When you were in this country last year, I told you not to forget me; and you promised that you would not; yet I doubt not that when you see the signature to this, memory will have much ado to call up the person who writes. Nevertheless I cannot forbear—even at the distance of time which has since elapsed, and the distance of space which intervenes—from telling you how much delighted I have been with your Maid of Elnar. I have not seen the whole; but various passages in various reviews, have shown me so much surpassing beauty, that I do not wait even till I have been delighted with the whole, to tell you how great has been the pleasure I have felt from a part.
I do not know very well how or why, but I have been lately sickening of poetry; and though once as great a dreamer as ever felt the sweet music of imagination in his heart of hearts, within the last four or five years I have found it all flat, stale, and unprofitable; and began to fancy myself a devout adorer of dull prose. I thank you then for showing me that there is still such a thing as poetry; and it would not at all surprise me to feel myself—after reading the Maid of Elnar through—taking the top of the wave, and going over every poet again from Chaucer to Byron. Can you tell me what it is that causes such a strange revolution in tastes? I declare for the last five years since the Byron mania was upon me, I have looked upon poetry as the most sappy, senseless misapplication of good words, that ever the whimsical folly of the universal fool, mankind, devised. A spark or two of the old faggot was rekindled in my heart about six weeks ago, by hearing a sonnet of Wordsworth’s read aloud; and that I believe induced me to read the extracts from your book; and now I am all ablaze. What I like in the various scattered passages of the Maid of Elnar, would be endless to tell without writing a review; but there is something throughout the whole which has enchanted me—a mingling of the fine spirit of old chivalry, with the sweet home feeling of calm happy nature that is something newer than even Spenser. As Oliver Cromwell used to say, I would say something—Ay verily—but I won’t for fear you should think me exaggerating and therefore I will bid you farewell. It is natural of course for me to hate you; for every author is bound to detest any other person who writes what is good. I would therefore fain pay you that compliment, but your book will not let me; and I must beg you to believe me
Ever yours most truly
G. P. R. James.
I send this to your Bookseller, because I do not know where else to send it; and I pay it, because many a good wholesome letter which has been addressed to the care of mine, has never reached me for want of that precaution on the part of my correspondents. Before the letter reaches you, I shall have got and read the whole book; and by heaven, if the rest does not come up to the extracts, I shall either lampoon you or your critics.
Another letter to Cunningham follows:
Maxpoffle Near Melrose Roxburghshire
17th May 1833.
My Dear Friend,
To show you how little the fault that you notice is attributable to myself, I have only to tell you that I could not get a copy of Mary of Burgundy till three days after you had received it and my sister in law writes to Mrs. James, by the post that brought your letter, that although she had ordered the book through her own bookseller, she has not yet been able to get it, while friends of hers have obtained it at the circulating libraries. Not having lived in London for many years, I am quite unacquainted with all the ins and outs of these affairs and do not even know who is the Editor of the Athenæum; but I think it somewhat hard measure on his part to make an author pay for the sins of his Bookseller and very different indeed from the usual liberal spirit that I have seen in his paper.