“Lakers and visitors have now disappeared for the season, like the swallows and other birds who are lucky enough to have better winter quarters allotted to them than this island affords them. The woodcocks and snipes have arrived, by this token, that my bookbinder here sent me a brace of the latter last week; and this reminds me to tell you, that if you ever have an owl dressed for dinner, you had better have it boiled, and smothered with onions, for it is not good roasted. Experto crede Roberto.
“Two or three weeks ago, calling at Calvert’s I learnt that Raisley C. had committed the great sin of
shooting an owl. The criminality of the act was qualified by an ingenuous
confession, that he did not know what it was when he fired at it: the bird was
brought in to show us, and then given me that I might show it to your godson,
owls and monkeys being of all created things those for which he has acquired
the greatest liking from his graphic studies. Home I came with the owl in my
hand, and in the morning you would have been well pleased had you seen
Cuthbert’s joy at recognising,
for the first time, the reality of what he sees daily in Bewick or in some
other of his books. Wordsworth and his
wife were here, and as there was no sin in eating the owl, I ordered it to be
dressed and brought in, in the place of game that day at dinner. It was served
up with-
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 99 |
“I asked your opinion, a good while since, concerning a dedication for the Peninsular War, and hitherto you have not opined upon the subject in reply. It has this moment, while I am writing, occurred to me, that I could, with sincere satisfaction in so doing, inscribe it to Lord Sidmouth. I have always felt thankful to him for the peace of Amiens, and should like to tell him so in public, as I once did vivâ voce. And I should do it the more willingly if he is going out of office, which I rather think he is.
“Gifford will have a paper upon Dobrizhoffer from me for this next number. Will you tell him that in a volume of tracts at Lowther, of Charles I.’s time, I found a Life of Sejanus by P. M., by which initials some hand, apparently as old as the book, had written Philip Massinger. I did not read the tract, being too keenly in pursuit of other game; but I believe it had a covert aim at Buckingham. I have not his Massinger, and therefore do not know whether he is aware that this was ever ascribed to that author; if he is not, he will be interested in the circumstance, and may think it worthy of farther inquiry.
| 100 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“My History is in good progress. I am finishing the longest chapter in the volume, and one of the most interesting. It contains the events in Portugal from the commencement of the insurrection in Spain till the arrival of our expedition.
“God bless you!
