“I will undertake the arrangement of the Garrick Papers, very willingly, for the lucre of gain, and not for the love of the subject; for the sake of being well paid, and not for the sake of being well talked of. But I will do it for lucre, for goodly remuneration, and ‘most sweet guerdon,’ which you know is better.
“It will take me more time to do this than it would
any other person, for this simple reason—that I should take more pains about
it; not in the composition, but in making myself thoroughly acquainted with all
the literary points on which it would be necessary to touch. On the other hand,
my general acquaintance with English literature is such, that there is no point
upon which I have not some stock of knowledge at command. Less than a
| Ætat. 52. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 283 |
“If Colburne
could see my table at this time he would think my studies were not the most
appropriate for the task which he wishes me to undertake. Here is a volume of
Jackson’s Works (folio)—in my
judgment the most valuable of all our English divines; there is a Portuguese
poem, in twenty books, upon the Virgin Mary. Here is the English translation of
Father Paul’s History of the Council of
Trent. Here is a Latin folio upon the Divi Tutelares of Popish
Christendom, by the Jesuit Macedo, who
had so much to do with Queen
Christina’s conversion. Here is a volume of Venema’s Hist. Eccl. Institutiones. Here is
the Report upon Emigration, and there is a thick, dumpy, and almost cubical
small quarto containing some 1400 closely-printed pages in Latin—De Miraculis Mortuorum, by
an old German Physician, who was moriturus himself when he composed the work.
Miracula here are to be understood in the sense of phenomena. The book is
exceedingly curious, and would furnish the Master of the Rolls
| 284 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 52. |
“From this apparatus you will conclude that I have a second volume of Vindiciae in hand.
