“The map of Ireland is a beautiful map—mountains,
and lakes, and rivers; which I hope one day to visit with you. St.
Patrick’s Purgatory and the Giant’s Causeway lie in
the same comer. Where ‘Mole, that mountain hoar,’ is, I
cannot find, though I have hunted the name in every distortion of possible
orthography. A journey in Ireland has, also, the great advantage of enabling us
to study savage life. I shall be able to get letters of introduction, which, as
draughts for food and shelter in a country where whiskey-houses are scarce,
will be invaluable.
| 172 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 27. |
“From Lamb’s letter to Rickman I learn that he means to print his play, which is the lukewarm John*, whose plan is as obnoxious to Rickman as it was to you and me; and that he has been writing for the Albion, and now writes for the Morning Chronicle, where more than two thirds of his materials are superciliously rejected. Stuart would use him more kindly. Godwin, having had a second tragedy rejected, has filched a story from one of De Foe’s novels for a third, and begged hints of Lamb. . . . . Last evening we talked of Davy. Rickman also fears for him; something he thinks he has (and excusably, surely) been hurt by the attentions of the great: a worse fault is that vice of metaphysicians—that habit of translating right and wrong into a jargon which confounds them; which allows everything, and justifies everything. I am afraid, and it makes me very melancholy when I think of it, that Davy never will be to me the being that he has been. I have a trick of thinking too well of those I love, better than they generally deserve, and better than my cold and containing manners ever let them know: the foibles of a friend always endear him, if they have coexisted with my knowledge of him; but the pain is, to see beauty grow deformed—to trace disease from the first infection. These scientific men are,
* The name of this play is “John Woodvil.” |
| Ætat. 27. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 173 |
“Odd and ill-suited moralisings, Coleridge, for a man who has left the lakes and the mountains to come to Dublin with Mr. Worldly Wisdom! But my moral education, thank God, is pretty well completed. The world and I are only about to be acquainted. I have outgrown the age for forming friendships. . . . .
“God bless you!
