I ought to have thanked you for your Visitation Sermon and
for your Charge, both worthy of the
| 146 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 48. |
“My anticipations would be of the darkest kind, if it
were not for a calm, unhesitating reliance upon Providence. Our institutions
had need be strong when they are so feebly defended, and so formidably and
incessantly assailed. Uncompromising courage was almost the only quality of a
statesman which Mr. Pitt possessed; and
that quality has not been inherited by his successors. At present they seem to
think that all is well, because the manufacturers are in employ, and there is
no seditious movement going on. And they would hardly look upon that writer as
their friend who should tell them that this quiet is only upon the surface,
that the leaven is at work, and that there is less danger from the negroes in
Demerara or Jamaica than from a manufacturing population such as ours, with
such a party of determined radicals and besotted reformers in Parliament to
excite them. Would that I could perceive the remedy as clearly as I do the
evil! I have, however, for some time been deliberately putting together my
thoughts upon this subject in a series of Colloquies upon the Progress and Prospects of
Society, taking for my motto three pregnant words from St.
Bernard, Respice, aspice,
prospice. I am neither so vain or
| Ætat. 48. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 147 |
“There is hope for us at home, because our institutions are so good that it is quite certain, if they were subverted, the miserable people would soon desire nothing so much as their re-establishment; and moreover, with the commonest prudence, they are strong enough to resist a revolutionary attack. But if we look abroad, the contending parties are both in such extremes of evil, that I know not from which the worst consequences are to be apprehended,—the establishment of old governments or the triumph of new ones. You would be pleased, I am sure, with the paper concerning Spain in the last Quarterly. It is by my friend Blanco White (Leucadio Doblado). A Spanish priest, who came over to this country in 1810, a thorough Jacobin and a thorough unbeliever, and is at this time as sincere a Protestant and as devout a minister as any whom the Church of England has in her service. There are few men whom I respect so highly.
“Before this letter reaches your Lordship, I shall be
on the way to London, and as I shall not finally leave it before the beginning
of February, it is possible that I may have the pleasure of meeting you there.
It will indeed gratify me to accept of your obliging invitation if I can one
day find opportunity and leisure: there is much in your country which I should
like to see, and many points upon
| 148 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 48. |
“That poem of Langhorn’s has certainly a Hebrew cast; but it must be rather a proof that this form of composition is the natural figure of passion, than of imitation. The principle, as a principle, he could not have understood, nor was he, being a lawyer, likely to have had any learning of that kind; nor indeed, being a Catholic, even to have been conversant with the scriptural style. The part given in the Quarterly Review is about a third of the poem, but the whole is in the same high and sustained strain of feeling.
“I am putting the last hand to my long promised Book of the Church. It will give great offence to the Catholics, and to all those Dissenters who inherit the opinions of the Puritans. But I hope and trust that it will confirm in many, and excite in more, a deep, well founded reverence for the Establishment.
