ET. 29.] SLAYS THE PYTHON- -CARICATURES THE VICTORY. 101 But the pleasure is greatly increased when we collect from such etchings the symptoms of an easy and elastic state of mind, to which he had often been a stranger, and of which there is still clearer evidence in a passage of the same date" I should not trouble you about drawing my pension, if I knew the proper way to apply for it; but as I wish, for the sake of having money at interest, to lift the three quarters in April, I must beg you to write to your agent in Scotland about it."* In a strain that indicates the same buoyancy of health and spirits, he again writes to Miss F. W. Mayow: April 30th. To say the truth, it is a sad thing that good folks, so scarce as we are, should have formed an acquaintance just to drop it. I pledge myself you do not know Matilda yet, nor will you have known what an excellent good young man I am, until you have been a good many weeks at our cottage in Sydenham! Having been an idle vagrant all my life, roving hither and yond among good and among bad folks, I have acquired, by sore experience, although amidst profound ignorance of the true philosophy of the world, that guess of characters which gypsies, beggars, pedlars, and other vagrants-nay, even which dogs acquire by physiognomy and conversation. I am sometimes mistaken, but never continue so very long. I saw your family at our first meeting. Like the mulberries on your trees, you are all fruits without rind. The sunshine of God's blessing has brought you out undisguisedly good. But we are husky productions. Matilda and I are afraid of showing kindness, lest it should be taken for fawning. But to balance this flattery of you, I will flatter Extract from a letter to John Richardson, Esq. ourselves; and such a pair of inimitables as we are! Oh, you shall see with a witness in time coming!— A more serious thought comes across my mind, when I have to thank you for your toleration of the few lines, and for your seeming to understand the explanation which accompanied them. On such a subject, I shall probably indulge more in the truth of my own feelings, than in the gems of ornament; and if the tribute please you, my fair critic! it will be my exceeding great reward. Matilda greets you; I think she would like much, if, by some cunning alchemy of relationship, she could commute you into one of her Scotch cousins. This would be mighty convenient for us. We should not even hint, as if we were afraid of your refusal of our roof; but in the spirit of clanship insist, as a matter of decent appearance before the world, that kindred should not break, and that Mary and you should not play the fine lady, and look down on country cousins! I can assure you we were fine folks yesterday, for we had no less a guest at dinner than the descendant of John Sobieski, the grandson of General Walackouski, aide-decamp to Peter the Great, and the cousin of Kaminsky, present commander-in-chief of the Russian armies. These three characters were all united in the person of one simple friend and school-fellow of my own, who is plain Frank Clason, and such a favourite of the "Empress Maude," * that the days he comes to Sydenham I am always sent to amuse myself elsewhere, and give way to the young lawyer. Talking of Russians, my eldest lad has grown again such a savage since his recovery, that we are resolved to buy him a commission among the Don Cossacks! . . For such a dispatch, what will the post charge you? Wretched * The historical name for his wife, Matilda-Mrs. Campbell. ET. 29.] VISIT TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT-LETTERS. 103 man! I was born uuder the star Scriblerus! Believe me very faithfully your affectionate friend, T. C. Again, on the 19th of May, he writes-"I am always overtaken with small distresses, when great ones fail me." "A dispatch from town reached me this morning, which engaged me incessantly in writing till the evening, at which time I felt so overcome with fatigue, that I could not extend my walk any distance from home." A few days after this date, the symptoms of his former complaint returned with so much severity, that change of scene and relaxation of mind were pronounced indispensable, and he started to make trial of the air of Hampshire. Crossing the Solent from Southampton, he took up his quarters at Ryde; and in the following letters the history of his sojourn in the island is circumstantially detailed : DEAR MISS MAYOW, TO MISS MAYOW. RYDE, ISLE OF WIGHT, June 16, 1807. Presuming to count upon you as the friend and comforter of my wife in her solitary state, I think I have a right to trouble you with a letter, though it should be a dull one, and to request the favour of some news from Sydenham, since your news must be so interesting, coming from yourselves, and from the immediate vicinity of all that is dear to me. Indeed, of Mrs. Campbell's real health and spirits I expect a truer account from you than from herself. Her disposition to keep me easy will lead her to dissemble any little accidents at home. Yet I should like to know such accidents; for, although the recovery of my health be a great object, it must not be done at all hazards of her finding extreme inconvenience from the solitude in which I have been compelled to leave her. She described to me your kind and consoling visits to her on the first of our separation. Believe me, I am grateful at heart for these kindnesses: they came at a time when all circumstances seemed to conspire against her. All her relations were, by some accident or another, prevented from going down to her. One cousin or sister was unwell, another going out of town; and if I had not known their hearts very well, I might have suspected collusion. My own disappointments were very similar. The want of books for references and authorities, in a work in which I am engaged,* has long and grievously protracted the publication of my Poems. In London, all my dependence for obtaining a few scarce books was on a few friends; but among them there seemed a conspiracy also. Never did bailiff hunt, watch, or besiege a fugitive debtor more than I did my bookfinding friends; but they eluded me, although I watched all night that I might waken early enough in the morning. One of these books, which flies from me like the waves from Tantalus, is "Jefferson's Notes on Virginia "—oh, hang Jefferson, that I ever heard the name of his Notes! On the night when I knew that Matilda and my babies were exposed to the dangers of midnight robbers; when I knew that my injunctions to have a guard in the house would be disobeyed, through that foolish distrust of having a stranger in the house, which, thank God, Matilda has at last overcome-on that night I resolved to make a morning round of all my literary coadjutors, to find the President's book, and, as usual, kept awake from anxiety. The morning came, but all my friends had left Londonvanished like guineas which one grasps in a dream! I Selections from the Poets, with Biographical Sketches [see page 89] and Historical Notes for "Gertrude of Wyoming." ET. 29.] LETTERS FROM THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 105 have been obliged to leave London without this book, on which my sole hope of reference relies. I have got, like all weak minds, into long digressions. I meant only to allude to your kindness in visiting my dear Matilda that evening, with so much friendship and sympathy as she described. * Well, I have been long enough on my own case. I shall tire you with it no more. I trust I shall hear from Sydenham good and pleasing accounts of your health and spirits... At this star, I stop to break open a letter from poor Matilda. She says my favourites are all well.-All well! it sounds like the sweet note of the midnight sentinel! A letter from one's best friend is worth going a hundred leagues for to wish, and long for, and receive. I have never been so far away from her. I may say it is the first wife's letter I ever received. She seems in very good spirits. I have your family, I believe, to thank for it. I was going to have concluded, but my spirits seem to mount as if I had pledged to my absent friends in a bumper. All is well! My wife my hearty, brown-necked boys-my faithful sister-in-law-and those my wife emphatically calls my favourites." All is well indeed! The practice of describing scenes and feelings more than they are in nature, is an affectation which I abhor-either joyous or the reverse; yet extremely joyous feelings appear sometimes, by their uncommonness, to be beyond nature's routine, even to those who enjoy them. Such, I think, are mine at present. I am sitting at the sea-side window of my boarding-house, on the northern side of Wight. It overlooks the shores of Southampton, the spires and buildings of Portsmouth, Spithead, and the towns adjacent, and a hundred ships of war, some of a hundred guns, riding between the shores! The peculiar light of the atmosphere reflects on the smooth expanse of the sea, not a dull |