“Laus Deo! Peace with America. All difficulty about the Ode is thus terminated, and instead of singing O be joyful! I must set about another. So I shall pen one for the Fiddlers, and alter the other, either to be published separately or with it. Coming extra-officially it cannot be offensive, and, being in the press, it cannot be suppressed without losing the price of the printer’s labour.
“As for any such possibilities as those at which you
hint, they are so very like impossibilities that I do not know how to
distinguish them. For in the first place you may be sure that if the men in
power were ever so well disposed toward me, they would think me already
liberally remunerated for my literary merits; they cannot know that by gaining
a pension of 200l. I was actually a loser of 20l. a-year; they, if they thought about it at all, would
needs suppose that it was a clear addition to my former means, and that if I
lived decently before, the addition would enable me to live with ease and
comfort. Secondly, they are never likely to think about me, farther than as I
may, in pursuing my own principles, happen to fall in with their view of
things. This happened in
| Ætat. 40. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 99 |
“No, Grosvenor, I shall never get more from Government than has already been given me, and I am and ought to be well contented with it; only they ought to allow me my wine in kind, and dispense with the Odes. When did this fool’s custom begin? Before Cibber’s time? I would have made the office honourable if they would have let me. If they will not, the dishonour will not be mine. And now I am going to think about my rhymes, so farewell for the night.
“I have been rhyming as doggedly and as dully as if my name had been Henry James Pye. Another dogged fit will, it is to be hoped, carry me through the job; and as the Ode will be very much according to rule, and entirely good-for-nothing, I presume it may be found unobjectionable. Meantime the poor Mus. Doc. has the old poem to mumble over. As I have written in regular stanzas, I shall despatch him one by this post to set him his tune. It is really my wish to use all imaginable civility to the Mus. Doc, and yet I dare say he thinks me a troublesome fellow as well as an odd one.
“God bless you!
