“I wish there were but one ten thousand of those
persons in England who talk about new books and buy them, whether they read,
mark, and inwardly digest them or not, that felt half as much interest in any
forthcoming or expected work of mine as you are pleased to express, and as I
should be unjust, as well as ungrateful, if I did not give you credit for.
Alas! my third volume of the Peninsular War is far from complete, very far. It must be a close
and
| 328 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 53. |
“My way to London towards the latter end of May was, I confess, through Ripon, but it was in the mail-coach, for I performed the whole journey without resting on the way. It was anything but a pleasant one. I went to see an uncle (my best friend) for the last time in this world; his continuance, at the age of fourscore, in pain, infirmity, and earthly hopelessness, not being to be desired*, even though his deliverance must be, in a mere worldly view, a great misfortune to his family. He married in his sixtieth year, and has six children. I went also in the secret determination of undergoing a surgical operation, if it should be deemed expedient, for an infirmity which had long afflicted me. Thank God! it has succeeded, and I am once more a sound man, which I had not been for some twelve years.
“If I am now not quite as able to skip over the mountains as I was when first my tent was pitched here, it will be owing only to the gradual effect of time, not to any disablement from a painful and dangerous cause.
|
| Ætat. 53. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 329 |
“No publisher I am afraid, in this age, would venture to bring out a translation of Davila. The sale of books is grievously diminished within the last six or eight years (I speak feelingly). To have any success a book must be new—a single season antiquates it; it must come from a fashionable name (nobility is now turned to a marketable account in this way); or it must be personal, if not slanderous; but, if slanderous, then best of all. It is the general diminution of income consequent on the depreciation of agricultural produce, and the experiments in free trade which has affected the booksellers, new books being the first things which persons who feel it necessary they should retrench, find they can do without.
“And who, in this most ignorant age, reads Davila? Most ignorant I call it relative to
historical reading; for, if our statesmen, so called by the courtesy of
England, read Davila, and such historians as
Davila, they could not commit such blunders as they
have committed, are committing, and will commit; nor should we at this time
have had cause to apprehend changes, and consequent convulsions, from which we
must look alone to Providence to preserve us. Were there more of sound
knowledge, there would be more of sound principle and of sound feeling. If
Davila were published, some two or three of the
worthies who dug up and mutilated the remains of Hampden might, perhaps, if they were to know that it was the
book which Hampden studied when he was preparing himself
and the nation for a rebellion and subversion of the lawful
| 330 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 53. |
“I am writing some verses describing the whole gallery of my portraits for Allan Cunningham’s annual volume. Such volumes are among the plagues of my life, but Allan Cunningham is a right worthy man, and I owe him something for having carried a remonstrance from me to the editor of the Morning Chronicle, on occasion of some atrocious attacks upon me in that paper.
“I have made an arrangement with Murray concerning John Jones’s rhymes. He will publish them, and give Jones the whole of his subscription copies; they amount to little more than 200 at present, but the list may be increased as much as we can. The verses will go to press as soon as Murray enables me to prepare the introduction by procuring for me the works of certain low and untaught rhymers of whom I wish to speak—Taylor the Water Poet, Stephen Duck, &c.
