‘A Sagamore or Petty King in Virginia’: Robert Southey quotes Thomas Fuller

Manuscript leaf in the hand of the Romantic poet, friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Robert Southey who quotes from the fable written by the 17th century writer Thomas Fuller about ‘A Sagamore or petty king in Virginia, guessing the greatness of other kings by his own, sent a native hither, who understood English’.

Southey continues with Fuller’s description of the man’s astonishment at the English population in ‘Plymouth, a populous place’, then Exeter (Fuller’s hometown in the early 1640s when he wrote this) where ‘the difficulty of his task was increased; coming at last to London (that forest of people) he broke his [counting] cane in pieces, perceiving the impossibility of his employment.’ The fable is seen as an allegory of counting sins but Fuller’s use of a story concerning an indigenous chief and his minion from Virginia in the American colonies is striking; no less, Southey’s decision to copy the passage. Along with Coleridge and Charles Lamb, Southey deeply admired Fuller for his insights and style, calling him ‘incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men’.

DESCRIPTION: Single sheet of manuscript notepaper (7x10cm) numbered 163, laid down on a piece of card. Written in Southey’s characteristic miniscule hand 16 lines from Thomas Fuller’s Good Thoughts in Bad Times, with the title noted at the tail of the page. c140 words. Written on verso: ‘Robert Southey (not signed)’