TO MRS. DUNLOP
[Some lines which extend, but fail to finish the sketch contained in this letter, will be found elsewhere in this publication.]
Ellisland, 4th April, 1789.
I no sooner hit on any poetic plan or fancy, but I wish to send it to you: and if knowing and reading these give half the pleasure to you, that communicating them to you gives to me, I am satisfied.
I have a poetic whim in my head, which I at present dedicate, or rather inscribe to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox; but how long that fancy may hold, I cannot say. A few of the first lines, I have just rough-sketched as follows:
SKETCH.
How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite;
How virtue and vice blend their black and their white;
How genius, the illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction—
I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle.
But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory,
At once may illustrate and honour my story.
Thou first of our orators, first of our wits;
Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits;
With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong,
No man with the half of ‘em e’er went far wrong;
With passion so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of ‘em ere went quite right;
A sorry, poor misbegot son of the muses,
For using thy name offers many excuses.
On the 20th current I hope to have the honour of assuring you in person, how sincerely I am—
R. B.