“. . . . . I will tell you Murray’s opinion of the Colloquies. The sale, he says, would have been tenfold greater if religion and politics had been excluded from them! The profits, I dare say, will be very little. . . . .
“My third volume of the War is in the press, and my hand has been only taken from it for a short interval, that I might do the needful work of reviewing, by which alone does it seem practicable for me to keep clear with the world. I have written for the London Review a short, but very interesting account of Lucretia Davidson, an American poetess, killed, like Kirke White, by over-excitement, in her seventeenth year. It is a most affecting story. There have been three papers of mine in that work; in the first, second, and fifth numbers; and, as they promise that there shall be no farther delay in payment, I should not like to withdraw from it. . . . .
“I might be paid at the same rate for Sharpe’s London Magazine; but, when that was converted into a magazine, it passed from the hands of Allan Cunningham into those of Theodore Hook and Dr. M’Ginn, with neither of whom did I wish to associate myself. . . . .
“But I am looking forward with much satisfaction
| 74 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 55. |
“The best news I can send you of myself must be something like an echo of your own letter,—that I go on working steadily, with little to hope, but cheerfully, and in full belief that the situation in which I am placed is that which is best for me. Had I kept the path wherein I was placed, I might have been a bishop at this day,—probably should have been; and therefore I bless God even for having gone astray, since my aberrations have ended in leading me to a happier, a safer, and (all things considered) a more useful station.
“If there be a later history of Bristol than Barrett’s, it must be a better one;
there is no earlier. I do not know the spot which you call the Furies’
Parlour by that name; but I could show you some haunts of mine upon those
Downs, and in that neighbourhood, which I know not whether I should have most
pain or pleasure in revisiting. Henry
Coleridge and his bride
are now lodging in Keswick: her mother
departs next week, and then we part after six-and-twenty years’ residence
under the same roof.
| Ætat. 55. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 75 |
“I want to finish the biographical letter in my desk; but you would pity me if you knew what I have in head, and in hand, and at heart, and saw the continual interruptions which cut up my time in large slices, or fritter it away. Withal I have the blessing of being sound in body once more, and can ascend the mountains with something like the strength, and all the spirits of youth. I had more to say of projects, and of approaching evils and dangers; of which we are likely to see the beginning, but not the end. I was born during the American Revolution, the French Revolution broke out just as I grew up, and my latter days will, in all likelihood, be disturbed by a third revolution, more terrible than either. God bless you, my dear friend!
