66. Robert Southey to Horace Walpole Bedford, 3[–4] November 1793 ⁠* 

Sunday. November 3^rd. 1793. ½ past seven. College Green Bristol. a wet cold evening & an excellent fire.

Monday night. seven o clock

Ecce iterum — not Crispinus [7]  my friend — no nor Juvenal neither, but RS descended from Pegasus mounted on a great chair & writing prose.

you say in your letter, you was on the point of requesting what would be too much for you to ask. my dear friend ask freely — if I have ability to perform it you know I have will & if I have neither I will freely say so. that you have relinquishd our plan does not surprize me — for myself I have employment enough with Joan & the Library. how your employments should take up so much time I know not — I read & write till my eyes ache & still have Time hanging as heavy as a stone round the neck of a drowning dog. probably I may visit Devonshire soon & see Lightfoot. he is a good fellow & will be without the Pot — this place strange as it may sound is to me most unpleasant — omne solum forti &c [8]  — I think of the sentiment & America obtrudes itself forcibly on my melancholy hours.

We live in a vile world — the good things are so badly distributed that Frederics [9]  & fools have crowns, boobies large estates & good fortunes — perhaps Nature thought good sense a handsome dower — but good sense in dependance is like a chef d oeuvres of Raffaelle [10]  in a bog house. if the savages of America have fewer luxuries than the slaves of Europe they have fewer miseries — the artificial distinctions of birth & fortune are unknown — distinctions which though the Philosopher must despise, he must want. on the banks of the Oronoko when the young savages is born — his infancy is neither embitterd by fashionable nursing his puberty by absurd education or his life by the anxieties so frequent & indeed unavoidable in civilized society. his bow & arrows furnish him with food — he gives the pipe of peace to the stranger & lives free as the game he pursues — teach him the value of money & the no-value of every thing else & he becomes miserable

perhaps ten years hence I may laugh at my rhapsodies — when time has annihilated my feelings & hardend my heart. they wish me at home to be like other young men — whilst I am ready in the words of the Pharisee to exclaim ‘I thank thee o God that I am not as other men are. [11]  to please the million I should dress my hair & fall into the fashionable follies of youth. two bottles a day — a tail — a pudding — & a quarterly surgeons bill would fit me for society — if ever I was allowed to write — it must be a loyal song or one in humble imitation of Captain Morris & Jack the second [12]  — so when I was grown compleatly contemptible — I might be fit for genteel company! were society what it ought beings like this (& such there are) would be hooted from all sides — if the Fox was contemptible without his tail what should man be without his reasons!

nineteen years have elapsed since I set sail upon the ocean of life — in an ill provided boat — the vessel weatherd many a storm & I took every distant cloud for land — still pushing forward for the Fortunate Islands till I discoverd that they existed not for me & that like many others wiser xxx better than myself I must be content to wander about & never gain the port. nineteen years — certainly a fourth part of my life — perhaps how great a part! & yet I have been of no service to society — why the clown who scares crows for two pence a day is a more useful member of society — he preserves the corn which I eat in indolence —

these damned dumps will one day drive me mad & draw the trigger — I have done. send me an account of Hyders [13]  death write soon & tell me you are going to enter at Balliol. it depends upon yourself — & delicacy would be criminal. all happiness is comparative — I would gladly change my future prospects for yours — I hope to hear congratulate you as a fellow collegian very shortly. yesterday is just one year since I enterd my name in the Vice Chancellors book — it is a year of which I would wish to forget <the> transactions could I only remember their effect. my mind has been very much expanded — my hopes I trust extinguishd — so adieu to Hope Fear but not to Folly — I must trifle away time.

I shall soon write to Grosvenor. remember me to Harry when you see him & to Kate — never tell me that Man is naturally vicious look at children & see how easily kindness begets esteem & love — but — why will it not when the child is grown up — God bless you.

yours sincerely.

RS.

I have half a letter written to C Collins.

I am reading Adam Smith on the Wealth of Nations. [14]