“I should long ago have thanked you for your offer of Sir Lancelot, but as I had written to Heber requesting from him all his Round-table books, I waited, or rather have been waiting, to see whether or not it would be among them. It is above two months since news came that Heber would look them out for me; but as they are not yet arrived, and my appearance in London has been expected for the last two or three weeks, it is probable that he is waiting to let me look them out for myself. I go for London next week, my family having just been increased by the birth of another girl,—an event for which I have been waiting.
“Wordsworth has
completed a most masterly poem upon the fate of the Nortons; two or three lines
in the old Ballad of the Rising in the North gave him
the hint. The story affected me more deeply than I
| 132 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 34. |
“My Chronicle
of the Cid is printed, and waits for the introduction and
supererogatory notes, both which will be of considerable length, and must be
completed at Holland House, where I shall find exactly those books which were
out of reach of my means. The History of Brazil will be in the press as soon as this is out of
it. What an epoch in history will this emigration of the
Braganzas prove, if we are not frightened by cowardly
politicians into making peace, and cajoling them back again to Portugal! Such
men as these have long since extinguished all political morality and political
honesty among us, and now they would extinguish national honour, which is all
we have left to supply their place! My politics would be, to proclaim to France
and to the world that England will never make peace with Napoleon Bonaparte, because he has proved
himself to be one whom no treaties and no ties can bind, and still more
| Ætat. 34. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 133 |
