2843. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [begun before and continued on 15 September 1816] ⁠* 

My dear G.

I shall write you a melancholy letter, – if a summons to supper do not call me off. Non sum qualis eram, [1]  – nor shall I ever be again. Whenever I am unoccupied I feel the wound, – & like a schoolboy who wishes that the months which must intervene before the holydays, – were over, – I detect him<my>self in wishing that the time were fairly past which separates me from eternity. – Isabel has a severe cough & cold which disposes me more particularly to such feelings, – or rather renders me less able to contend against them. – I can stand aloof & contemplate these things like a stoic, – I can feel how beneficial they are, like a Xtian, – yea how necessary to the perfection of our moral nature: – but it is neither inconsistent with philosophy nor with religion while I am strenuously doing my work, to wish that the day were over, – & look on with hope towards the night.

____

Sunday evening

The Courier of yesterday brought the speeches at the Palace Yard meeting, which as coming pretty strongly in aid of my last letters, are well-timed. [2]  It would not be amiss if Murray were to reprint my two papers upon the Poor, in a little volume; – by restoring the castrations in the first, & making some additions to the second, they might be rendered tolerably compleat for their purpose. [3]  Indeed if the ministry would but read mark & inwardly digest ten pages in that first paper, & act upon them, the <immediate> danger would be put an end to, & leisure be gained for those measures of prevention & amelioration which I have so often & so earnestly xx advised. [4]  Were the Grand Murray to do this I would procure the last Edinburgh which Wynn says has stirred up all his bile by reviving Malthus’s proposal about the poor, [5]  – & either in notes preface or postscript, I would deal with that precious journal according to its deserts.

I am now about to begin an article for this the next number, the motive of which is the solid sum of 100 £ (which you will allow to be a good reason) – the text books a heap of foreign travels by Frenchmen in England, – & the object a comparative estimate of xx our national character & institutions. [6]  In this I shall repeat my warning, & exhortations, – & the hope (however faint) that by thus repeating again & again the same strain some effect may ultimately be produced reconciles me to the employment of irreparable time in such ephemeral occupations, – while works which should extend & perpetuate my reputation, are lying unfinished on the shelf.

God bless you

RS.