“You cannot think of me more frequently nor more affectionately than I do of you. These recollections begin to have an autumnal shade of feeling; and habitually joyous as my spirits are, I believe that if we were now to meet, my first impulse would be to burst into tears. I was not twenty when we parted, and one and twenty years have elapsed since that time. Of the men with whom I lived at Oxford, Wynn, Elmsley, and yourself are all that are left. Seward is dead, Charles Collins is dead, Robert Allen is dead, Burnett is dead. I have lost sight of all the rest.
“My family continue in number the same as when you
heard from me last. I am my son’s schoolmaster, and, in the process, am
recovering my Greek, which I had begun to forget at Balliol. How long I may
continue to abide here is uncertain: the first term of my lease will expire in
1817; if I do not remove then, I must remain for another seven years, and I am
far too sensible of the insecurity of life to look beyond that time. Having
many inducements to remove nearer London, and many to remain where I am, the
trouble and enormous expense of moving (for I have not less than 5000 books)
will probably turn the scale; certainly they will weigh heavy in it. It is not
that I have any business in London as Poet-Laureate; that office imposes upon
me no such necessity; it only requires, as a matter of decorum,
| Ætat. 40. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 113 |
“I have just been reading the Ludus Literarius of my friend Dr. Bell: happy is the schoolmaster who profits by it, and reforms his school upon the Madras system. I pray you give the subject a serious consideration. The only real obstacle is the want of initiatory books, but they would be very easily made; and I believe that very few pieces of literary labour would be so largely repaid. It is quite certain that his system removes 99 parts in 100 of the miseries of the school-boys and the school-master. . . . .
“Thus, Lightfoot, my life passes as uniformly and as laboriously as yours. There is one difference in your favour: you, perhaps, look on to an end of your labours, which I never must do till ‘my right hand forget its cunning.’ But I am very happy, and I dare say so are you. ‘The cheerful man’s a king,’ says the old song; and if this be true, both you and I are royal by nature.
“God bless you, my dear Lightfoot!
