1826.] Letter on Affairs in general. 191 
less he have ‘£75 a-year ;” nor of “ Prince,” unless he can command 
“£120 !” 
This sort of “ grinning honour” has never been much to our English 
taste. And Mr. Southey, with a seat in Parliament almost forced upon 
him, plainly and manfully declines to sit, upon the ground that his for- 
tune does not permit him conveniently to occupy such a station. I 
think Southey has done wisely; for, with powers (properly applied) of 
the highest order, the House of Commons was not the arena upon 
‘which he would have turned them to account. If it be true that he has 
quarrelled with the Quarterly Review, they will have need of a 
strong hand to supply his place. Rather a stronger, I think, than they 
will readily know where to meet with. I hope it is a mistake. 
It is curious, however—looking to the reason Mr. Southey gives for 
not sitting in the Parliament—to see how, from time immemorial, the 
quality of poverty seems to have attached itself to what the Provengals 
would have called the gaye professions. A few painters, here and there, 
have had the luck to escape ; but poets and soldiers, through the world, 
have invariably parted it between them. In the “ Dialogues des Che- 
minées,” a French work in the style of the ‘‘ Diable Boiteux”— where the 
chimneys on each side of a narrow street confer upon matters in which 
they are concerned, No. 1 is made to complain that there has been no 
fire made in his grate for three months. His proprietor sits and writes 
all day long in the cold :—the proprietor of No.1 is an author. The op- 
posite chimney, No. 2, expresses great surprise at this account; as there 
is a fire on his hearth all day long, and yet his proprietor writes inces- 
santly :—but it turns out that this writer, at No. 2, isa forger. Cobbett, 
by the way, who knows something of the matter, seems once or twice to 
have had an opinion, that forgery was more profitable than any other 
style of composition. 
There are two or three other very odd ideas in that little book—the 
« Dialogues of the Chimnies.” One flue overhears a plan laid for break- 
ing himself open, to get at money which is supposed to be hidden behind 
him. And a long argument takes place between two others, Nos. 5 and 
6, as to whether witches really do go up chimnies on broomsticks! upon 
which No.6 protests absolutely that none have ever gone in that way 
up him. The poverty, however, likean heir-loom, has come down toe 
poets even to this day. Handsome prices are given for books: but 
Wordsworth and Coleridge would be out-bought by many a chandler. 
Sir Walter Scott did seem once as if he would have been an excep- 
tion: he had made a large sum of money. But the spell was too strong 
upon the tribe to be broken: he has lost it all again. 
The very devil seems, this last month, to have been at work among the 
player people! Mr. Bish has been quarrelling with the Drury Lane pro- 
prietors ; and Mr. Elliston has cumfisticated Mr. Poole; and Mr. Sin- 
clair has brought an action against the managers of Covent Garden. 
And, at last, one of the farthest people we would have looked for to find 
engaged in a quarrel or misdoing—Mr. Velluti, of the Opera-House,— 
has been taken up by the ladies, chorus singers of that establishment, and 
carried before Mr. Dubois, the Commissioner of the Court of Requests. 
It is the vulgarest fallacy in the world to talk of the empire des femmes 
that exists in France; the influence of women in England is stronger 
twenty times over. Signor Velluti’s plea was cast in court by acclama- 
tion, before his agent had time to say a word in his behalf; and if the Sig- 
nor had unhappily been present, and any one of the fair plaintiffs had 
