“It is a very old remark that one sin draws on another; and as an illustration of it, I believe one reason why you have not had a letter from me for so long a time is that my Autobiography has been standing still. This is the first symptom of amendment, and in pursuance of it when this letter is despatched I propose to begin the 17th of the Series.
“Thus much has been left undone, and now for what I have been doing. You may have learnt from John Coleridge that I sat to work for him as soon as he was installed into his new office*, and sent him a paper upon the Church Missionary Society, and a few pages upon Mrs. Baillie’s Letters from Lisbon.
“You must have heard of Mr. Butler’s attack upon the Book of the Church. My uncle says of it—his contradicting you and saying that you had misstated facts may have the same answer as Warburton gave to one of his antagonists: ‘it may be so for all he knows of the matter.’ The Bishop of London wrote to ask if I intended to answer it, for if I did not they must look about for some person who would, ‘as it had imposed upon some persons who ought to have known better, and he hoped I should demolish what he called his flimsy structure of misstatements and sophistry.’ Upon my replying that
* As successor to Gifford in the editorship of the Quarterly Review. |
| Ætat. 50. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 205 |
“Last week I spent at Rydal with Wordsworth, going thither partly in the hope
that change of air might rid me of a cough, which, though apparently slight,
has continued upon me long enough to show that it is deep seated. It was left
behind some two months ago by an endemic cold that attacked the throat in a
peculiar manner. I am better for the change. But it will be necessary for me to
take a journey as soon as the summer begins, in the hope of escaping that
annual attack which now regularly settles in the chest. I meant to have visited
Ireland, but this I must give up on Edith’s account, for I was strongly advised not to go by
a man in power, who knew the country well, and said he would not insure any
man’s life there for three months; and this, with a sort of cut-throat
anonymous letter from an Irishman (the same that made that infamous attack upon me in the Chronicle) abusing me as an Orange
Boy in the foulest and most ferocious terms, has made her believe that I should
be in danger there: and of course I should not think it right to
| 206 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 50. |
“God bless you, my dear Friend!
