“Yesterday I received a letter from my uncle with the news of Miss Tyler’s death, an event which you will probably have learnt before this reaches you. My uncle is thus relieved from a considerable charge, and from the apprehension which he must have felt of her surviving him. She was in the eighty-second year of her age. She will be interred (to-morrow, I suppose,) in the burial place of the Hills, where her mother and two of the Tylers are laid, and my father with five of my brothers and sisters.
“Her death was, even for herself, to be desired as
well as expected. My affection for her had been long and justly cancelled. I
feel no grief, therefore, but such an event of necessity presses for a while
like a weight upon the mind. Had it not been for the whim which took her to
Lisbon in the year of my birth, you and I should never have known each other:
my uncle would never have seen Portugal, and in how different a course would
his life and mine in consequence have run! I have known many strange characters
in my time, but never so extraordinary a one as hers, which, of course, I know
in-
| Ætat. 46. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 63 |
“Yesterday’s post brought me also an intimation from my musical colleague, Mr. Shield, that ‘our most gracious and royal master intends to command the performance of an Ode at St. James’ on the day fixed for the celebration of his birth-day.’ Of course, therefore, my immediate business is to get into harness and work in the mill. Two or three precious days will be spent in producing what will be good for nothing; for as for making any thing good of a birth-day ode, I might as well attempt to manufacture silk purses from sows’ ears. Like Warton, I shall give the poem an historical character; but I shall not do this as well as Warton, who has done it very well. He was a happy, easy-minded, idle man, to whom literature in its turn was as much an amusement as rat-hunting, and who never aimed at anything above such odes.
“March 20.—I now send you the
fourth letter of the promised series, dated at the beginning nearly four months
before it was brought to an end. Were I to proceed always at this rate with it,
I should die of old age before I got breeched in the narrative; but with all my
undertakings I proceed faster in proportion as I advance in them. Just now I am
in the humour for going on; and you will hear from me again sooner than you
expect, for I shall begin the next letter as soon as this packet is dispatched.
It is a long while since I have heard from you, and I am somewhat anxious to
hear how your affair goes
| 64 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 46. |
“God bless you, my dear friend!
