“We shall be very glad to see you, my dear Grosvenor, if you can come. There is a bed in the house, and I am of necessity an idle man, and can show you all things worth seeing, and get you a dose of the beatifying gas, which is a pleasure worth the labour of a longer journey. . . . .
“I have often thought of the Chancery line. . . . .
—— did not seem to like it: he is
ambitious for me, and perhaps hardly understands how utterly I am without that
stimulus. I shall write to him a serious
| 38 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 25. |
“Come to Bristol, I pray and beseech you. Winter as it is, I can show you some fine scenes and some pleasant people. You shall see Davy, the young chemist, the young everything, the man least ostentatious, of first talent that I have ever known; and you may experimentalise, if you like, and arrange my Anthology papers, and be as boyish as your heart can wish, . . . . and I can give you Laver for supper. O rare Laver! . . . .
“Perhaps the closest friendships will be found among
men of inferior intellect, for such most completely accord with each other.
There is scarcely any man with whom the whole of my being comes in contact; and
thus with different people I exist another and yet the same. With ——, for instance, the school-boy feelings
revive; I have no other associations in common with him. With some I am the
moral and intellectual agent; with others I partake the daily and hourly
occurrences of life. You and I, when we would see alike, must put on younger
spectacles. Whatever is most important in society, appears to us under
different points of view. The man in
| Ætat. 25. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 39 |
