It is not with my inclination that I fag for the booksellers; but what can I do?  My poverty and not my will consents.  The income of my office is only reversionary, and my private fortune much limited.  My poetical success fairly destroyed my prospects of professional success, and obliged me to retire from the bar; for though I had a competent share of information and industry, who would trust their cause to the author of the Lay of the Last Minstrel?  Now, although I do allow that an author should take care of his literary character, yet I think the least thing that his literary character can do in return is to take some care of the author, who is unfortunately, like Jeremy in Love for Love, furnished with a set of tastes and appetites which would do honour to the income of a Duke if he had it.  Besides, I go to work with Swift con amore; for, like Dryden, he is an early favourite of mine.  The Marmion is nearly out, and I have made one or two alterations on the third edition, with which the press is now groaning.  So soon as it is, it will make the number of copies published within the space of six months amount to eight thousand,—­an immense number, surely, and enough to comfort the author’s wounded feelings, had the claws of the reviewers been able to reach him through the steel jack of true Border indifference.

TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

Congratulations

Edinburgh, 13 Nov. 1813.

I do not delay, my dear Southey, to say my gratulor.  Long may you live, as Paddy says, to rule over us, and to redeem the crown of Spenser and of Dryden to its pristine dignity.  I am only discontented with the extent of your royal revenue, which I thought had been L400, or L300 at the very least.  Is there no getting rid of that iniquitous modus, and requiring the butt in kind?  I would have you think of it:  I know no man so well entitled to Xeres sack as yourself, though many bards would make a better figure at drinking it.  I should think that in due time a memorial might get some relief in this part of the appointment—­it should be at least L100 wet and L100 dry.  When you have carried your point of discarding the ode, and my point of getting the sack, you will be exactly in the situation of Davy in the farce, who stipulates for more wages, less work, and the key of the ale-cellar.  I was greatly delighted with the circumstances of your investiture.  It reminded me of the porters at Calais with Dr. Smollett’s baggage, six of them seizing upon one small portmanteau, and bearing it in triumph to his lodgings.  You see what it is to laugh at the superstitions of a gentleman-usher, as I think you do somewhere.  ‘The whirligig of Time brings about his revenges.’