“If there be any evil connected with poetry, it is that
it tends to make us too little masters of ourselves, and counteracts that
stoicism, or necessary habit of self-control, of which all of us must sometimes
stand in need. I do not mean as to our actions, for there is no danger that a
man of good principles should ever feel his inclination and his duty altogether
at variance. But as to our feelings. You talk of mourning the loss of your
trees, and not
| Ætat. 43. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 243 |
‘He who does not sometimes wake And weep at midnight, is an instrument Of Nature’s common work;’ |
“Thomas Clarkson I know well: his book upon Quakerism keeps out of sight all the darker parts of the picture; their littleness of mind, their incorrigible bigotry, and their more than popish interference with the freedom of private actions. Have you read his history of the Abolition of the Slave Trade? I have heard it from his own lips, and never was a more interesting story than that of his personal feelings and exertions. I have happened in the course of my life to know three men, each wholly possessed with a single object of paramount importance,—Clarkson, Dr. Bell, and Owen of Lanark, whom I have only lately known. Such men are not only eminently useful, but eminently happy also; they live in an atmosphere of their own, which must be more like that of the third heaven than of this every-day earth upon which we toil and moil.
“I am very ill-pleased with public proceedings. The
present Ministry are deficient in every thing except good intentions; and their
opponents are deficient in that also. These resignations ought to have been
made during the pressure of war, uncalled
| 244 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 43. |
“God bless you!
