Supporting Batteries: Southey Defended

Abstract

Both the Quarterly Review’s reviewer—“the late journalist” Southey mentions in his preface to Vindiciæ—and the British Critic questioned whether the poet laureate’s self-vindication was really needed (QR 33: 4–6; BC 23: 652–3). In February 1825, nine months before the Quarterly Review, the British Critic listed Southey’s three principal champions: the Rev. Joseph Blanco White (Southey’s Spanish friend and correspondent), the Rev. Henry Phillpotts (rector of Stanhope and soon to be bishop of Exeter), and the Rev. George Townsend (newly appointed prebendary of Durham Cathedral). “Each of these,” remarks the British Critic, “has made a formidable breach in the new bulwark of the Roman Catholic Church, and unless some temporary defence is thrown up by the defenders, Mr Southey’s Vindiciæ will take possession of the fortress without opposition.” The reviewer decides that Charles Butler’s efforts have been counterproductive: “The religion of the Pope turns out to be worse than it was supposed to be, the Protestant champions are numerous and unanswerable; public feeling declares in their favour; and we are indebted for all this to Mr Butler.” As Butler himself ruefully admitted in his own Vindication of the Book of the Roman Catholic Church, published in 1826 but written before Southey’s Vindiciæ appeared: “If a multitude of Answers to a work be a proof of its merit ‘the Book of the Roman Catholic Church’ has pretensions to be thought meritorious” (Vindication xi).