“I received your kind letter on the evening before last,
and I trust that this will arrive at Bristol just in time to rejoice with them
that rejoice. Alas! you will have found the dear old place sadly minused by
| Ætat. 27. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 147 |
“Our house stands on a low hill, the whole front of which is one field and an enormous garden, nine-tenths of which is a nursery garden. Behind the house is an orchard, and a small wood on a steep slope, at the foot of which flows the river Greta, which winds round and catches the evening lights in the front of the house. In front we have a giant’s camp—an encamped army of tent-like mountains, which by an inverted arch gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite; and on our left Derwentwater and Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrodale. Behind us the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a tent-like ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all your wanderings. Without going from our own grounds we have all that can please a human being. As to books, my landlord, who dwells next door*, has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine; histories, encyclopaedias,
* Greta Hall was at this time divided into two houses, which were afterwards thrown together. |
| 148 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 27. |
“Our neighbour is a truly good and affectionate man, a father to my children, and a friend to me. He was offered fifty guineas for the house in which we are to live, but he preferred me for a tenant at twenty-five; and yet the whole of his income does not exceed, I believe, 200l. a year. A more truly disinterested man I never met with; severely frugal, yet almost carelessly generous; and yet he got all his money as a common carrier*, by hard labour, and by pennies and pennies. He is one instance among many in this country of the salutary effect of the love of knowledge—he was from a boy a lover of learning. . . . . The house is full twice as large as we want; it hath more rooms in it than Allfoxen; you might have a bed-room, parlour, study, &c. &c., and there would always be rooms to spare for your or my visitors. In short, for situation and convenience,—and when I mention the name of Wordsworth, for society of men of intellect,—I know no place in which you and Edith would find yourselves so well suited.”
