“I will be at your door at ten o’clock on Saturday the 20th of May, unless any mishap should prevent me.
| 246 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 51. |
“It was not without some degree of shame that I received your kind letter; the shame which arises from a consciousness of having omitted what ought to have been done. For I have often thought of writing to you, and intended to write; and as often some avocation has made me postpone it till that more convenient season, which never arrives for one who is always employed, and but too frequently interrupted.
“My last year’s journey proved an eventful one,
both for evil and good. I travelled in the hope of cutting short an annual
catarrh, which is of such a nature that, unless the habit of its recurrence can
be overcome, its work must, in a very few visits more, be completed. The
experiment succeeded perfectly, and so far all was well. I sent home, also, a
goodly consignment of folios, and of smaller fry, from Brussels, and from
Leyden; heavy artillery, to be mounted in my batteries against Babylon. But my
ill fortune began at Douay, whither I went on my outward journey, partly for
the sake of taking a line which I had not travelled before; chiefly because I
had an ancestor buried there, the first Sir Herbert
Croft, who turned Romanist in the reign of James I., and died there among the Benedictines.
Happily for me, his son returned to the faith in which he had been born: I
wished to see his grave; but when I came to the Benedictine church, I was in
the same case as Yorick, when he looked for
the tombs of Amandus and Amanda. The church had been gutted, the monuments
destroyed, in the Revolution; and the crypt, wherein he was buried, was filled
with
| Ætat. 51. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 247 |
| 248 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 51. |
“He is above seventy years of age, and considering what he has gone through in mind and body, it is marvellous that he is alive. From infancy he has been an invalid; and in childhood was saved, after his case was pronounced hopeless, by a desperate experiment of his own father’s,—to change the whole mass of his blood by frequent bleeding. But in consequence, his system acquired such a habit of making blood, that periodical bleeding has been necessary from that time; and now, in his old age, after every endeavour to prolong the intervals, he is bled every six weeks. His pulse is always that of a feverish man. He has never slept more than four hours in the four-and-twenty, and wakes always unrefreshed, and in a state of discomfort, as if sleep exhausted him more than the perpetual intellectual labour in which he is engaged. None of his countrymen have written so much, or so variously, or so well; this is admitted by his enemies; and he has for his enemies the whole body of Liberals and time-servers. His fortune was completely wrecked in the Revolution; and having been the most confidential and truest friend of the Stadtholder, he has received the usual reward of fidelity after a Restoration. The House of Orange, like other restored families, has thought it politic to show favour to their enemies, and neglect their friends. A small pension of about 140l. is all that he has; and a professorship, which the King had promised, is withheld, lest the Liberals should be offended.
| Ætat. 51. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 249 |
“His life has been attempted in popular commotions; he has almost wanted bread for his family in exile, having had eight children by a first wife, seven by the present! one boy of twelve years old is the only one left, whose disposition is everything that can be desired, but his constitution so feeble, that it is impossible to look at him without fear. The mother is four-and-twenty years younger than her husband, and in every respect worthy of him; I have never seen a woman who was more to be admired and esteemed for everything womanly; no strangers would suppose that so unassuming a person was in high repute as a poetess. Bilderdijk’s intellectual rank is at once indicated by his countenance; but he is equally high-minded and humble, in the best sense of those epithets; and both are so suited to each other, so resigned to their fortunes, so deeply and quietly religious, and therefore so contented, so thankful, and so happy, that it must be my own fault if I am not the better for having known them.
“This theme has made me loquacious. You see that if I suffered for visiting Holland instead of Ireland, the evil was amply overpaid. For your renewed invitation I cannot thank you as I ought, nor say more at present than that in all likelihood I shall be most happy to accept it. We shall see what twelve months will bring forth.
“Farewell, my Lord, till May 20. I beg my kind regards to Mr. Forster, and remain,
