“. . . . . The infrequency of my letters, my dear Wynn, God knows, is owing to no distaste. The pressing employments of one who keeps pace with an increasing expenditure by temporary writings,—the quantity which, from necessity as well as inclination, I have to read, and the multiplicity of letters which I have to write, are the sufficient causes. You do not know the number of letters which come to me from perfect strangers, who seem to think a poet-laureate has as much patronage as the Lord Chancellor. Not unfrequently the writers remind me so strongly of my own younger days, that I have given them the best advice I could, with earnestness as well as sincerity; and more than once been thus led into an occasional correspondence. The Laureateship itself with me is no sinecure. I am at work in consequence of it at this time. Do not suppose that I mean to rival Walter Scott. My poem will be in a very different strain. . . . .
“During my stay in London, I scarcely ever went out of
the circle of my private friends. I dined in company with Mina and some other Liberals—a set of
men who (while I cannot but respect them as individuals, and feel that under
the late Administration I myself might probably have felt and acted with them,)
do certainly justify Ferdinand, not in
his ca-
| Ætat. 42. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 145 |
“There is but one point in your letter in which I do not agree with you, and that regards the army. The necessity of maintaining it appears to me manifest, and the contingent danger imaginary. Our danger is not from that quarter. If we are to suffer from the army, it will be by their taking part against the Government (as in France), and siding in a mob revolution. In my judgment, we are tending this way insensibly to our rulers and to the main part of the people, but I fear inevitably. The foundations of Government are undermined. The props may last during your lifetime and mine, but I cannot conceal from myself a conviction that, at no very distant day, the whole fabric must fall! God grant that this ominous apprehension may prove false.
“God bless you, my dear Wynn.
