“Here has been as great a gap in our correspondence as
I have seen in the seat of my brother Sir
Dominie’s pantaloons, after he has been sliding down
Latrigg. Sir, I shall be very happy to give you a slide down Latrigg also, if
you will have the goodness to
| Ætat. 30. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 351 |
“Will you Butlerise, Mr. Bedford? By the core of William’s heart, which I take to be the hardest of all oaths, and therefore the most impossible to break, I will never cease persecuting you with that question and that advice, till you actually set that good ship afloat, in which you are to make as fair a voyage to the port of Fame as ever Englishman accomplished. Mr. Bedford, it appears to me that Englishmen accomplish that said expedition better by sea than by land,—and that, therefore, the metaphor is a good one, and a sea-horse better than Pegasus. Do, do begin: and begin by writing letters to me, which may be your first crude thoughts; and I will unpack my memory of all its out-of-the-way oddities, and give them to you for cargo and ballast.
“Elmsley will
have told you of our adventures in Scotland, if the non-adventures of a journey
in Great Britain at this age of the world can deserve that name. I am returned
with much pleasant matter of remembrance; well pleased with Walter
Scott, with Johnny
Armstrong’s Castle on the Esk, with pleasant Tiviotdale,
with the Tweed and the Yarrow: astonished at Edinburgh, delighted with Melrose,
sick of Presbyterianism, and, above all things, thankful that I am an
Englishman and not a Scotchman. The Edinburgh Reviewers I like well as companions, and think little of
as anything else. Elmsley has more knowledge and a sounder
mind than any or all of them. I could learn more from him in a day than they
could all teach me in a year. Therefore I saw
| 352 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 30. |
“I go to Portugal next year, if politics permit me, and expect to take Edith and the Edithling with me, for at least a two years’ residence. Bating the voyage and the trouble of removal, this is a pleasant prospect. I love the country, and go well prepared to look for everything that I can want. My winter will be fully employed, and hardly. I am at my reviewing, of which this year I take my leave for ever. It is an irksome employment, over which I lose time, because it does not interest me. A good exercise certainly it is, and such I have found it; but it is to be hoped that the positive immorality of serving a literary apprenticeship, in censuring the works of others, will not be imputed wholly to me. In the winter of 1797, when I was only twenty-three and a half, I was first applied to to undertake the office of a public critic! Precious criticism! And thus it is that these things are done. I have acquired some knowledge, and much practice in prose, at this work, which I can safely say I have ever executed with as much honesty as possible; but on the whole I do and must regard it as an immoral occupation, unless the reviewer has actually as much knowledge at least of the given subject, as the author upon whom he undertakes to sit in judgment.
“When will your worship call upon me for my
| Ætat. 30. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 353 |
“What a death is Nelson’s! It seems to me one of the characteristics of the sublime that its whole force is never perceived at once. The more it is contemplated, the deeper is its effect. When this war began, I began an Ode, which almost I feel now disposed to complete;—take the only stanza:—
“O dear, dear England! O my mother isle! There was a time when, woe the while! In thy proud triumphs I could take no part; And even the tale of thy defeat In those unhappy days was doom’d to meet Unnatural welcome in an English heart: For thou wert leagued in an accursed cause, O dear, dear England! and thy holiest laws Were trampled underfoot by insolent power. Dear as my own heart’s blood wert thou to me, But even Thou less dear than Liberty! |
“God bless you!
