“Poor Jackson
is gone at last, after a cruel illness. I followed him to the grave to-day. A
good man, to whom the town of Keswick and many of its inhabitants are greatly
beholden. He has left Hartley 50l. to be paid when he
comes of age. Had he thought of bequeathing him his books it would have been a
more suitable remembrance. Never had man a more faithful, anxious, and
indefatigable nurse than he has had in Mrs.
Wilson,—always ready, always watchful, always willing, never
uttering a complaint, never sparing herself; with the most disinterested
affection; acting so entirely from the feelings of a good heart, that I do not
believe even the thought of duty ever entered it. The night after his death we
made her take a little spirit and water; it was not a tea-cupfull, but upon her
it acted as medicine; and she told me the next day that, for the first time
during two years, she had slept through the night.
| 252 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 35. |
“Busy as it is usually my fortune to be, I was never so busy as now. Three mornings more will finish my transcribing task for the first volume of my History of Brazil, including a long chapter, which, I fear, can hardly be got into the volume, though I much wish to insert it. Then come the notes,—supplementary,—which might, with great pleasure to myself and profit to my reader, be extended to another volume as large; but I shall not allow them much more than fifty pages. The book, as a whole, is more amusing than was to be expected. About a fortnight’s morning work will complete my work for it: 448 pages are printed; the whole will not be less than 660.
“Last night we had a prodigious flood, higher in some
places than can be remembered; I say in some places, because the lake was
previously low, and the force of the waters was spent before they found their
way to it. Do you know the little bridge over what is usually a dry ditch at
the beginning of the Church Lane? The water was over it, and three feet deep in
the lane. Half Slacks Bridge is gone, a chaise-driver and horses lost between
this place and Wigton,
| Ætat. 35. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 253 |
“I must not wish you to be paid off unless you could be sure of a better appointment than you have at present, or of not being appointed at all. As for peace, I see no hope of it,—no fear of it would be the better phrase. The Junta have mismanaged, and so have we; I know not whose mismanagement has been the worst. The army which has been wasted at Flushing would have recovered Spain: the Spaniards will now be left to do it their own way, by detail. What these changes at home will produce one cannot guess till it is known who is going out and who coming in. If Marquis Wellesley comes in, we may expect something. If Canning goes out, the candle will be taken out of the dark lantern. God bless you!
