2556. Robert Southey to Neville White, 16 February 1815 ⁠* 

Keswick, Feb. 16. 1815.

My dear Neville,

Since you heard from me, I have scarcely seen a face but those of my own family, nor been farther from home than Friars’ Crag, except one fine day, which tempted me to Lord William Gordon’s. [1]  The weeks and months pass by as rapidly as an ebb tide. The older we grow the more we feel this. The hour-glass runs always at the same rate; but when the sands are more than half spent, it is then only that we perceive how rapidly they are running out. I have been close at the desk this winter. The Quarterly takes up a heavy portion of my time. You would see in the last number two articles of mine – one upon the History of English Poetry, [2]  the other upon Forbes’s Travels, [3]  both deplorably injured by mutilation. The next number will have a pretty full abstract of Lewis and Clarke’s Travels. [4]  All these things cost me more time than they would any other person, for upon every subject, I endeavour to read all such books relating to it, as I had before left unread.

I know not that there is anything farther to tell you of myself, unless it be, that I have written the first book of Oliver Newman, and that it is in irregular rhymes. [5]  We are all, thank God, tolerably well. Herbert goes on stoutly with his Greek, and last week he began to learn German, which I shall acquire myself in the process of teaching him.

How is James going on? This I am anxious to hear. The Income Tax [6]  was laid on with great injustice; it is taken off, not because it pressed with a cruel weight upon those of small fortune, but because it took in a proper proportion from the great landholders and capitalists, who cannot be got at in an equal degree by any other manner. For instance, Lord –  [7]  pays probably 10,000l. a year to this tax. Nothing that can be substantiated for it can by possibility take from him a tenth part of that sum. The tax ought not to be continued; but I would have given it one year longer, that Government might have been enabled, with as much facility as possible, to wind up the accounts of a long war, unexampled alike in its duration, importance, and expense. Not to have done this will lower the English people in the eyes of other nations; but of all people under Heaven who have any country to boast of, we are the least patriotic.

Believe me, my dear Neville,

Very affectionately yours,

Robert Southey