 1832.