“Yesterday I received your letter, and to-day I despatched Gomella and the third volume of Ramuzio, The other two volumes can also be sent, if you should find it necessary to consult them. The parcel is addressed to the paternal charge of your Keswick carrier. There is no hurry in returning these volumes, so don’t derange your operations by hurrying your extracts, only keep them from any profane eye. I dipped into Gomella while I was waiting for intelligence from you, and was much edified by the bonhommie with which the miracles of the Jesuits are introduced.
“The news from Spain gave me such a mingled feeling,
that I never suffered so much in my whole life from the disorder of spirits
occasioned by affecting intelligence. My mind has naturally a strong military
bent, though my path in life has been so very different. I love a drum and a
soldier as heartily as ever Uncle Toby did,
and between the pride arising from our gallant bearing, and the deep regret
that so much bravery should run to waste, I spent a most disordered and
agitated night, never closing my eyes but what I was harassed with visions of
broken ranks, bleeding soldiers, dying horses—‘and all the current of
a heady fight.’ I agree with you that we want energy in our
cabinet—or rather their opinions are so different, that they come to wretched
compositions between them, which are worse than the worst course decidedly
followed out. Canning is most anxious to
support the Spaniards, and would have had a second army at Corunna, but for the
positive demand of poor General Moore
that empty transports should be sent thither. So the reinforcements were
disembarked. I
| LETTER TO MR SOUTHEY—JAN. 1809. | 237 |
“Ballantyne’s brother is setting up here as a bookseller, chiefly for publishing. I will recommend Coleridge’s paper to him as strongly as I can. I hope by the time it is commenced he will be enabled to send him a handsome order. From my great regard for his brother, I shall give this young publisher what assistance I can. He is understood to start against Constable and the Reviewers, and publishes the Quarterly. Indeed he is in strict alliance, offensive and defensive, with John Murray of Fleet Street. I have also been labouring a little for the said Quarterly, which I believe you will detect. I hear very high things from Gifford of your article. About your visit to Edinburgh, I hope it will be a month later than you now propose, because my present prospects lead me to think I must be in London the whole month of April. Early in May I must return, and will willingly take the lakes in my way in hopes you will accompany me to Edinburgh, which you positively must not think of visiting in my absence.
“Lord
Advocate, who is sitting behind me, says the Ministers have
resolved not to abandon the Spaniards coute qui
coute. It is a spirited determination—but they
| 238 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Mrs Scott joins me in best compliments to Mrs Southey. I hope she will have a happy hour. Pray, write me word when the books come safe. What is Wordsworth doing, and where the devil is his Doe? I am not sure if he will thank me for proving that all the Nortons escaped to Flanders, one excepted. I never knew a popular tradition so totally groundless as that respecting their execution at York.”
