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.
MY DEAR CANNING,
I have laid aside my Regalia, and King Gifford, first of the name, is now no more, as Sir Andrew Aguecheek says, "than an ordinary mortal or a Christian." It is necessary to tell you this, for, with the exception of a dark cloud which has come over Murray's brow, no prodigies in earth or air, as far as I have heard, have announced it.
It is now exactly sixteen years ago since your letter invited or encouraged me to take the throne. I did not mount it without a trembling fit; but I was promised support, and I have been nobly supported. As far as regards myself, I have borne my faculties soberly, if not meekly. I have resisted, with undeviating firmness, every attempt to encroach upon me, every solicitation of publisher, author, friend, or friend's friend, and turned not a jot aside for power or delight. In consequence of this integrity of purpose, the Review has long possessed a degree of influence, not only in this, but in other countries hitherto unknown; and I have the satisfaction, at this late hour, of seeing it in its most palmy state. No number has sold better than the sixtieth.
But there is a sad tale to tell. For the last three years I have perceived the mastery which disease and age were acquiring over a constitution battered and torn at the best, and have been perpetually urging Murray to look about for a successor, while I begged Coplestone, Blomfield, and others to assist the search. All has been ineffectual. Murray, indeed, has been foolishly flattering himself that I might be cajoled on from number to number, and has not, therefore, exerted himself as he ought to have done; but the rest have been in earnest. Do you know any one? I once thought of Robert Grant; but he proved timid, and indeed his saintly propensities would render him suspected. Reginald Heber, whom I should have preferred to any one, was snatched from me for a far higher object.