TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.,
FRANKFORT.
June 24, 1817.
I received your dear letter this morning, and it has thrown a bright sunshine on my day; though to others, who had not such a pleasant volume from an affectionate and amusing son, the day was as black, wet, and dirty, as ever disgraced the month of June. As to May, she may have been very lovely when she was young; but she is now grown old, and a more chilly, forbidding, decayed beauty I have never met with.
We are now in town for a few days. My recent misfortune will recur so strongly when I am tranquil, that I am forced to seek variety in whatever shapes, fair or foul, it can be met with. Even as I am now, it will require an effort to unroot myself from the tenacious soil of London, that great mantrap, which catches and retains all descriptions of people, however dissimilar in their tastes, pursuits, and inclinations. I once passed in the eyes of a literal sober-minded circle for being the most dissipated woman possible, because I declared it was pleasant to date a letter from London.
I wish Moore had published The Fire Worshippers alone. It has more merit than the other poems, which are uncommonly gaudy and sugary, and glitter, and dazzle, and cloy, and surfeit us at last. But I sincerely believe he has written Lalla Rookh for the sake of his wife and children. It is evident that his inclinations, perhaps his talents, are not suitable for a work of any considerable length. He is a sweet bird, fitted for short excursions; vigorous while on the wing, but not formed for long flights; and he should not have promised us an epic, and then put us off with four tales, tacked together by a coarse thread.
TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Bursledon Lodge, June 30, 1817.
I hope your dear daughter will soon entirely recover her health, and look back on her illness, as I can do on all mine, with a deep sense of its advantages—as a touchstone of the affections of those we love—a bond of union twined by protecting cares on one hand, and gratitude on the other—a remembrancer of the precarious tenure of earthly blessings—a new source of sympathy with those that suffer—and a dark shade which throws into gayer and purer lights the common, and therefore often unobserved, blessings of existence.