“On opening a box to-day, the contents of which I had
not seen since the winter of 1799, your picture
| 136 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 34. |
“What you say of my copyrights affected me very much. Dear Cottle, set your heart at rest on that subject. It ought to be at rest. They were yours, fairly bought, and fairly sold. You bought them on the chance of their success, which no London bookseller would have done; and had they not been bought, they could not have been published at all. Nay, if you had not purchased Joan of Arc, the poem never would have existed, nor should I, in all probability, ever have obtained that reputation which is the capital on which I subsist, nor that power which enables me to support it.
“But this is not all. Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten those true and
most essential acts of friendship which you showed me when I stood most in need
of them? Your house was my house when I had no other. The very money with which
I bought my wedding-ring and paid my marriage fees, was supplied by you. It was
with your sisters I left Edith during my
six months’ absence, and for the six months’ after my return it was
from you that I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till I
was enabled to live by other means. It is not the settling of a cash account
that can cancel obligations like these. You are in the habit
| Ætat. 34. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 137 |
