“In the long space of three months since I wrote to you (or rather four!), you will expect I have done much. In truth, I have not been idle. For the great history, I have only collected the knowledge of what documents to reach, and where to seek them. The public-library books are not removable; and I, like all the English, am driven to the cool retirement of Cintra. I have the general facts already in my memory, and I think a fair and accurate opinion of the chief personages, differing very considerably from their received characters; and a map of the method to be pursued. The ground is well manured, and the seed is in. I speak the language, not, indeed, grammatically, but fluently; and Portuguese, from a familiar voice, is almost as intelligible to me as English. I know the progress of their language, step by step, and have written materials towards the literary history, of collateral and incidental information—such anecdotes as paint the manners and character of a people. My collection would fill half an octavo volume.
“But Thalaba: it has taken up a greater portion
| 104 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
“Our house stands here in a lemon-garden of somewhat
less than half an acre. Its fruit usually sells for twenty moidores; this year,
owing to its failure, it produced only ten. These orchards, you see, are
wonderfully productive, but they require more attention than any English crops.
They are watered regularly. Here there is a large tank in every garden, whence
the water is conveyed by little channels, which the man conducts round the
roots of every tree, loosening the soil with a hoe: by this the leaves, as they
fall, are sooner mingled with the soil, and afford a constant manure. Wages are
as high as eighteen-pence a day, with wine. The price of
bread, of course, can differ little from its price. in England; all other
provisions are rather dearer, in some respects owing to actual scarcity, still
more to the paper
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 105 |
‘No debtor is imprisoned here; shame, shame to our own laws! There is a Board of Bankruptcy—an institution, perhaps, of unequalled absurdity, so is it managed. Any debtor who will surrender all his effects to the board, receives 10 per cent. It has been established about thirty years, and they have never made one dividend. Where goes the money? There is a fund for cleaning and lighting the city. There are no lamps and no scavengers. Where goes the fund? . . . .
“The number of monastics decreases; not from any dearth of laziness or fanaticism, but because the revenues are not now equal to the support of the original number. Sometimes the monks desert; in that case they pursue them. They took one poor fellow at work in a garden, where, for three months, he had been usefully employed, and enjoying freedom. . . . .
| 106 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
“Here is a fine soil of folly, and a plentiful crop do the friars reap! Some little good they do in return. They are good landlords, and the church lands are the only lands that are tolerably cultivated. The ruin of Spain and Portugal is, the fashion that all the wealthy have, of residing wholly in the metropolis, where they spend to the uttermost, vex their tenants, and never pay their debts. Portugal, you say, must have bad roads. It will be very difficult to make them good. In winter the very heavy rains wash away all the smaller parts, and leave only the larger stones; in summer the sun dries them up, and the wind sweeps the stones bare. Brentford stones would be thought a fine road here. Hence slow and little travelling, and bad inns; in country towns no booksellers! scarcely any reading anywhere. Like beasts and savages, the people can bear total indolence. Their delight is to look into the street, put somebody to hunt their heads at the same time, and it is happiness! Even in the garden walls they have grates to look into the road. . . . .
“I lack society sadly. The people here know much of
their own business, very little of the country they live in, and nothing of
anything else except cards. My uncle,
indeed, is a man of extensive knowledge; and here is one family, of which the
master is a man of some science, and where I can open my flood-gates. I want
you and Davy, and a newspaper, and
bread-and-butter, and a green field for me and the horse: it would do his old
English heart as much good as it would mine. But I have ample and pleasant
employment: curiosity for ever
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 107 |
