I never thought the large packet was from you; it was thrown aside with the rest, till evening, and only opened then by chance. I was greatly grieved to find what I had thus left unacknowledged. The drawings are entirely beautiful and wonderful, but, like all the good work done in those bygone days, (Donovan's own book being of inestimable excellence in this kind,) they affect me with profound melancholy in the thought of the loss to the entire body of the nation of all this perfect artistic capacity, and sweet will, for want of acknowledgment, system, and direction. I must write a careful passage on this matter in my new Elements of Drawing. Your drawings have been sent me not by you, but by my mistress Fors, for a text. It is no wonder, when you can draw like this, that you care so much for all lovely nature. But I shall be ashamed to show you my peacock's feather; I've sent it, however.
It is very sweet of you to give me your book, but I accept it at once most thankfully. It is the best type I can show of the perfect work of an English lady in her own simple peace of enjoyment and natural gift of truth, in her sight and in her mind. And many pretty things are in my mind and heart about it, if my hands were not too cold to shape words for them. The book shall be kept with my Bewicks; it is in nowise inferior to them in fineness of work. The finished proof of next "Proserpina" will, I think, be sent me by Saturday's [Pg 83] post. Much more is done, but this number was hindered by the revisal of the Dean of Christ Church, which puts me at rest about mistakes in my Greek.
It is a great joy to me that you like the Wordsworth bits; there are worse coming; but I've been put into a dreadful passion by two of my cleverest girl pupils "going off pious!" It's exactly like a nice pear getting "sleepy;" and I'm pretty nearly in the worst temper I can be in, for W. W. But what are these blessed feathers? Everything that's best of grass and clouds and chrysoprase. What incomparable little creature wears such things, or lets fall! The "fringe of flame" is Carlyle's, not mine, but we feel so much alike, that you may often mistake one for the other now.
You cannot in the least tell what a help you are to me, in caring so much for my things and seeing what I try to do in them. You are quite one of a thousand for sympathy with everybody, and one of the ten times ten thousand, for special sympathy with my own feelings and tries. Yes, that second column is rather nicely touched, though I say it, for hands and eyes of sixty-two; but when once the wind stops I hope to do a bit of primrosey ground that will be richer.
Here, not I, but a thing with a dozen of colds in its head, am!