MY DEAR CANNING,
I wish you had a pleasanter bedfellow; but here am I on the sofa with a cough, and a very disagreeable associate I find it. Old Moore, I think, died all but his voice, and my voice is nearly dead before me; in other respects, I am much as I was when you saw me, and this weather is in my favour…. I have promised Murray to try to carry on the Review to the 60th number; the 58th is now nearly finished. This seems a desperate promise, and beyond it I will not, cannot go; for, at best, as the old philosopher said, I am dying at my ease, as my complaint has taken a consumptive turn. The vultures already scent the carcase, and three or four Quarterly Reviews are about to start. One is to be set up by Haygarth, whom I think I once mentioned to you as talked of to succeed me, but he is now in open hostility to Murray; another is to be called the Westminster Quarterly Review, and will, if I may judge from the professions of impartiality, be a decided Opposition Journal. They will all have their little day, perhaps, and then drop into the grave of their predecessors. The worst is that we cannot yet light upon a fit and promising successor.
Ever, my dear Canning,
Faithfully and affectionately yours,
WILLIAM GIFFORD.
This state of matters could not be allowed to go on much longer; sometimes a quarter passed without a number appearing; in 1824 only two Quarterlies appeared—No. 60, due in January, but only published in August; and No. 61, due in April, but published in December. An expostulation came from Croker to Murray (January 23, 1824):
"Have you made up your mind about an editor? Southey has written to me on the subject, as if you had, and as if he knew your choice; I do not like to answer him before I know what I am to say. Will you dine at Kensington on Sunday at 6?"
Southey had long been meditating about the editorship. It never appears to have been actually offered to him, but his name, as we have already seen, was often mentioned in connection with it. He preferred, however, going on with his own works and remaining a contributor only. Politics, too, may have influenced him, for we find him writing to Mr. Murray on December 15, 1824: "The time cannot be far distant when the Q.R. must take its part upon a most momentous subject, and choose between Mr. Canning and the Church. I have always considered it as one of the greatest errors in the management of the Review that it should have been silent upon that subject so long." So far as regarded his position as a contributor, Southey expressed his opinion to Murray explicitly:
Mr. Southey to John Murray.
October 25, 1824.
"No future Editor, be he who he may, must expect to exercise the same discretion over my papers which Mr. Gifford has done. I will at any time curtail what may be deemed too long, and consider any objections that may be made, with a disposition to defer to them when it can be done without sacrificing my own judgment upon points which may seem to me important. But my age and (I may add without arrogance) the rank which I hold in literature entitle me to say that I will never again write under the correction of any one."
Gifford's resignation is announced in the following letter to Canning
(September 8, 1824):
Mr. W. Gifford to the Rt. Hon. G. Canning.
September 8, 1824.