“I give you joy of your escape from late hours in the
House of Commons and a summer in London. I congratulate you upon exchanging gas
lights for the moon and stars, and the pavement of Whitehall for your noble
terraces, which I never can think of without pleasure, because they are
beautiful in themselves, and carry one back to old times,—any-
| Ætat. 45. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 355 |
“I will come to you for a day or two, on my way to town, about the beginning of December. This will be a flying visit; but one of these summers or autumns, I should like dearly to finish the projected circuit with you which Mr. Curry cut short in the year 1801, when he sent for the most unfit man in the world to be his secretary, having nothing whatever for him to do; and many years must not be suffered to go by. My next birthday will be the forty-fifth, and every year will take something from the inclination to move, and perhaps also from the power of enjoyment.
“I was not disappointed with Crabbe’s Tales. He is a decided mannerist, but so
are all original writers in all ages; nor is it possible for a poet to avoid it
if he writes much in the same key and upon the same class of subjects.
Crabbe’s poems will have a great and lasting
value as pictures of domestic life, elucidating the moral history of these
times,—times which must hold a most conspicuous place in history. He
knows his own powers, and never aims above his reach. In this age, when the
public are greedy for novelties, and abundantly supplied with them, an author
may easily commit the error of giving them too much of the same kind.
| 356 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 45. |
“Peter Roberts is a great loss. I begin almost to despair of ever seeing more of the Mabinogion. And yet if some competent Welshman could be found to edit it carefully, with as literal a version as possible, I am sure it might be made worth his while by a subscription, printing a small edition at a high price, perhaps 200, at 5l. 5s. I myself would gladly subscribe at that price per volume for such an edition of the whole of your genuine remains in prose and verse. Till some such collection is made, the ‘gentlemen of Wales’ ought to be prohibited from wearing a leek; aye, and interdicted from toasted cheese also. Your bards would have met with better usage if they had been Scotchmen.
“Shall we see some legislatorial attorneys sent to
Newgate next session? or will the likely conviction of ——
damp the appetite for rebellion which is at present so sharp set? I heard the
other day of a rider explaining at one of the inns in this town how well the
starving manufacturers at Manchester might be settled, by parcelling out the
Chatsworth estate among them. The savings’ banks will certainly prove a
strong bulwark for property in general. And a great deal may be expected from a
good system of colonisation; but it must necessarily be a long while before a
good system can be formed (having no experience to guide us, for we have no
knowledge how these things were managed by the ancients), and a long while also
before the people can enter into it.
| Ætat. 45. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 357 |
