“When do I come to London? A plain question. I cannot tell, is as plain an answer. My book will be out before Christmas, and I shall then have no further business in Bristol; yet, Bedford, this is not saying when I shall leave it. The best answer is, as soon as I can, and the sooner the better. I want to be there. I want to feel myself settled, and God knows when that will be, for the settlement of a lodging is but a comfortless one. To complete comfort, a house to oneself is necessary However, I expect to be as comfortable as it is possible to be in that cursed city, ‘that huge and hateful sepulchre of men.’ I detest cities, and had rather live in the fens of Lincolnshire or on Salisbury Plain than in the best situation London could furnish. The neighbourhood of you and Wynn can alone render it tolerable. I fear the air will wither me up, like one of the miserable myrtles at a town parlour window. . . . . Oh, for ‘the house in the woods and the great dog!’
“I already feel intimate with Carlisle, but I am a very snail in company,
Grosvenor, and pop into my shell
whenever I am approached, or roll myself up like a hedgehog, in my rough
outside. It is strange, but I never approach London without feeling my heart
sink within me; an unconquerable heaviness oppresses me in its atmosphere, and
all its associated ideas are painful. With a little house in the country,
| 296 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 22. |
“My future studies, too. Now, I never read a book without learning something, and never write a line of poetry, without cultivating some feeling of benevolence and honesty; but the law is a horrid jargon—a quibbling collection of voluminous nonsense; but this I must wade through,—aye, and I will wade through,—and when I shall have got enough to live in the country, you and I will make my first Christmas fire of all my new books. Oh, Grosvenor, what a blessed bonfire! The devil uses the statutes at large for fuel, when he gives an attorney his house warming.
“I shall have some good poems to send you shortly. Your two birthday odes are printed; your name looks well in capitals, and I have pleased myself by the motto prefixed to them: it is from Akenside. Shall I leave you to guess it? I hate guessing myself.
“‘Oh, my faithful friend! Oh early chosen! ever found the same, And trusted, and beloved; once more the verse, Long-destined, always obvious to thine ear, Attend indulgent.’ |
| Ætat. 22. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 297 |
“My Triumph of Woman is manufactured into a tolerable poem. My Hymn to the Penates will be the best of my minor pieces. The B. B. Eclogues may possibly become popular.
“Read St. Pierre, Grosvenor; and if you ever turn Pagan, you will certainly worship him for a demigod. . . . . I want to get a tragedy out, to furnish a house with its profits. Is this a practicable scheme, allowing the merit of the drama? or would a good novel succeed better? Heighho! ways and means! . . . .
