guineas!” Southey exclaims; “well, but, thank God, there is _Thalaba_ ready, for which I ask this sum.” “_Thalaba_ finished, all my poetry,” he writes, “instead of being wasted in rivulets and ditches, shall flow into the great Madoc Mississippi river.” One epic poem, however, he finds too little to content him; already _The Curse of Kehama_ is in his head, and another of the mythological series which never saw the light. “I have some distant view of manufacturing a Hindoo romance, wild as _Thalaba_; and a nearer one of a Persian story, of which I see the germ of vitality. I take the system of the Zendavesta for my mythology, and introduce the powers of darkness persecuting a Persian, one of the hundred and fifty sons of the great king; an Athenian captive is a prominent character, and the whole warfare of the evil power ends in exalting a Persian prince into a citizen of Athens.” From which catastrophe we may infer that Southey had still something republican about his heart. Before quitting Portugal, the Southeys, with their friend Waterhouse and a party of ladies, travelled northwards, encountering very gallantly the trials of the way; Mafra, its convent and library, had been already visited by Southey. “Do you love reading?” asked the friar who accompanied them, overhearing some remark about the books. “Yes.” “And I,” said the honest Franciscan, “love eating and drinking.” At Coimbra—that central point from which radiates the history and literature of Portugal—Southey would have agreed feelingly with the good brother of the Mafra convent; he had looked forward to precious moments of emotion in that venerable city; but air and exercise had given him a cruel appetite; if truth must be told, the ducks of the monastic poultry-yard were more to him than the precious finger of St. Anthony. “I _did_ long,” he confesses, “to buy, beg, or steal a dinner.” The dinner must somehow have been secured before he could approach in a worthy spirit that most affecting monument at Coimbra—the Fountain of Tears. “It is the spot where Inez de Castro was accustomed to meet her husband Pedro, and weep for him in his absence. Certainly her dwelling-house was in the adjoining garden; and from there she was dragged, to be murdered at the feet of the king, her father-in-law.... I, who have long planned a tragedy upon the subject, stood upon my own scene.” While Southey and his companions gazed at the fountains and their shadowing cedar-trees, the gownsmen gathered round; the visitors were travel-stained and bronzed by the sun; perhaps the witty youths cheered for the lady with the squaw tint; whatever offence may have been given, the ladies’ protectors found them “impudent blackguards,” and with difficulty suppressed pugilistic risings.