William Case Jr

Robert Southey edited two volumes of his Annual Anthology (1799, 1800). Here were first published of a good number of poems by Southey himself, and by Coleridge too (not to mention Charles Lamb, George Dyer, Joseph Cottle, Sir Humphry Davy and others), including some very famous pieces: Coleridge's ‘Lewti’ and ‘This Lime Tree Bower My Prison’ and Southey's ‘Battle of Blenheim’, as well as his ‘The Old Man's Comforts’, so famously parodied by Lewis Carroll as ‘You Are Old, Father William’. Southey planned a third annual, but in the event it didn't happen. Many of the poems in the Anthology are attributed to their authors either by direct name, or transparent pseudonym (several of Coleridge's are signed ‘Esteesi’ for instance). Others are not attributed, but scholars have tracked down authorship, using Southey and Coleridge's own annotated copies of the volumes, later collected editions of poets and so on.

Four of the Annual Anthology poems are signed ‘William Case Jr’, all in vol 2: ‘Gorthmund’, ‘Sonnet VIII’, ‘Sonnet IX: to a Friend on presenting him with a Volume of M.S.S. Poems’ (at the head of this post) and ‘A Winter Sketch’. Nobody knows anything about this geezer; not who he was, nor how he knew Southey or Coleridge (if he knew Southey: maybe he offered his submissions out of the blue). ‘Not otherwise identified,’ says Kenneth Curry, adding: ‘no books of Case are in the British Museum or Bodleian.’ [Kenneth Curry, ‘The Contributors to The Annual Anthology’ The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 42:1 (1948), 61]. He's not a very good poet, I think; but I was curious about him, so I had a rummage around.

I didn't find much, but I found  a couple of things. So: Case published a fair few poems, as fugitives, in various places 1800-1806 (the latest that I found). Here's one from The Poetical Register, and Repository of Fugitive Poetry (1802), another poetical annual:

Following up that footnote tells us that the friend was another young man and poet manqué called ‘W[illiam?] Evans’. Other poems intimate that Case came from Norfolk:

... the River Yare flowing, of course, through Norwich and into the North Sea.

Case published two volumes of verse. The first, The Minstrel Youth; a Lyrical Romance, with other Poems (Conder 1801), was reviewed in the Monthly Review for 1801:

A very promising specimen of the young author's poetical taste and talents: we suppose him to be young; and if he perseveres in paying his devoirs to the muses, he may probably obtain a considerable degree of their regard and encouragement. The pieces here submitted to the judgment of the public are various, moral, and not destitute of harmony and pathos. The poem, in three parts, intitled The Minstrel Youth, is the most considerable performance, and evinces the the writer's proficiency in the Romantic lore which so strongly marks the ages of chivalry, and many of the manly old English Ballads.

You can read the collection's title poem here if you like, and see for yourself. Case's second collection was Pictures of British Female Poesy (Crosby 1803), concerning which The British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review said:

The author, whose name is Case, and an inhabitant of Lynn, in Norfolk, celebrates, in various poetical metres, the more distinguished females of the present day; Seward, Charlotte Smith, Barbauld, Radcliffe, Yearsley, Hannah More, West, &c. The performance deserves a specimen to be given of it; and we select the following spirited apostrophe to Helen Maria Williams.

“But when she thus essays a wreath to weave
Of flowers, as rich as fancy e'er could paint,
Some meet her eye, that, like the nightshade, leave
In beauty's brightest gloss a baleful taint.
Say, fair Enthusiast, from thy natal land,
What scepric system lur'd thy heart away,
When late amidst an innovating band,
At Peace high altar flow'd the gratulating lay?*
Why give to France supremacy of fame,
Is all the victory, all the glory hers?
No: Britain owns a yet superior claim,
Thy Britain dearer ties on thee prefers.
Helen! the Muse regrets, thy talents shine
In light, that but the moral sense depraves;
Freedom she loves, yet not, oh France! not thine,
Hers is her birthright, thine the liberty of slaves.”

[*Alluding to her Ode on the late Peace, written in France]

No fan of France then, Mr Case. Did he live in Lynn, or was he merely from Lynn? William Case was Mayor of Lynn in 1790, and again in 1798 (he died in 1809). Presumably William Case Jr was his son. Junior published no more volumes after 1803, and no more poems at all after 1806, so far as I can see. Why not?

Could this William Case be the same man as Lieutenant, later Captain William Case of the Royal Navy?

WILLIAM CASE entered the Navy, 15 Jan. 1790, as Fst.-cl. Vol., on board the HEBE 38, Capt. Alex. Hood, and, in March, 1792, was transferred to the JUNO 32, Capt. Sam. Hood, both stationed in the Channel. From May, 1793, to April, 1796, he again served in the HEBE, as Midshipman, under Capts. A. Hood, Paul Minchin, and Mat. Henry Scott, in the West Indies, where we find him, after a short attachment to the MAJESTIC 74, flag-ship of Sir John Laforey, promoted, 3 Oct. 1797, to a Lieutenancy in LA VICTORIEUSE 14, Capts. Edw. Stirling Dickson and Richardson. While in the latter vessel he cut out a Spanish schooner from under the fire of a privateer and two batteries at Port España, Trinidad—took part, 7 May, 1798, in a very creditable action with two French privateers, the smaller of whom, a sloop of 6 guns and 50 men, was captured, and the other, a schooner of 12 guns and 80 men, put to flight—and, in Dec. following, witnessed the surrender of two forts near the river Caribe, besides valiantly contributing, in joint command of a party of 70 seamen, to the capture and destruction, at Gurupano, of two others, defended by at least 300 men, and of the Couleurre, of 6 guns and 80 men.” Lieut. Case's next appointments were, 27 Aug. 1801, 20 April, 1804, and 21 Dec. 1805, to the BEAVER sloop, Capt. Christopher Basset Jones, MAGDALENE, Capt. Joseph Lamb Popham, and AGINCOURT 64, Capts. Thos. Briggs and Henry Hill, on the Home station; after which he served, from Jan. 1806 to June, 1812, under Sir Sam. Hood, on board the CENTAUR 74, HIBERNIA 110, TIGRE 74, OWEN GLENDOWER 36, and ILLUSTRIOUS 74, off the Western Islands, and in the Mediterranean, Baltic, and East Indies. During the period of his attachment to the CENTAUR, Mr. Case, as First Lieutenant, was meritoriously present, 25 Sept. 1806, at the capture, in company with the MARS and MONARCH 74's, of four heavy French frigates from Rochefort, on which occasion Sir S. Hood lost his arm. He also attended, in Aug. and Sept. 1807, the expedition to Copenhagen—beheld, in Dec. of the same year, the surrender of Madeira—ably assisted, in conjunction with the IMPLACABLE 74, at the taking, 26 Aug. 1808, in sight of the whole Russian fleet, near Rogerswick, of the 74-gun ship Sewolod, after a close and furious conflict, in which the CENTAUR lost 3 killed and 27 wounded, and the enemy 180 killed and wounded:—and, in Aug. 1809, was engaged, under Capt. Wm. Henry Webley, in the attack upon Walcheren. After holding for two months the appointment of Lieutenant-Governor of Madras Hospital, he was promoted, 7 Aug. 1812, to the command of the HECATE sloop; and, on 15 of the same month, he joined the SAMARANG, of 16 guns, of which he appears to have retained command, in New South W. until 24 March, 1814. He has since been on half-pay. His acceptance of the rank he now holds took place 14 May, 1846. Capt. Case, in the early part of his career, also assisted at the reduction of Ste. Lucie and Trinidad. He married, 15 Sept. 1829, a daughter of Henry Hallett, Esq., of Chidcock, Devon. [William R O'Bryan, A Naval Biographical Dictionary: Comprising the Life and Services of Every Living Officer in Her Majesty's Navy (1849), 178]

(I think the numbers after the HMS names are the number of guns each sloop carries). No mention of any youthful poetic ambitions there, but then you wouldn't expect such notice in a Naval Biographical Dictionary. The dates fit, otherwise. And if this is the man, he was very often stationed in the Channel or ‘on the Home station’ up to 1806 (convenient for submitting poems to British journals), whereupon his naval career took off and he was stationed all around the world, 1806-1812 on the CENTAUR in the Med, the Baltic, and East Indies; and after that all the way to New South Wales. This would have made it harder for him to publish his poems, and might have crowded-out his time for poetry altogether. Or perhaps he came to look on it as a youthful extravagance no longer consonant with his position. Case's friend Evans, who died in St Vincent in 1801 of ‘contagion’ could have been stationed there as a naval officer: it was one of the key naval battlegrounds of the Napoleonic Wars after all.

This is all speculative of course, and could be quite, quite wrong. Maybe Case was just a bourgeois-of-leisure in Lynn the whole time and Lieutenant Case quite another person. But there's certainly a quantity of sea-verse in Case's oeuvre. Here, for instance, are stanzas 2 and 3 from the ‘Descriptive Sketch’ whose opening I quoted above:

(The Garien is another name for the river Yare). ‘To thee, vast deep! this moral truth I owe’ the poem ends: ‘That as thy calm now smiles, thy storms now blow,/Each object, e’en most dear, so fluctuates here below.’ Sound like a sailor to you?