1579. Robert Southey to Walter Savage Landor, 9 February 1809 ⁠* 

My dear Landor,

You have a bill coming before Parliament. [1]  – The Speakers Secretary happens to be one of my very intimate friends, & one of the men in the world for whom I have the highest respect. It may be some convenience to you upon this occasion to know him, because he can give you every necessary information respecting Parliamentary business, & thus perhaps spare you some needless troubles, – & there needs no other introduction than knocking at his door & sending up your name, with which he is well acquainted. Rickman is his name, & you will find it over his door, in S^t Stephens Court, New Palace Yard, – next door to the Speakers. I will tell you what kind of man he is. His outside has so little polish about it, that once having gone from Christ-Church to Pool in his own boat, he was taken by the press-gang, – his robust figure, hard-working hands, & hoarse voice all tending to deceive them. A little of this is worn off. He is the strongest & clearest headed man that I have ever known, – pondere, numero & mensura is his motto, [2]  – but to all things he carries the same reasoning & investigating intellect as to mathematical science, & will find out in Homer & the Bible facts necessarily to be inferred from the text, & which yet have as little been supposed to be there intimated, as the existence of metal was suspected in potash before Davy detected it there. [3]  I have often said that I learnt how to see for the purposes of poetry from Gebir, [4]  – how to read for the purposes of history from Rickman. – His manners are stoical, they are like the husk of the cocoa-nut, & his inner nature is like the milk within its kernel. When I go to London I am always his guest, – he gives me but half his hand when he welcomes me at the door, – but I have his whole heart; – & there is not that thing in the world which he thinks would serve or gratify me that he does not do for me, – unless it be something which he thinks I can as well do myself. The subject which he best understands is political economy. Were there but half a dozen such men in the House of Commons, there would be courage, virtue & wisdom enough there to save this country from that revolution to which it is so certainly approaching.

I should not have written just now had it not been to mention Rickman, thinking that you may find it useful to know him. For I wished when writing to tell you of Kehama, [5]  – & a good many interruptions have occurred to delay my progress, indispositions of my own, or of the childrens, this latter the only things concerning which I am anxious over much. At present my wife is seriously ill, – & when I shall be sufficiently at rest to do any thing God knows. Another heat will finish the poem

I hope you will not return to Spain. What is to be done in that country must be behind stone-walls, not in the open field. Moore [6]  should have dispersed the army among the strong frontier towns from the Minho to the Guadiana, & then have worn out the patience of the French, while we fitted out a greater army to relieve him. I do not abate a jot of heart or hope, as to the ultimate issue of the struggle. Nay I am, & ever have been fully persuaded that if we landed 100,000 men near Bilbao, seized the passes, shut the French in Spain, & landed 50,000 more to fight them there we should then have a campaign to which the world has never seen xxx a parallel since the Battle of Platæa. [7]  But we are palsied at home. There is not one statesman among us who has either wisdom or virtue.

Coleridge’s essay is expected to start in March. [8] 

My Uncle Mr Hill, is settled at his parsonage at Staunton-upon-Wye, [9]  – in that part of the world to which your cedar plantation will give new beauty, – & your name new interest when those cedars shall have given place to their offspring, – it is possible that you have no other neighbour so well informed within the same distance. [10]  Next year, God willing, I shall travel to the south, & halt with him, – it is likely that I may then find you out either at Llantony, or somewhere in the course of a wide circuit. Meantime I will still hope that some fair breeze of inclination may send you xxx here to talk about Spain, to plan a great poem, & to cruise with me about Derwentwater.

God bless you

R Southey.

Feby 9. 1809. Keswick.