CVIII. TO THE SAME.
No. 21 Buckingham Street [early in 1800].
My dear Southey,—I will see Longman on Tuesday, at the farthest, but I pray you send me up what you have done, if you can, as I will read it to him, unless he will take my word for it. But we cannot expect that he will treat finally without seeing a considerable specimen. Send it by the coach, and be assured that it will be as safe as in your own escritoire, and I will remit it the very day Longman or any bookseller has treated for it satisfactorily. Less than two hundred pounds I would not take. Have you tried warm bathing in a high temperature? As to your travelling, your first business must, of course, be to settle. The Greek Islands[230] and Turkey in general are one continued Hounslow Heath, only that the highwaymen there have an awkward habit of murdering people. As to Poland and Hungary, the detestable roads and inns of them both, and the severity of the climate in the former, render travelling there little suited to your state of health. Oh! for peace and the South of France! What a detestable villainy is not the new Constitution.[231] I have written all that relates to it which has appeared in the “Morning Post;” and not without strength or elegance. But the French are children.[232] ’Tis an infirmity to hope or fear concerning them. I wish they had a king again, if it were only that Sieyès and Bonaparte might be hung. Guillotining is too republican a death for such reptiles! You’ll write another quarter for Mr. Stuart? You will torture yourself for twelve or thirteen guineas? I pray you do not do so! You might get without the exertion, and with but little more expenditure of time, from fifty to an hundred pounds. Thus, for instance, bring together on your table, or skim over successively Brücker, Lardner’s “History of Heretics,” Russell’s “Modern Europe,” and Andrews’ “History of England,” and write a history of levellers and the levelling principle under some goodly title, neither praising or abusing them. Lacedæmon, Crete, and the attempts at agrarian laws in Rome—all these you have by heart.... Plato and Zeno are, I believe, nearly all that relates to the purpose in Brücker. Lardner’s is a most amusing book to read. Write only a sheet of letter paper a day, which you can easily do in an hour, and in twelve weeks you will have produced (without any toil of brains, observing none but chronological arrangement, and giving you little more than the trouble of transcription) twenty-four sheets octavo. I will gladly write a philosophical introduction that shall enlighten without offending, and therein state the rise of property, etc. For this you might secure sixty or seventy guineas, and receive half the money on producing the first eight sheets, in a month from your first commencement of the work. Many other works occur to me, but I mention this because it might be doing great good, inasmuch as boys and youths would read it with far different impressions from their fathers and godfathers, and yet the latter find nothing alarming in the nature of the work, it being purely historical. If I am not deceived by the recency of their date, my “Ode to the Duchess” and my “Xmas Carol” will do for your “Anthology.” I have therefore transcribed them for you. But I need not ask you, for God’s sake, to use your own judgment without spare.
(No signature.)