“I have declined a proposal from Fraser to write a popular history of English
literature, à-la-mode Murray’s Family Library; in four
volumes. Because, in the first place, it cannot be prudent to engage in schemes
where, besides author and bookseller, there is a certain middle man, or
undertaker, to have his portion of the profits: secondly, because I hope to
execute such a work upon a fitting scale, and in a
| 56 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 55. |
“Lockhart tells me my paper upon Portugal has had the rare fortune of pleasing all parties: I looked at it therefore to find out what there was wrong in it, but I could not discover. He asks for a similar paper upon Spain, but cannot have it; because much that is true of the one country is true of the other, and because I am not so thoroughly acquainted with the subject. Concerning Portugal no other foreigner can know so much; concerning Spain many may know more.
“It is well for me that I like reviewing well enough to feel nothing irksome in the employment; but as life shortens on me I cannot help sometimes regretting that so large a share of the little which is left, must continue so to be employed, till the last.
“When are you coming? we talk of you and wish for you every day. . . . .
“You think me easily pleased with people. Perhaps no one tolerates them more easily; but I am not often contented, in the full sense of that term, any more with men than with books. In both I am thankful for the good that is mixed with ill; but there are few of either which I like well enough to take to my heart and incorporate them, as it were, with it.
| Ætat. 55. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 57 |
“But I must go on with the Life of Loyola, so God bless you!
