“Perfectly true. It happened in this very house. Wordsworth was very angry at the paragraph, and I believe accused me of giving it to the world. I was as much surprised as himself, however, to see it in print.”
“What is Southey’s manner of life?”
“Walter Scott said of him that he lived too much with women. He is secluded in the country, and surrounded by a circle of admiring friends who glorify every literary project he undertakes, and persuade him in spite of his natural modesty, that he can do nothing wrong or imperfectly. He has great genius and is a most estimable man.”
“Hamilton lives on the Lakes too—does he not?”
“Yes. How terribly he was annoyed by the review of his book in the North American. Who wrote it?”
“I have not heard positively, but I presume it was Everett. I know nobody else in the country who holds such a pen. He is the American Junius.”
“It was excessively clever but dreadfully severe, and Hamilton was frantic about it. I sent it to him myself, and could scarce have done him a more ungracious office. But what a strange thing it is that nobody can write a good book on America! The ridiculous part of it seems to me that men of common sense go there as travellers, and fill their books with scenes such as they may see every day within five minutes’ walk of their own doors, and call them American. Vulgar people are to be found all over the world, and I will match any scene in Hamilton or Mrs. Trollope, any day or night here in Edinburgh. I have always had an idea that I should be the best traveller in America myself. I have been so in the habit of associating with people of every class in my own country, that I am better fitted to draw the proper distinctions, I think, between what is universal over the world or peculiar to America.”
“I promise you a hearty welcome, if you should be inclined to try.”
“I have thought seriously of it. It is, after all, not more than a journey to Switzerland or Italy, of which we think nothing, and my vacation of five months would give me ample time, I suppose, to run through the principal cities. I shall do it, I think.”
I asked if he had written a poem of any length within the last few years.