“I have just received yours, and regret that I did not
write sooner, upon a reasonable calculation
| Ætat. 29. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 245 |
“For God’s sake adapt your mode of living to the
climate you are going to, and abstain almost wholly from wine and spirits.
General Peche, an East Indian
officer here, with whom we dined on Christmas-day, told me that in India the
officers who were looking out for preferment, as a majority, &c., and who
kept lists of all above them, always marked those who drank any spirits in a
morning with an X, and reckoned them for nothing. ‘One day,’
said he,. ‘when we were about to march at day-break, I and
Captain —— were in my tent, and we saw a German of
our regiment, so I said we’d try him; we called to him, said it was a
cold morning, and asked him if he would drink a glass to warm him. I got
him a full beaker of brandy-and-water, and, egad! he drank it off. When he
was gone, I said. Well, what d’ye think; we may cross him,
mayn’t we? Oh yes, said he, cross him by all means. And the German
did not live twelve months.’ Spice is the stimulus given by
nature to hot countries, and eaten in whatever quantities can do no harm. But
the natives of all hot countries invariably abstain from spirits, as deadly.
| 246 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 29. |
“Edith will go on with Madoc for you, and a letter full shall go off for Barbadoes this week. My last set you upon a wide field of inquiry; I know not what can be added, unless you should be at St. Vincent’s, where the Caribs would be well worthy attention; making the same queries of and to them as to the negroes. Of course there are no Spanish books except at the Spanish islands. Oh! that I were at Mexico for a hunt there! Could you bring home a live alligator? a little one, of course, from his hatching to six feet long; it would make both me and Carlisle quite happy, for he should have him. And tray pray, some live land-crabs, that they may breed; and any other monsters. Birds lose their beauty; and I would not be accessory to the death of a humming-bird, for the sake of keeping his corpse in a cabinet: but with crocodiles, sharks, and land-crabs it is fair play—you catch them, or they you. Your own eyes will do all that I can direct them. How unfortunate that neither of us can draw! I want drawings of the trees.
| Ætat. 29. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 247 |
“Thompson, the friend of Burns, whose correspondence with him about songs fills the whole fourth volume, has applied to me to write him verses for Welsh airs: of course I have declined it; telling him that I could as soon sing his songs as write them, and referring him to Harry, whom he knows, for an estimate of that simile of disqualification. Still I am at reviewing; but ten days will lighten me of that burthen, and then huzza for history, and huzza for Madoc, for I shall be a free man again! I have bought Pinkerton’s Geography after all, for the love of the maps, having none; it is a useful book, and will save me trouble.
“We shall not think of holding any part of St. Domingo. What has been done can only have been for the sake of what plunder was to be found, and perhaps also to save the French army from the fate which they so justly deserved. God forbid that ever English hand be raised against the negroes in that island! Poor wretches! I regard them as I do the hurricane and the pestilence, blind instruments of righteous retribution and divine justice; and sure I am that whatever hand be lifted against them will be withered. Of Spanish politics I can say nothing, nor give even a surmise. Here at home we have the old story of invasion; upon which the types naturally range themselves into a very alarming and loyal leading paragraph. Let him come, say I, it will be a fine thing for the bell-ringers and the tallow-chandlers.
“I trust this will reach you before your departure.
Write immediately on your arrival, and afterwards
| 248 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 29. |
“God bless you! Edith’s love. A happy new year, and many returns!
