"Item. That dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and passion, not thought or passion hid in the dregs of poetry.
"Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similes, figures, etc. They will all find their place sooner or later, each in the luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is language, ergo, successive, ergo every the smallest star must be seen singly.
"There are not five metrists in the kingdom whose works are known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed to speak so plainly; but B. C. is a man of genius, and it depends on himself (competence protecting him from gnawing and distracting cares), to become a rightful poet—i. e. a great man.
"Oh, for such a man; worldly prudence is transfigured into the high spiritual duty. How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, is the mother tongue.
"A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory on the confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819."
I took my leave of this true poet after half a day passed in his company, with the impression that he makes upon every one—of a man whose sincerity and kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in his character. Simple in his language and feelings, a fond father, an affectionate husband, businessman of the closest habits of industry—one reads his strange imaginations, and passionate, high-wrought, and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which most to wonder—the man as he is, or the poet as we know him in his books.
LETTER LXXIV.
AN EVENING AT LADY BLESSINGTON'S—ANECDOTES OF MOORE, THE POET—TAYLOR, THE PLATONIST—POLITICS—ELECTION OF SPEAKER—PRICES OF BOOKS.
I am obliged to "gazette" Lady Blessington rather more than I should wish, and more than may seem delicate to those, who do not know the central position she occupies in the circle of talent in London. Her soirées and dinner-parties, however, are literally the single and only assemblages of men of genius, without reference to party—the only attempt at a republic of letters in the world of this great, envious, and gifted metropolis. The pictures of literary life, in which my countrymen would be most interested, therefore, are found within a very small compass, presuming them to prefer the brighter side of an eminent character, and presuming them (is it a presumption?), not to possess that appetite for degrading the author to the man, by an anatomy of his secret personal failings, which is lamentably common in England. Having premised thus much, I go on with my letter.
I drove to Lady Blessington's an evening or two since, with the usual certainty of finding her at home, as there was no opera, and the equal certainty of finding a circle of agreeable and eminent men about her. She met me with the information that Moore was in town, and an invitation to dine with her whenever she should be able to prevail upon "the little Bacchus" to give her a day. D'Israeli, the younger, was there, and Dr. Beattie, the king's physician (and author, unacknowledged, of "The Heliotrope"), and one or two fashionable young noblemen.