TO THE LADY FANNY PROBY.
Bursledon Lodge, Sept. 2, 1815.
You ask me how I like The Pilgrims of the Sun. It abuses the privilege assumed by modern poets of setting aside all respect for le vrai or le vraisemblable. It is a reverie, a rhapsody, a long tour in an air-balloon—what you will; yet it has pretty lines, and shows some imagination; but these one finds everywhere. It is one of the distinctions of this age, that so many attempt to write verses, and so few fail of producing something which may be read, once at least, with pleasure. But I have read Roderick the Goth with reverence and admiration—a stately Gothic temple, in ornament rich and elaborate, yet losing nothing of its general effect from the beauty and high finish of its details; exciting in the mind a religious awe which composes and invigorates, at the same time awakening the tenderest affections. The application of the words of our Liturgy and Scripture is often very beautiful; and I am not so scrupulous on this head as the Edinburgh Reviewer, who (pious man) is shocked at the introduction of Catholic ceremonies, as indecorous and irreverent. They are highly picturesque, and suited to poetry; and I do not think Mr. Southey’s description of auricular confession will either make one convert to Popery, or excite the smallest sentiment of irreverence for Christianity. But these Reviewers seem to praise him with great regret, and, I believe, are a little angry that any one on this side the Tweed should have written so fine a poem. However, I grant that it is too universally sombre; the mixture of justified and avowed revenge with Christian feelings on other matters is incongruous; while the hinge on which the story turns is a crime which by no skill whatever can be divested of meanness and ferocity.
How could Lord Carysfort think I had forgot his reading? On the contrary, his reading not merely fixed in my memory what was good, but has also left an indelible impression of some of Lewis’s diableries, and Wordsworth’s inanity, which I wish to forget, and cannot, though I have in general a happy facility in that way; and I sometimes find myself involuntarily repeating—
‘What’s the matter, what’s the matter,
What is it ails young Harry Gill?’
and so on for three or four stanzas. The whole is in an Annual Register which was sent to Berlin, and I heard it but once read in the corner where Lady Carysfort’s sofa was placed, and where she sat with feminine work in her hands, and more than feminine eloquence on her lips; now discussing with prophetic spirit (as events have proved) the fate of Europe, and now consulting on the form of some simple ornament for her daughters. How much has been erased from memory of what has happened before and since; yet how well do I recollect those sweet evenings. Forgive me the Irish epithet; I cannot always do without it.