[129] It is not known to the English, but it is a fact which I can vouch for, from my six or seven years' residence in Scotland [written in 1839], that the Scotch, one and all, believe it to be an inalienable characteristic of an Englishman to be fond of good eating. What indignation have I, and how many a time, had occasion to feel and utter on this subject? But of this at some other time. Meantime, the Man of Feeling had this creed in excess; and, in some paper (of The Mirror or The Lounger), he describes an English tourist in Scotland by saying—"I would not wish to be thought national; yet, in mere reverence for truth, I am bound to say, and to declare to all the world (let who will be offended), that the first innkeeper in Scotland under whose roof we met with genuine buttered toast was an Englishman."
[130] Meantime, if it did not disturb him, it ought to disturb us, his immediate successors, who are at once the most likely to retrieve these losses by direct efforts, and the least likely to benefit by any casual or indirect retrievals, such as will be produced by time. Surely a subscription should be set on foot to recover all books enriched by his marginal notes. I would subscribe; and I know others who would largely.
[131] In De Quincey's imperfect reproduction of this paper in his collective edition, he adds here:—"One single paper, for instance—viz. a review of Nelson's life, which subsequently was expanded into his very popular little book on that subject—brought him the splendid honorarium of £150."—M.
[132] See the Evidence before the House of Commons' Committee. [De Quincey does not give the date, nor the occasion.—M.]
[133] See note, Southey and the Edinburgh Annual Register, appended to this chapter.—M.
[134] Sir Watkin, the elder brother, had a tongue too large for his mouth; Mr. C. Wynne, the younger, had a shrill voice, which at times rose into a scream. It became, therefore, a natural and current jest, to call the two brothers by the name of a well-known dish, viz. bubble and squeak.
[135] Why he was called Herbert, if my young readers inquire, I must reply, that I do not precisely know; because I know of reasons too many by half why he might have been so called. Derwent Coleridge, the second son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and first cousin of Herbert Southey, was so called from the Lake of Keswick, commonly styled Derwent Water, which gave the title of Earl to the noble, and the noble-minded, though erring, family of the Radcliffes, who gave up, like heroes and martyrs, their lives and the finest estates in England for one who was incapable of appreciating the service. One of the islands on this lake is dedicated to St. Herbert, and this might have given a name to Southey's first-born child. But it is more probable that he derived this name from Dr. Herbert, uncle to the laureate.
[136] On the 17th of April 1816, aged ten years.—M.
[137] From Tait's Magazine for August 1839. See explanation in Preface to this volume.—M.
[138] "Into two distinct apartments":—The word apartment, meaning, in effect, a compartment of a house, already includes, in its proper sense, a suite of rooms; and it is a mere vulgar error, arising out of the ambitious usage of lodging-house keepers, to talk of one family or an establishment occupying apartments in the plural. The Queen's apartment at St. James's or at Versailles—not the Queen's apartments—is the correct expression.