June 6.—Your little work is most pleasing, and highly useful; for none, I think, can read it without an amelioration of the heart. Gratitude for one’s own temporal blessings, content with one’s situation, if raised above the pressure of want or necessity of labour, a certain dislike of frivolous expense, and views of human nature sane and practical, must be more or less excited by a close inspection of ‘the short and simple annals of the poor.’
TO MRS. HAYGARTH.
Elm Lodge, March 21, 1822.
We could not let Mr. Brigstock have this lovely spot. If you saw the Hamble, as I do every morning from my bedroom, sometimes at low tide, ‘in windings bright and mazy as the snake,’ and at high tide in one broad sheet of dazzling splendour, which, when I suddenly open my window, reminds me of a ray of the Divine presence, you would see the immense difficulty to my weak mind of parting with anything so beautiful. Mr. T. is firmer, but I think he feels as much reluctance. The spring has advanced with unspeakable sweetness and brilliancy. I am covering this place—perhaps for Mr. Brigstock of the untunable name—with roses, honeysuckles, violets, and early flowers. There are already a great abundance, all my own planting, but I am spreading them in every direction.
SONNET TO THE RIVER HAMBLE.
March 22.
The sun forsakes thee, yet thou still art fair;
In thy own graceful curvings fond to twine