“I am always glad to receive a letter from you. It reminds me of many pleasant meetings, and of years upon which, though they have long gone by, it is not yet become painful to look back.
“Something we must all have to regret; I have done much since you first became acquainted with me, but much less than I hoped to have done, than I should have done under more favourable circumstances, and than I might have done under those in which I have been placed. You have chosen rather to enjoy your fortune than to advance it; and with your power of enjoyment I am far from thinking that you have chosen ill. You would be neither a wiser, happier, or better man, if you were sitting on the bench all be-robed and be-wigged as Mr. Justice Kenyon; nor if you were in the House of Commons, flitting, like the bat in the fable, between two contending parties, and not knowing to which you properly belonged. Men make a great mistake when they fancy themselves useful members of society, because they are busy or bustling ones. You have seen a great deal of the world, and your recollections and observations, were you to employ yourself in preserving them, might produce something which posterity would not willingly let perish.
“Poole will be
here on a flying visit next week: he
| 158 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 57. |
“The General* is here, in good health and spirits. It is very pleasant to see the perfect boyishness with which he enters into all youthful sports. He spells Sir Nicholas’s name, plays forfeits, dances, and wears a false nose, as gravely and with as much serious enjoyment as he used to play the cymbals five or six and twenty years ago. Senhouse also is here with his family. Both desire to be remembered to you.
“I am writing some Colloquies, but not with the same interlocutor; and I am collecting my political papers, lest my claims to unpopularity should be forgotten: some of my friends may say the publication in this respect being ill-timed to a nicety. This year will clear my hands of the Peninsular War; and then the History of Portugal will go to press, the work which I have most at heart. Whether any thing will come of the collections which I have made for other undertakings not less extensive in their
| Ætat. 57. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 159 |
“God bless you!
