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386 large sums by the sale of his works, and he lost no time in performing one act of grace at least during this short tenure of office. He offered him £300 a-year from the Civil List Pension Fund, which he granted on "a public principle, the recognition of literary eminence as a public claim." This timely assurance of a definite income relieved Southey from all future anxiety respecting the supply of his daily necessities. It rendered him also independent of the publishers; and he congratulated himself on being able henceforth to devote himself entirely to his great works, and in particular to his "History of Portugal;" and to partake of his favourite relaxation of travel whenever failing health demanded it.

After Mrs. Southey had been about a year at York, she was so far recovered as to make her return home a desirable step. "If her illusions," writes her husband, "are like dreams to her, the reality is like a dream to me, but one from which there is no awaking." He devoted himself to her care with a sorrowful satisfaction. He was not one to shrink from an obligation, and devolve upon his daughters or dependants a task he deemed it was his more especial duty to undertake. She had made it the pride of her life to minister to him in his health, he would minister to her in her helplessness; and all that human concern could do, he did, to alleviate her hapless condition.

In the summer of 1836 his old schoolfellow Grosvenor Bedford, accompanied by his niece, stayed with him; and although his visitor was almost deaf, they managed to have much talk of old times. They had been acquainted from 1788, familiar from 1790, intimate from 1791. Rev. Edward Levett, another Westminster contemporary, visited him likewise at the same time. At the summer assizes this year he was subpœnaed with other literary men to appear as a witness, on a celebrated will case then pending, involving the Castle Hornby estate, of from