“During this fine autumn (the finest which we can remember in this country) I have frequently regretted that you were not with us, upon our mountain excursions; and thought sometimes how busily your hammer would have been at work among the stones, over which I was treading as ignorantly as the cart-horse in our company.
“You have not estimated Neville White more favourably than he deserves. There does not
breathe a better or a nobler heart. Men are sometimes strangely out of their
place in this world: there, for instance, is a man living in Milk Street, and
busied about Nottingham goods, who, if he were master of a palace and a
princely fortune, would do honour to the one, and make the best possible use of
the other. I felt towards him just as you have done, at first sight; and
recognising instantly the character, scarcely perceived that the individual was
a stranger. There is more in these sympathies than the crockery
| Ætat. 43. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 283 |
“Your picture of the Norfolk scenery is very lively and very just. I have been twice in my life at Norwich, and once at Yarmouth, many years ago, long enough to have drawn from that open and level country some images, which were introduced in Thalaba. I remember writing an epistle in blank verse from thence in 1798*, which had some descriptive lines that might be worth transcribing, if they were at hand. It was the unbroken horizon which impressed me, appearing so much wider than at sea; and the skyscapes which it afforded. I had the same impression in passing through Picardy; and if I lived in such a country, should perhaps find as many beauties in the sky as I do here upon the earth. Anywhere I could find food for the heart and the imagination, at those times when we are open to outward influences, except in great cities. If I were confined in them, I should wither away like a flower in a parlour window. Did you notice the cry of the bittern in that country? I heard it between Yarmouth and Norwich. Its spiral flight, when it takes wing, is as remarkable and as peculiar as its cry. This bird has been extirpated here; only one has been seen since I have resided at Keswick, and that was shot by a young Cantab, who ate it for his dinner, and had no more brains in his head than the bittern.
“Having nothing to hope in this world, and nothing to desire in it for myself, except as quiet a
* See vol. i. p. 336. |
| 284 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 43. |
“What are you now about? If I had seen you here, where we could have conversed at leisure and without reserve, I would have told you of my own projects, formed in youth and now never to be resumed, talked over your own, and have endeavoured to show you where you might gather the freshest laurels. God bless you!
