“This morning I received your St. John in Patmos, two months after the
date of the note which accompanied it: this is mentioned, that you may not
think I have been slow in acknowledging and thanking you for it. I have just
read the poem through, and
| Ætat. 58. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 193 |
“You will not, I am sure, suppose that I could for
even a moment feel hurt by your remarks in the preface. After haying reviewed
in the Quarterly Review Grahame’s Georgics, Montgomery’s Poems, and his World before the Flood, and Lander’s Count Julian, I found it necessary to
resolve that I would not review the work of any living poet. Applications to me
from strangers, and from others in all degrees of acquaintanceship, were so
frequent, that it became expedient to be provided with a general reason for
refusing, which could offend no one; there was no other means of avoiding
offence. Many would otherwise have resented the refusal, and more would have
been more deeply displeased if they had not been extolled according to their
own estimate of their own merits. From this resolution I did not consider
myself as departing when I drew up the account of Mary Colling; her story and her
character interested me greatly, and would, I thought, interest most readers. I
wished to render her some service, and
have the satisfaction of knowing that this has been in some measure effected.
It was a case wherein a little praise, through that channel, might be the means
of producing some permanent benefit to one who has gentle blood in her veins,
and whose sweet
| 194 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 58. |
“I have no wish to encourage the growth of humble authors, still less of adventurers in literature, God knows. But I earnestly wish, especially in an age when all persons can read, to encourage in all who have any love of reading that sort of disposition which would lead them to take pleasure in your poems, and in mine, and in any which are addressed, as ours always have been, to the better feelings of our nature. The tendency of our social system has long been to brutalise the lower classes, and this it is that renders the prospect before us so fearful. I wish to see their moral and intellectual condition as much as possible improved; it seems to me that great improvement is possible, and that in bettering their condition the general good is promoted.
“Would that there were a hope of seeing you here, that I might show you this lake and these mountains, and these books, and talk with you upon subjects which might make us forget that we are living in the days of William IV., Earl Grey, the Times newspaper, and the cholera morbus. God save the first, and deliver us from the rest!
