“I thank you for your little volume, which I have read with pleasure, as the faithful transcript of a good man’s mind. It contains ample proof that you possess the perceptions of a poet; and if the diction in which they are clothed has sometimes its defects, it is because you have been too laboriously employed in more dignified pursuits to have had leisure for maturing the mechanical part of an art which, of all other trades or professions, requires the longest apprenticeship.
“What I have written upon the Missionaries I well knew
would accord with your feelings and opinions. I have not yet done with the
subject, meaning, so soon as my many occupations will allow, to prepare an
article upon the South African missions; and, perhaps, to go on at intervals
till I have given a view of all the existing Protestant missions; proved my own
firm belief that there are but two methods of extending
civilisation,—conquest and conversion,—the latter the only certain
one; entered fully into the difficulties which oppose the
| 282 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 36. |
“I had given Canning credit for the Austrian article, though half suspecting that it was giving him credit for too much, because there was a reference to the principles of human nature and a sense of its dignity rarely, or never, to be found in a politician by trade. The Quarterly does well; but it would do far better if it was emancipated from the shackles of party. It wants also some recondite learning: you should give them an account of the Welsh Archaeology; or, if that be too laborious, should take some of the Welshmen’s publications, Davies or Roberts, for your text, and pour out from your full stores. . . . .
“You will receive the first volume of my greatest labours very shortly; for,
after many provoking delays, it has at last got out of the printer’s
hands. It is less interesting perhaps than the second volume will prove, or
than the history of the mother country; but it will repay perusal, and you will
find many valuable hints respecting savage life. I have a poem also in the press, which you will
wonder at and abuse. It is, in my own judgment, a successful attempt at giving
to rhyme the whole freedom, and more than the variety, of blank verse. But in
all its structure and story it is so wholly unlike anything else, that I expect
to have very few admirers. This has been a sort of episode to my main
employments. . . . . What I am busied upon most intently is the historical part
of Ballantyne’s new Annual Register. The perfect freedom
and perfect
| Ætat. 36. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 283 |
