TO THE SAME.
Bursledon Lodge, Dec. 18, 1817.
Accept a little kaleidoscope, the emblem of a poetic imagination; varying, shifting, reflecting, combining, refining, illuminating; and from the simplest elements producing endless beauty and variety; educing order from confusion, and diversity from repetition. May your imagination thus multiply your pleasures.
All is sombre in the general state of England; the poor dying of hunger; and the death of our Princess and her infant, though no longer the subject of conversation to the exclusion of every other, has left a cloud that will not pass away. It seems like blotting spring from the year. Godwin’s new work, Mandeville, is in unison with the season and the times. It is ‘darkness visible,’ a tremendous picture of envy, hatred, and revenge. There is a strong instance of the impressive power of genius in Mandeville’s description of his disfigured countenance. One cannot forget a word of it; one knows his face better than that of half one’s commonplace acquaintance.
TO THE HONOURABLE MISS AGAR.
Bursledon Lodge, Dec., 1817.
I refresh myself in writing to you with ideas of kindness and affection, after looking over Godwin’s Mandeville, which, beginning in massacre, goes on through varied shades of hatred and revenge, and ends by a ghastly wound, the sole and suitable catastrophe of this dismal farrago, occasionally relieved by gleams of powerful and original genius. Perhaps when I read, instead of skimming, I may like it better. It is too late now to dignify hatred. It succeeded for a moment, when the public taste was vitiated by those works of second-rate German authors, which not only corrupted our literature, but led us to form a false judgment of our admirable northern neighbours; for we naturally supposed that the best of their writings made their way here; while of these we saw very few. Besides, Lord Byron’s haters have put all others out of fashion. They alone can be angry, revengeful, or misanthropic with grace. The mob of haters, if we except Marmion, appear a set of vulgar ruffians, since we knew the Corsair, Manfred, &c.
As to Chalmers, he is very eloquent and very good; but many others on the same subject more readily touch my heart, and please my taste. Besides, I do not so much want books to confirm my faith, as to incite me to act up to it. I should be very fortunate if my practice was as firm as my belief.