"21, Buckingham Street, Strand, January, 1800.
My dear sir,
I am sitting by a fire in a rug great coat. Your room is doubtless to a
greater degree air tight than mine, or your notions of Tartarus would
veer round to the Greenlander's creed. It is most barbarously cold, and
you, I fear, can shield yourself from it, only by perpetual imprisonment.
If any place in the southern climates were in a state of real quiet, and
likely to continue so, should you feel no inclination to migrate? Poor
Southey, from over great industry, as I suspect, the industry too of
solitary composition, has reduced himself to a terrible state of
weakness, and is determined to leave this country as soon as he has
finished the poem on which he is now employed. 'Tis a melancholy thing
that so young a man, and one whose life has ever been so simple and
self-denying....
O, for a peace, and the south of France! I could almost wish for a
Bourbon king, if it were only that Sieyes and Buonaparte might finish
their career in the old orthodox way of hanging. Thank God, _I have my
health perfectly_, and I am working hard; yet the present state of human
affairs presses on me for days together, so as to deprive me of all my
cheerfulness. It is probable that a man's private and personal connexions
and interests ought to be uppermost in his daily and hourly thoughts, and
that the dedication of much hope and fear to subjects which are perhaps
disproportionate to our faculties and powers, is a disease. But I have
had this disease so long, and my early education was so undomestic, that
I know not how to get rid of it; or even to wish to get rid of it. Life
were so flat a thing without enthusiasm, that if for a moment it leaves
me, I have a sort of stomach sensation attached to all my thoughts, _like
those which succeed to the pleasurable operations of a dose of opium._
Now I make up my mind to a sort of heroism in believing the
progressiveness of all nature, during the present melancholy state of
humanity, and on this subject _I am now writing_; and no work on which I
ever employed myself makes me so happy while I am writing.
I shall remain in London till April. The expenses of my last year made it
necessary for me to exert my industry, and many other good ends are
answered at the same time. Where I next settle I shall, continue, and
that must be in a state of retirement and rustication. It is therefore
good for me to have a run of society, and that, various, and consisting
of marked characters. Likewise, by being obliged to write without much
elaboration, I shall greatly improve myself in naturalness and facility
of style, and the particular subjects on which I write for money are
nearly connected with my future schemes. My mornings I give to
compilations which I am sure cannot be wholly useless, and for which, by
the beginning of April I shall have earned nearly £150. My evenings to
the _Theatres_, as I am to conduct a sort of Dramaterye or series of
Essays on the Drama, both its general principles, and likewise in
reference to the present state of the English Theatres. This I shall
publish in the 'Morning Post.' My attendance on the theatres costs me
nothing, and Stuart, the Editor, covers my expenses in London. Two
mornings, and one whole day, I dedicate to these Essays on the possible
progressiveness of man, and on the principles of population. In April I
retire to my greater works,--'The Life of Lessing.' My German chests are
arrived, but I have them not yet, but expect them from Stowey daily; when
they come I shall send a letter.
I have seen a good deal of Godwin, who has just published a Novel. I like
him for thinking so well of Davy. He talks of him every where as the most
extraordinary of human beings he had ever met with. I cannot say that,
for I know _one_ whom I feel to be the superior, but I never met with so
extraordinary a _young man_. I have likewise dined with Horne Tooke. He
is a clear-headed old man, as every man must needs be who attends to the
real import of words, but there is a sort of charlatanry in his manner
that did not please me. He makes such a mystery out of plain and palpable
things, and never tells you any thing without first exciting, and
detaining your curiosity. But it were a bad heart that could not pardon
worse faults than these in the author of 'The Diversions of Purley.'