“The news in your letter has vexed me, and, after my
manner, set me upon discovering all the consolations that can be extracted from
it. First and foremost, that if you go as convoy, you will not be stationed
there; and, therefore, to sail at this season into warm weather is no such bad
thing. If you go to Jamaica you will find a whole lot of letters, unless they
have been burnt at the post-office. As you will keep a keen look-out for all
imaginable things, I need give you only one commission, which is, that you do
use your best endeavours to bring home a few live land-crabs for me, that I may
endeavour to rear a breed in England.

“Do not send off Henry,
because it will be lost at the custom-house; keep it till you yourself come to
England, and can safely get it ashore; ’tis a good book for a long
voyage—very dull, but full of matter, and trustworthy as far as the
author’s information goes.

“I think it possible, Tom, that you might collect some interesting information from
the negroes, by inquiries of any who may wait upon you, if they be at all
intelligent, concerning their own country; principally what their superstitions
are—as Whom do they worship? Do they ever see apparitions? Where do the
dead go? What are their burial, their birth, their marriage ceremonies? What
their charms or remedies for sickness? What the power of their priests; and how
the priests are chosen, whether from among the people, or if a separate breed,
as the Levites and Bramins? You will easily see with what other questions these
might be followed up; and by noting down the country of the negro, with what
information he gave, it seems to me very likely that a very valuable account of
their manners and feelings might be collected. Ask also if they know anything
of Timbuctoo, the city which is sought after with so much curiosity as being
the centre of the internal commerce of Africa. This is the way to collect facts
respecting the native Africans and their country. I would engage, in twelve
months, were I in the West Indies, to get materials for a volume that should
contain more real importancies than all travellers have yet brought home. Ask
also what beasts are in their country; they will not know English names for
them, but can describe them so that you will know them: the unicorn is believed
to exist by me as well as by many others,—you will not mistake the
rhinoceros for one. Inquire also for a land crocodile, who grows to the length
of six, eight, or ten feet, having a tongue slit like a snake’s; my
Portuguese

242

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE

Ætat. 29.

speak of such animals in South
Africa—they may exist in the western provinces.

“You would have been very useful to me if you had been
at the table when I was reviewing Clarke’s book, and Captain
Burney’s. Indeed, I often want a sailor to help me out. In
the process of my History some curious facts respecting early navigation have
come to light. I find the needle and the quadrant used in the Indian seas
before any European vessel had ever reached them; and, what surprises me more,
the same knowledge of soundings in our own seas in 1400 as at present, which is
very strange, for that practice implies a long series of registered
experiences. The more I read, the more do I find the necessity of going to old
authors for information, and the sad ignorance and dishonesty of our boasted
historians. If God do but give me life, and health, and eyesight, I will show
how history should be written, and exhibit such a specimen of indefatigable
honesty as the world has never yet seen. I could make some historical triads,
after the manner of my old Welsh friends, of which the first might run thus:
The three requisites for an historian—industry, judgment, genius; the
patience to investigate, the discrimination to select, the power to infer and
to enliven.

Joanna Baillie (1762-1851)
Scottish poet and dramatist whose Plays on the Passions
(1798-1812) were much admired, especially the gothic De Montfort,
produced at Drury Lane in 1800.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
English poet and essayist, the sister of John Aikin, who married Rochemont Barbauld in
1774 and taught at Palgrave School, a dissenting academy (1774-85).

James Burney (1750-1821)
The brother of Fanny Burney; he sailed with Captain Cook and wrote about his voyages, and
in later life was a friend of Charles Lamb and other literary people.

François-René, viscomte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
French romantic poet and diplomat, author of The Genius of
Christianity (1802). He was a supporter of the Bourbon restoration. He was
ambassador to Great Britain in 1822.

James Stanier Clarke (1765 c.-1834)
Naval chaplain and librarian to the Prince of Wales; author of Naufragia, or, Historical Memoirs of Shipwrecks, 2 vols (1805) and The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson, 2 vols (1809); he corresponded with
Jane Austen.

Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of Essays of Elia published in the London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.

Edith Southey [née Fricker] (1774-1837)
The daughter of Stephen Fricker, she was the first wife of Robert Southey and the mother
of his children; they married in secret in 1795.

Henry Herbert Southey (1783-1865)
The younger brother of Robert Southey; educated at Edinburgh University, he was physician
to George IV, Gresham Professor of Medicine, and friend of Sir Walter Scott.

Thomas Southey (1777-1838)
The younger brother of Robert Southey; he was a naval captain (1811) and afterwards a
Customs officer. He published A Chronological History of the West
Indies (1828).

William Taylor of Norwich (1765-1836)
Translator, poet, and essayist; he was a pupil of Anna Letitia Barbauld and correspondent
of Robert Southey who contributed to the Monthly Magazine, the Monthly Review, the Critical Review, and
other periodicals.

The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature. (1756-1817). Originally conducted by Tobias Smollett, the Critical Review began
as a rival to the Monthly Review, begun in 1749. It survived for 144
volumes before falling prey to the more fashionable quarterlies of the nineteenth
century.