ill stay at home, and not part
from you. For though not unhappy when away, still without you I am not
happy. For your sake, as well as my own and little Edith's, I will not
consent to any separation; the growth of a year's love between her and me,
if it please God she should live, is a thing too delightful in itself, and
too valuable in its consequences, to be given up for any light
inconvenience on your part or mine.... On these things we will talk at
leisure; only, dear, dear Edith, _we must not part!_"

This was a poor literary gentleman. The First Gentleman in Europe had a
wife and daughter too. Did he love them so? Was he faithful to them? Did
he sacrifice ease for them, or show them the sacred examples of religion
and honour? Heaven gave the Great English Prodigal no such good fortune.
Peel proposed to make a baronet of Southey; and to this advancement the
king agreed. The poet nobly rejected the offered promotion.

"I have," he wrote, "a pension of 200_l._ a year, conferred upon me by the
good offices of my old friend C. Wynn, and I have the laureateship. The
salary of the latter was immediately appropriated, as far as it went, to a
life insurance for 3,000_l._, which, with an earlier insurance, is the
sole provision I have made for my family. All beyond must be derived from
my own industry. Writing for a livelihood, a livelihood is all that I have
gained; for, having also something better in view, and never, therefore,
having courted popularity, nor written for the mere sake of gain, it has
not been possible for me to lay by anything. Last year, for the first time
in my life, I was provided with a year's expenditure beforehand. This
exposition may show how unbecoming and unwise it would be to accept the
rank which, so greatly to my honour, you have solicited for me."

How noble his poverty is, compared to the wealth of his master! His
acceptance even of a pension was made the object of his opponents' satire:
but think of the merit and modesty of this state pensioner; and that other
enormous drawer of public money, who receives 100,000_l._ a year, and
comes to Parliament with a request for 650,000_l._ more!

Another true knight of those days was Cuthbert Collingwood; and I think,
since Heaven made gentlemen, there is no record of a better one than that.
Of brighter deeds, I grant you, we may read performed by others; but where
of a nobler, kinder, more beautiful life of duty, of a gentler, truer
heart? Beyond d