“I had wondered at your silence, which Corry’s servant made longer than it else
had been, bringing me your letter only yesterday. . . . . The Southey Gazette is happily barren of
intelligence, unless you will hear with interest that I yesterday bought the
Scriptores Rerum
Hispanicarum, after a long search—that the day before, my
boots came home from the cobler’s—that the gold leaf which
Carlisle stuft into my tooth is all
come out—and that I have torn my best pantaloons. So life is passing on,
and the growth of my History satisfies me that it is not passing altogether
unprofitably. One acquaintance drops in to-day, another to-morrow; the friends
whom I have here look in often, and I have rather too much society than too
little. Yet, I am not quite the comfortable man I should wish to be; the
lamentable rambling to which I am doomed, for God knows how long, prevents my
striking root any where,—and we are the better as well as the happier for
local attachment. Now do I look round, and can fix upon no spot which I like
better than another, except for its mere natural advantages. ’Tis a
res damnabilis, Bedford, to have no family ties that one cares
about. And so much for the Azure Fiends, whom I shall now take the liberty of
turning out of the room. I am busy
| Ætat. 28. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 183 |
“. . . . . I wish I were at Bath with you; ’twould
do me good all over to have one walk over Combe Down. I have often walked
there, before we were both upon the world. . . . . Oh! that I could catch Old
Time, and give him warm water, and antimonial powder, and ipecacuanha, till he
brought up again the last nine years! Not that I want them all; but I do wish
there was a house at Bath wherein I had a home-feeling, and that it were
possible ever again to feel as I have felt returning from school along the
Bristol road, Eheu fugaces, Posthume,
Posthume! The years may go; but I wish so many good things
did not go with them, the pleasures, and the feelings, and the ties of youth.
Blessings on the Moors, and the Spaniards, and the Portuguese, and the saints!
I yet feel an active and lively interest in my pursuits. I have made some
progress in what promises to be a good chapter about the Moorish period; and I
have finished the first six reigns, and am now more than half way through a
noble black letter chronicle of Alonso the
XIth, to collate with the seventh. The Life of the
Cid will be a fit frame for a picture of the manners of his
time, and a curious picture it will be: putting all
| 184 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 28. |
“Ride, Grosvenor, and walk, and bathe, and drink water, and drink wine, and eat, and get well, and grow into good spirits, and write me a letter.
