“. . . . . I shall have a poem to send you in the
course of a few weeks, planned upon occasion of the King’s death (which
you may think no very promising subject), laid aside eight months ago, when
half written, as not suited for publication while the event was recent, and now
taken up again, and almost brought to a conclusion. The title is, ‘A Vision of Judgment.’
It is likely to attract some notice, because I have made—and, in my own
opinion, with success—the bold experiment of constructing a metre upon the
principle of the ancient hexameter. It will provoke some abuse for what is said
of the factious spirit by which the country has been disturbed during the last
fifty years; and it will have some interest for you, not merely because it
comes from me, but because you will find Henry’s name not improperly introduced in it. My
Laureateship has not been a sinecure: without reckoning the annual odes, which
| Ætat. 46. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 53 |
“The prevailing madness has reached Keswick*, as well as all other places; and the people here, who believe, half of them, that the King concealed his father’s death ten years for the sake of receiving his allowance, and that he poisoned the Princess Charlotte (of which, they say, there can be no doubt; for did not the doctor kill himself? and why should he have done that if it had not been for remorse of conscience?), believe, with the same monstrous credulity, that the Queen is a second Susannah. The Queenomania will probably die away ere long; but it will be succeeded by some new excitement; and so we shall go on as long as our Government suffers itself to be insulted and menaced with impunity, and as long as
* Some riots had been expected on the occasion of the Queen’s trial. My father writes at the time, “King Mob, contrary to his majesty’s custom, has borne his faculties meekly in this place, and my windows were not assailed on the night of the illumination. I was prepared to suffer like a Quaker; and my wife was much more ‘game’ than I expected. Perhaps we owed our security to the half dozen persons in town who also chose to light no candles. They had declared their intention of making a fight for it if they were attacked, and they happened to be persons of consideration and influence. So all went off peaceably. The tallow chandler told our servant that it was expected there would be great disturbances; this was a hint to me, but I was too much a Trojan to be taken in by the man of grease.”—To G. C. B., Nov. 17. 1820. |
| 54 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 46. |
“I have a book in progress upon the state of the country, its existing evils, and its prospects. It is in a series of dialogues, and I hope it will not be read without leading some persons both to think and to feel as they ought. In more than one instance I have had the satisfaction of being told that my papers in the Quarterly Review have confirmed some who were wavering in their opinions, and reclaimed others who were wrong. . . . .
“God bless you, my dear Neville!
