Lady Holland, 17th Jan. 1813.—There had been meetings on the Catholic question, and he says:—“I shall certainly give my solitary voice in favour of religious liberty, and shall probably be tossed in a blanket for my pains.”
John Allen, 24th Jan. 1813.—“My fancy is my own: I may see as many crosiers in the clouds as I please; but when I sit down seriously to consider what I shall do upon important occasions, I must presume myself rector of Foston for life.”
John Murray [of Edinburgh], 12th July 1813.—“My situation is as follows:—I am engaged in agriculture without the slightest knowledge of the art; I am building a house without an architect, and educating a son without patience. . . . My new mansion springs up apace, and then I shall really have a pretty place to receive you in, and a pleasant country to show you.”
Lady Holland, 17th Sept. 1813.—“Few events are of so little consequence as the fecundity of a
clergyman’s wife; still your kind dispositions justify me in letting you know that Mrs Sydney and her new-born son are both extremely well.”
John Allen, 13th Jan. 1814.—Of Lord Holland, Sydney writes:—“I wish he would leave off wine entirely, after the manner of the Sharpe and Rogers school. He is never guilty of excess; but there is a certain respectable and dangerous plenitude, not quite conducive to that state of health which all his friends most wish to Lord Holland.”
Jeffrey, Mar. 1814.—“Pray remember me, dear Jeffrey, and say a good word for me if I die first. I shall say many for you in the contrary event.”
Lady Holland, 25th June 1814.—“I liked London better than ever I liked it before, and simply, I believe, from water-drinking. Without this, London is stupefaction and inflammation. It is not the love of wine, but thoughtlessness and unconscious imitation.”
Jeffrey, 1814.—“I like my new house very much; . . . but the expense of it will keep me a very poor man, a close prisoner here for my life, and render the education of my children a difficult exertion for me. My situation is one of great solitude, but I preserve myself in a state of cheerfulness and tolerable content, and have a propensity to amuse myself with trifles.”
F. Horner, 1816.—Referring to Dugald Stewart’s Preliminary Dissertations, Sydney says:—“I was amazingly pleased with his comparison of the Universities to enormous hulks confined with mooring-chains, everything flowing and progressing around them. Nothing can be more happy.”