“No compliment has ever been addressed to me which gratified me more than your Dedicatory Sonnet, and one only which gratified me so much (that of Henry Taylor’s Philip van Artevelde); both for the same reason, because both are in themselves singularly beautiful, and I know that both were written with sincerity.
“This letter is written from my first halting place on a very wide circuit. Cuthbert and I left home on Monday, bound for the Land’s End, from whence I shall turn back with him to Sussex, and having deposited him there, proceed to London. There my purpose is to remain a fortnight, after which I shall perform my promise of visiting Neville White whenever I went again to town, and then make the best of my way home. It is an unfavourable season for making such a journey, but my brother, Dr. Southey, advised and urged me to break from home, and not rely too confidently upon a stock of health and spirits on which there were large demands.
“Being able to do this (which I hardly expected till a
fortunate subpœna to Lancaster put it to the proof), I had the additional
motive of going to examine the only collections of Cowper’s letters which have not been entrusted to
me,—those of Mr. Bagot, which I am
to peruse with his son, near Birmingham,
and those of Joseph Hill, which were
bequeathed as
| Ætat. 63. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 309 |
“There was a third inducement for this journey. I wished to show Cuthbert the scenes of my childhood and youth, which no one but myself could show him, and to introduce him to a few old friends, all that are left to me in that part of England. Probably it may be my last journey to those parts. We hope to reach Bristol on Thursday, Nov. 3., and intend to remain a week there.
“Direct to me at Mr. Cottle’s, Bedminster, Bristol. Cottle published my Joan of Arc in 1796, and there are very few who entertain a warmer regard for me than he has done from that time.
“The lines which I have written in Miss ——’s album are on the opposite page to that upon which O’Connell and Joseph Buonaparte have inscribed their effusions. You will see that mine did not require any premeditation:
“‘Birds of a feather flock together; But vide the opposite page! And thence you may gather I’m not of a
feather With some of the birds in this cage.’ |
As soon as Cowper is completed, Longman
means to commence a monthly publication of my poems in ten volumes. The volumes shall
be sent you duly as they are published. Very few of my successors in this
generation would be so well en-
| 310 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 63. |
“Cuthbert desires his kind remembrances; and believe me always,
