3230. Robert Southey to Walter Savage Landor, 3 January 1819 ⁠* 

I procrastinated my intended letter too long, till upon the belief that you would have left Como, I knew not where to direct, – & Senhouse whom I desired to obtain your address from your brother Robert, has not written to me. – Therefore I was doubly glad to receive yours from Pisa. It came in eighteen days. – My house was purchased by a silversmith in Cockspur Street, a native of Borrodale here; [1]  – an injunction against the sale was obtained in favour of the widow of a former owner; [2]  the matter is in Chancery; the actual Landlord is in Carlisle jail, & I am paying rent to a mortgagee. [3]  Disturbed in possession of the house I cannot be for twelve years to come; & as long as there is any litigation I am in no danger of being annoyed by cutting up the grounds. Unless some such annoyance should drive me away, in all likelihood I shall be settled here for life. This is the sixteenth year of my residence, – & tho there are some local objections, & some inconvenience in the distance from London, I know not where I could pitch my tent to more to my satisfaction. A better climate is not to be had without going out of England, – & that cannot be done because of my pursuits, my books & my family.

I was quite certain that you would appreciate Wordsworth justly. Nations you say are never proud of living genius. They are proud of it only as far as they understand it, & the majority being incapable of understanding it, can never admire it, till they take it upon trust, – so that two or three generations must pass before the public affect to admire such poets as Milton [4]  & Wordsworth. – Of such men the world scarcely produces one in a millennium – has it indeed ever produced more than two? for Shakespere [5]  is of a different class. But of all inferior degrees of poets no age & no country was ever so prolific as our own, every season produces some half dozen poems, not one of which obtains the slightest attention, & any one of which would have the author celebrated above all his contemporaries five & twenty years ago.

Let me know your movements, & how I may direct a parcel to you in May, by which time the concluding volume of Brazil will be finished, & the life of Wesley, [6]  – & I will put in some thing else to make them the better worth their freight. The history <former> contains much curious matter, concerning stages of society which have hitherto obtained little notice, but are important links in our knowledge of the history of man & of society. The life of Wesley [7]  is full of extraordinary facts, & will carry you into a world as little like the one with which you are conversant as if it were another planet.

Since I returned from the continent [8]  I have never been farther from home than Rydale. I have been working on at these works, with my usual summer & autumnal interruptions, – & the usual expenditure of time for the Q Review. The verses which I have written are so few that they do not deserve to be mentioned. [9]  As soon as these works are thro the press I go to London, & put to press the history of the Peninsular War, of which good part is ready. [10]  I suppose we shall hear of a cabinet resolution from that poor country. [11]  Any thing I do not expect, nor do I know what to wish for, where any change will too probably be but a change of evils. Some arrangement like that at Lisbon when Affonso 6. was set aside for incapacity, is the most likely catastrophe, & the one which would produce least mischief. [12]  – Look where we will thro the civilized world, the materials for explosion seem ready; – & this is no chearful exhilarating xx consideration for one who has lived long enough to know that order is the first thing needful in society. Here in England a fair harvest & a flourishing trade give us a surface of tranquillity. But all our institutions civil & religious, – nay & whatever is sacred in public or in private life, – are continually attacked by the press in every shape, – by sapping & mining, & by battering in breach. On the other hand there are powerful counteracting causes at work, & in the struggle between good & evil, the destructive & conservative principles, which this literally is, my faith & my constitution are alike on the hopeful side.

[MS missing] you have seen enough of Italy I think you will be [MS missing] disposed to tarry awhile in Switzerland than in any [MS missing] part of the continent; – if you can forgive them for speaking French. An Englishman feels more at home among the Swiss than with [MS missing] other people, – the religion & their domestic character are more like what he has been accustomed to. And he feels that he is breathing free air, – which is a blessed thing. I should hesitate between Bern & Lausanne. – Perhaps I may see you before you leave Italy. I dream of seeing Rome before I die, – & should I live to carry the Peninsular War thro the Press (the work of two years from this time) I should endeavour to lay my plans so as to enter Italy by way of the South of France late in the autumn, & leave it in the spring by way of the Tyrol. It is but a dream, – but one of those dreams which bring about their own accomplishment.

God bless you with many & happy years

RS.

Keswick. 3^d. Jan^y. 1819.