"I like your praise both of myself and my poem, because it comes from a good quarter. You saw me where and how a man is best seen—at home, and in his every-day wear and tear, mind and manners: I have no holiday suit, and never seek to shine: such as it is, my light is always burning. Somewhat of my character you may find in Chaucer's Clerk of Oxenford; and the concluding line of that description might be written, as the fittest motto, under my portrait—'Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.' I have sinned enough to make me humble in myself, and indulgent toward others. I have suffered enough to find in religion not merely consolation, but hope and joy; and I have seen enough to be contented in, and thankful for, the state of life in which it has pleased God to place me.
"We hoped to have seen you on your way back from Ellery. I believe you did not get the ballad of the 'Devil and the Bishop,' which Hartley transcribed for you. I am reprinting my miscellaneous poems, collected into three volumes. Your projected publication[32] will have the start of it greatly, for the first volume is not nearly through the press, and there is a corrected copy of the ballad, with its introduction, in Ballantyne's hands, which you can make use of before it will be wanted in its place.
"You ask me why I am not intimate with Wilson. There is a sufficient reason in the distance between our respective abodes. I seldom go even to Wordworth's or Lloyd's; and Ellery is far enough from either of their houses, to make a visit the main business of a day. So it happens that except dining in his company once at Lloyd's many years ago, and breakfasting with him here not long afterwards, I have barely exchanged salutations once or twice when we met upon the road. Perhaps, however, I might have sought him had it not been for his passion for cock-fighting. But this is a thing which I regard with abhorrence.
"Would that 'Roderick' were in your hands for reviewing; I should desire no fairer nor more competent critic. But it is of little consequence what friends or enemies may do for it now; it will find its due place in time, which is slow but sure in its decisions. From the nature of my studies, I may almost be said to live in the past; it is to the future that I look for my reward, and it would be difficult to make any person who is not thoroughly intimate with me, understand how completely indifferent I am to the praise or censure of the present generation, farther than as it may affect my means of subsistence, which, thank God, it can no longer essentially do. There was a time when I was materially injured by unjust criticism; but even then I despised it, from a confidence in myself, and a natural buoyancy of spirit. It cannot injure me now, but I cannot hold it in more thorough contempt.
"Come and visit me when the warm weather returns. You can go nowhere that you will be more sincerely welcomed. And may God bless you.
"Robert Southey."
In waging war with the Lake school of poetry, the Edinburgh Review had dealt harshly with Southey. His poems of "Madoc" and "The Curse of Kehama" had been rigorously censured, and very shortly before the appearance of "Roderick," his "Triumphal Ode" for 1814, which was published separately, had been assailed with a continuance of the same unmitigated severity. The Shepherd, who knew, notwithstanding the Laureate's professions of indifference to criticism, that his nature was sensitive, and who feared that the Review would treat "Roderick" as it had done Southey's previous productions, ventured to recommend him to evince a less avowed hostility to Jeffrey, in the hope of subduing the bitterness of his censure. The letter of Southey, in answer to this counsel, will prove interesting, in connexion with the literary history of the period. The Bard of Keswick had hardly advanced to that happy condition which he fancied he had reached, of being "indulgent toward others," at least under the influence of strong provocation:—
"Keswick, 24th Dec. 1814.
"Dear Hogg,—I am truly obliged to you for the solicitude which you express concerning the treatment 'Roderick' may experience in the Edinburgh Review, and truly gratified by it, notwithstanding my perfect indifference as to the object in question. But you little know me, if you imagine that any thoughts of fear or favour would make me abstain from speaking publicly of Jeffrey as I think, and as he deserves. I despise his commendation, and I defy his malice. He crush the 'Excursion!!!'[33] Tell him that he might as easily crush Skiddaw. For myself, popularity is not the mark I shoot at; if it were, I should not write such poems as 'Roderick;' and Jeffrey can no more stand in my way to fame, than Tom Thumb could stand in my way in the street.
"He knows that he has dealt unfairly and maliciously by me; he knows that the world knows it, that his very friends know it, and that if he attacks 'Roderick' as he did 'Madoc' and 'Kehama,' it will be universally imputed to personal ill-will. On the other hand, he cannot commend this poem without the most flagrant inconsistency. This would be confessing that he has wronged me in the former instances; for no man will pretend to say that 'Madoc' does not bear marks of the same hand as 'Roderick;' it has the same character of language, thought, and feeling; it is of the same ore and mint; and if the one poem be bad, the other cannot possibly be otherwise. The irritation of the nettling (as you term it), which he has already received