“From this uttermost end of the north it will not be easy, or indeed possible, to send anything to the West Indies, except what will go in the compass of a letter; else you should have the Iris’s* bundled up for you. . . . . My plan for Madoc stands, then, at present, that Longman shall risk all expenses, and share the eventual profits; printing it in quarto, and with engravings, for I am sure the book will sell the better for being made expensive. Having now cleared off all my Annual Reviewing (oh Tom, such a batch I almost as much as last year’s rabble) I am now for a while at full leisure, and of course direct it principally to Madoc, that it may be off my hands, for I should not be willing to leave the world till I have left that in a fair state behind me. I am now finishing the 14th section. . . . . They tell me that Walter Scott has reviewed Amadis
* A Norwich newspaper, edited by Mr. William Taylor. |
| Ætat. 29. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 255 |
“As for politics, Tom, we that live among the mountains, as the old woman said,
do never hear a word of news. This talk of war with Spain I do not believe, and
I am at last come round to the opinion that no invasion is intended, but that
the sole object of Bonaparte is to exhaust
our finances. Booby! not remembering that a national bankruptcy, while it ruins
individuals, makes the state rich. . . . . How long the present Duncery may go
on, God knows; I am no enemy to them, for they mean well, but in this broil
with the Volunteers they are wrong, and dangerously wrong as regards their own
popularity. I wish every Volunteer would lay down his arms,—being fully
persuaded that in case of necessity he would take them up again;—but this
attempt to increase the system of patronage, by depriving them of their
covenanted right of electing their own officers, is rascally and abominable.
The elections universally made, show that the choice always falls upon men who
have either the claim of property, character, or talents. Of more permanent
political importance will be a circumstance of which there is no talk of at
all. Inquiries are making into the actual state of the poor in England, an
office has
| 256 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 29. |
