“You will shortly, I trust, receive my Pilgrimage, the notes and title-page to which would have been at this time in the printer’s hands, if I had not been palsied by the severe illness of my son, who is at this time in such a state that I know not whether there be more cause for fear or for hope. In the disposition of mind which an affliction of this kind induces, there is no person whom I feel so much inclined to converse with as with you.
| Ætat. 42. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 155 |
“I have touched, in the latter part of my poem, upon the general course of human events, and the prospects of society. But perhaps I have not explained myself as fully and as clearly as if I had been writing in prose. The preponderance of good, and the progressiveness of truth and knowledge and general well-being, I clearly perceive; but I have delivered an opinion that this tendency to good is not an over-ruling necessity, and that that which is, is not necessarily the best that might have been, for this, in my judgment, would interfere with that free agency upon which all our virtues, and indeed the great scheme of Revelation itself, are founded.
“Time, my own heart, and, more than all other causes,
the sorrows with which it has been visited (in the course of a life that, on
the whole, has been happy in a degree vouchsafed to few, even among the
happiest), have made me fully sensible, that the highest happiness exists, as
the only consolation is to be found, in a deep and habitual feeling of
devotion. Long ere this would I have preached what I feel upon this subject, if
the door had been open to me; but it is one thing to conform to the Church,
preserving that freedom of mind which in religion, more than in all other
things, is especially valuable; and another to subscribe solemnly to its
articles. Christianity exists nowhere in so pure a form as in our own Church;
but even there it is mingled with much alloy, from which I know not how it will
be purified. I have an instinctive abhorrence of bigotry. When Dissenters talk
of the Establishment, they make me feel like a high Churchman; and when I get
among
| 156 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 42. |
“You have thrown a new light upon the York and
Lancaster age of our history, by showing the connection of those quarrels with
the incipient spirit of Reformation. I wish we had reformed the monastic
institutions instead of overthrowing them. Mischievous as they are in Catholic
countries, they have got this good about them, that they hold up something
besides worldly distinction to the respect and admiration of the people, and
fix the standard of virtues higher than we do in Protestant countries. Would
that we had an order of Beguines in England! There are few subjects which have
been so unfairly discussed as monastic institutions: the Protestant condemns
them in the lump, and the Romanist crams his legends down your throat. The
truth is, that they began in a natural and good feeling, though somewhat
exaggerated,—that they produced the greatest public good in their season,
that they were abominably perverted, and that the good which they now do,
wherever they exist, is much less than the evil. Yet, if you had seen, as I
once did, a Franciscan of fourscore, with a venerable head and beard, standing
in the cloister of his convent, where his brothers lay beneath his feet, and
telling his beads, with a countenance expressive of the most perfect and
peaceful piety, you would have felt with me how desirable it was that there
should be such institutions for minds so constituted. The total absence of
religion from our poor-houses, alms-houses, and hospitals, is as culpable in
one way as the excess of superstition is in
| Ætat. 42. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 157 |
“But I will have done with these topics, because I
wish to say something respecting your second volume. You have surprised me by the
additions you have made to our knowledge of our own early poetry. I had no
notion that the Hermit of Hampole was so
considerable a personage, nor that there remained such a mass of inedited
poetry of that age. The Antiquarian Society would do well to publish the whole,
however much it may be. You are aware how much light it would throw upon the
history of our language, of our manners, and even of civil
transaction;—for all these things I should most gladly peruse the whole
mass. St. Francisco Xavier is not the
Xavier who wrote the Persian Life of Christ. In p. 3. you mention some novel
verses which relate to Portuguese history. If the Scald
Halldon’s poem be not too long, may I request you to
translate it for me, as a document for my history. Observe, that
| 158 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 42. |
“Remember us to Mrs. Turner, Alfred, and your daughter. We are in great anxiety, and with great cause, but there is hope. My wish at such time is akin to Macbeth’s, but in a different spirit—a longing that the next hundred years were over, and that we were in a better world, where happiness is permanent, and there is neither change nor evil.
“God bless you!
