. . . . . “On my return to England in the next spring, I shall take a house in or near London, where you shall live with me and study anatomy at the Westminster Hospital, under Carlisle, whom you know to be a man of genius and my friend. By the time you have acquired enough previous knowledge, I trust some of my eggs will have hatched, so that you may graduate either at Edinburgh or in Germany, as shall appear best. Till my return you will remain where you are; you are well employed, and evidently improving rapidly. Nor is there any home to which you possibly could remove! On my return you will have one, and I trust more comfortable than any you have yet had. We are rising in the world; it is our turn, and will be our own faults if we do not, all of us, attain that station in the world to which our intellectual rank entitles us.
“Attend to prose particularly; excellence in that
| 108 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
“Thalaba has taken up too much of my time, and I am eager to send it
off, and wash my hands of all that could have been written in England: it is
finished, and half ready for the press. I am polishing and polishing, and
hewing it to pieces with surgeon severity. Yesterday I drew the pen across six
hundred lines, and am now writing to you instead of supplying their place. It
goes over for publication very shortly—I trust in three weeks. Rickman is my agent and supervisor of the
press. I am sorry you do not know Rickman. I esteem him
among the first men of my knowledge. . . . . For six weeks we have been at
Cintra—a spot the most beautiful that I have ever seen, and which is
probably unique. Eighteen miles distant, at Lisbon, the sun is insupportable.
Here we are cool, with woods and water. The wealthier English are all here;
still, however, I lack society, and, were it not for a self-sufficiency (like
the bear, who sucks his paws when the snow shuts him up in his den), should be
in a state of mental famine. My uncle is little here; people will die, and must
be buried. He is a man of extensive information; his
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 109 |
“You would be amused could you see Edith and myself on ass-back—I sitting
sideways, gloriously lazy, with a boy to beat my Bayardo, as well adapted to me, as ever that wild courser was to
Rinaldo. In this climate there is no
walking; a little exercise heats so immoderately: but their cork woods or fir
woods, and mountain glens, and rock pyramids, and ever-flowing fountains, and
lemon-groves ever in flower and in fruit, want only society to become a
Paradise. Could I but colonise Cintra, with half-a-dozen familiars, I should
wish never to leave it. As it is, I am comfortable, my health establishing
itself, my spirits everlastingly partaking the sunshine of the climate; yet I
do hunger after the bread-and-butter, and the
fire-side comforts, and the intellect of England. You will, I think, whenever
my library is at hand, learn Portuguese, because I have got the history of Charlemagne and the Twelve Paladins in that
language, and Palmerin of
England. I have only laid hands on half an old Spanish romance, Don
| 110 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 111 |
“God bless you!
