“I have been regretting that you were not at Portsmouth in the great insurrection†, that I might have had a full, true, and particular account of that extraordinary business—a business at which every body is astonished. . . . . As I have no business in London (except, indeed, to dine at Gray’s Inn once at the latter end of June,) till November, we intend
* His cousin, Margaret Hill. † The mutiny of the fleet at Spithead. |
| 310 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 23. |
“I had a letter from Lisbon yesterday. My uncle’s family has been very unfortunate: his poor old woman is dead, and so is his dog Linda. His mare, who was lame, he had given away to be turned into the woods; she has not been seen lately, and he thinks the wolves have eat her; it was an account that made me melancholy. I had been long enough an inhabitant of his house to become attached to every thing connected with it; and poor old Ursula was an excellent woman: he will never find her equal, and I shall never think of Lisbon again without some feelings of regret
“My acquaintance here are more than are convenient, and
I meet with invitations unpleasant to refuse, and still more unpleasant to
accept. This is another motive to me to wish for a country residence as long as
possible. I find the distance in this foul city very inconvenient; ’tis a
morning’s walk to call upon a distant friend, and I return from it
thoroughly fatigued. We are going to dine on Wednesday next with Mary Wollstonecroft—of all the literary
characters the one I most admire. My curiosity is fully satisfied, and the
greater part of these people, after that is satisfied, leave no other
remaining. This is not the case with her; she is a first-rate woman,
| Ætat. 23. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 311 |
“I have two reasons for preferring a residence near the sea. I love to pickle myself in that grand brine tub; and I wish to catch its morning, evening, and mid-day appearance for poetry, with the effect of every change of weather. Fancy will do much; but the poet ought to be an accurate observer of nature; and I shall watch the clouds, and the rising and setting sun, and the sea birds with no inattentive eye. I have remedied one of my deficiencies, too, since a boy, and learnt to swim enough to like the exercise. This I began at Oxford, and practised a good deal in the summer of 1795. My last dip was in the Atlantic Ocean, at the foot of the Arrabida Mountain—a glorious spot. I have no idea of sublimity exceeding it. . . . . Have you ever met with Mary Wollstonecroft’s letters from Sweden and Norway? She has made me in love with a cold climate, and frost and snow, with a northern moonlight. Now I am turned lawyer, I shall have no more books to send you, except, indeed, second editions, when they are called for, and then my alterations will be enough, perhaps, to give one interested in the author some pleasure in the comparison. God bless you.
