thoughts still occasionally reverted to the South. Writing to his brother in May, he says: "This war terrifies and puzzles me about Portugal. I think of going over alone this next winter while I can. I have fifteen quartos on the way from Lisbon, and—zounds! if they should be taken!"
In June, 1803, he made a short trip to London to consult with Messrs. Longman and Rees respecting their projected "Bibliotheca Britannica," and he meditated settling at Richmond, and devoting himself entirely to this extensive and laborious work. But his first-born child—the infant girl of whom he had been so "foolishly fond"—was taken from him, and the bereaved parents turned their steps to Keswick, for the consolations of friendship in the society of Mr. and Mrs. Coleridge.
The excited state of public affairs deeply affected the interests of literature, and the publishers deemed it prudent to defer the appearance of their weighty undertaking. Meanwhile, two extracts from letters written during the following year, will afford some glimpse of our author's occupations.
In March, writing to Rickman, he says: "I have more in hand than Bonaparte or Marquis Wellesley—digesting Gothic law, gleaning moral history from monkish legends, and conquering India, or rather Asia with Albuquerque, filling up the chinks of the day by hunting in Jesuit chronicles, and compiling 'Collectanea Hispanica and Gothica.' Meantime, 'Madoc' sleeps, and my lucre of gain compilation ('Specimens of the English Poets') goes on at night, when I am fairly obliged to lay history aside, because it perplexes me in my dreams."
In September of the same year, he thus writes to his brother:
"Meantime, these are my employments—to finish the correcting and printing of 'Madoc,' to get through my
