“Twice I wished for you yesterday; first, at breakfast, because it was a beautiful morning, and my feet itched for a ten miles’ walk. But you are in Sussex, Davies is in Shropshire, and I have not even a dog for a companion.
“Secondly, you were wished for two hours afterwards, when I had settled to my work, for then came the box of books from Ulverston. You would have enjoyed the unpacking. It is the best batch they ever sent home: thirty, volumes, besides three for Bertha and five of Kate’s.
“I should like, if it were possible, always to communicate my pleasures, and keep my troubles to myself. Here was no one to admire the books with us.
“You remember* when the miller invited me, to whom he had never spoken before, to rejoice with him over the pig that he had killed, the finest that he had ever fattened, and how he led me to the place where that which had ceased to be pig, and was not yet bacon, was hung up,—scalded, exenterate, and hardly yet cold,—by the hind-feet.
“Mr. Campbell’s† man, Willy, in like manner, yesterday, called on his acquaintance to admire a
* I remember it very well, and how my father rejoiced the man’s heart by admiring the goodly sight. † A gentleman resident at Keswick, with whom he was very intimate. |
| Ætat. 60. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 281 |
“About six weeks hence I hope to rejoice both over Cowper and the Admirals, though not to take my leave of them then. But I hope to have a volume of each completed, and am now keeping on pari passu with both. The Evangelical Magazine has outdone its usual outdoings in abusing the first volume. They say I shall be known to posterity as embalmed in Lord Byron’s verse for an incarnate lie. The whole article is in this strain, and it has roused Cradock’s indignation as much as it has amused me; for it is written just as I should wish an enemy to write. God bless you, my dear boy!
