“I do not wonder that neither you nor your friend are acquainted with the name of Jackson as a divine, and I believe the sight of his works would somewhat appal you, for they are in three thick folios. He was Master of Corpus (Oxford) and vicar of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the early part of Charles the First’s reign, but his works were not published in a collective form till after the Restoration, when they were edited by Barnabas Oley, who was also the editor of George Herbert’s Remains. In our Old Divines there is generally something that you might wish were not there: less of this in Jackson, I think, than in any other, except South; and more of what may truly be called divine philosophy than in any or all others. Possibly you might not have the same relish for Jackson that I have, and yet I think you would find three or four pages per day a wholesome and pleasant diet.
“If you have not got the sermons of my almost namesake, Robert South (who was, moreover, of Westminster), buy thou them forthwith, O Grosvenor Charles Bedford! for they will delight the very cockles of thy heart. . . . .
| Ætat. 53. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 335 |
“I cannot give full credit to your story* about the Life of Nelson. It is not likely that the American Government, which is as parsimonious as Mr. Hume would wish ours to be, should incur the expense; and if they had, it is very unlikely that I should not have heard of it from the Americans who find their way to me, or those American acquaintance who give them letters of introduction. If the fact were so, it should be put in the newspapers. But I dare say that, if Henry will cross-question his informant, he will find that it has been asserted upon very insufficient grounds. As for our Government doing any thing of this kind, they must first be taught to believe that it is part of their duty to provide wholesome instruction for the people. This they will learn when they have had sufficient cause to repent of their ignorance, and not till then. For myself I am very far from complaining of Government, to which, indeed, I owe much more than to the public You know what his Majesty is pleased
* “I met a Mr. Brandreth at my brother’s a few days ago, who has lately returned from the West Indies. He says the American Government has printed an edition of your Life of Nelson, sufficiently numerous for a distribution on fine paper to every officer, and on coarse paper to every man in their fleet. This is what should have been done here long ago, and would have been done if our statesmen had been anything better than politicians, or considered the people of the country as anything but mere machines, unendowed with feelings or motives of action. It ought to be in the chest of every seaman, from the admiral to the cabin boy. But our rulers have long been in the habit of calculating the people only by arithmetical figures, and look upon them only in the mass, without taking human character into the account. ‘We politicians, you know,’ said the late Lord Londonderry once to a friend of mine, ‘have no feelings.’ No, indeed, should have been the answer, nor do you reckon upon any in others.”—G. C. B. to R. S., Dec. 1828. |
| 336 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 53. |
“There are many causes for this. The Annuals are now the only books bought for presents to young ladies, in which way poems formerly had their chief vent. People ask for what is new; and to these may be added, that of all the opponents of the great and growing party of revolutionists, I am the one whom they hate the most, and of all the supporters of established things the one whom the anti-revolutionists like the least. So that I fight for others against many, but stand alone myself.
“God bless you!
