Beschreibung:

Southey, Robert, poet laureate, and Thomas Telford engineer. ''Inscriptions for the Caledonian Canal'', Autograph draft of his set of three poems, comprising general title leaf captioned 'Inscriptions for the Caledonian Canal', 'At Clachnaclarry', title and 36 lines; 'At Fort Augustus', title and 46 lines; 'At Banavie', title and 26 lines, with numerous autograph deletions, corrections and alterations in ink and pencil, inscribed at head of title in a contemporary hand 'Southey from Miss Myers', together 10 pages, 168mm x 102mm, [early 1820's] A hymn to the engineering prowess of Thomas Telford and a rare celebration of science in poetry. Unlike many of his contemporaries Southey, the poet laureate, was enthralled by the power and majesty of science and great engineering works, possibly partly inspired by his friendship with the engineer Thomas Telford the designer of the Caledonian Canal. Athwart the Island here from sea to sea Between these mountain barriers, the Great Glen Of Scotland offers to the traveler Thro wilds impervious else, an easy path .....What other works Science audacious in enterprise hath wrought Meet not the eye, but well may fill the mind… Huge rivers were controuled, or from their course Shouldered aside; & at the eastern mouth Where the salt ooze denied a resting place There were the deep foundations laid by weight On weight immersed, & pile on pile down-driven Till stedfast as the everlasting rocks The massive outwork stands… In 'At Banavie' Southey's peroration reaches its apogee: … may the marble here Record the Architects immortal name. Telford it was by whose presiding mind The whole great was was plann'd & perfected; Telford, who oer the vale of Cambrian Dee, Aloft in air at giddy height upborne Carried his navigable road, & hung High over Menai's straits the bending bridge… Southey visited the Caledonian canal with Telford in 1818 (see Southey's Journal of a Tour in Scotland in 1819, ed. C.H. Herford (London, 1929) and also a letter to Gen. William Peachey in which he describes work on the canal (New Letters of Southey, ed. K. Curry, 2 vols., New York, 1965, vol.2, p. 200). The inscriptions were published in the Anniversary (1829) and included in the ten volume last lifetime edition of Southey's Poetical Works (1837-38). Southey wrote a biographical essay on Telford and planned a full-scale biography which never came to fruition after the breakdown in his health in 1839. Born on 9 August 1757 near Westerkirk in Dumfries-shire, Telford was the posthumous son of a shepherd. He spent his childhood supplementing the family's limited income by shepherding and left his parish school at the age of 14 to become an apprentice stonemason in Langholm. In 1780 he went to Edinburgh to work as a mason on the development of the New Town and in 1782 moved to London to work on the greatest construction project of the day, Somerset House. In 1801 the Government asked Telford to develop his earlier work on harbours and piers with a survey of roads across Scotland which led to him designing and building over 920 miles of road and 120 bridges in the Highlands, numerous harbours and jetties as well as the Caledonian Canal. In 1818, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to engineering in Britain, Telford was made first President of the Institute of Civil Engineers. Southey's embrace of science and engineering is mirrored in Telford's appreciation of beauty and form, his article on 'Bridges' in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia (1812) having been called 'the first treatise by an engineer on structural art' (David P. Billington. The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering, Princeton University Press, 1985).