My dear Thelwall,—Ah me! literary adventure is but bread and cheese by chance. I keenly sympathise with you. Sympathy, the only poor consolation I can offer you. Can no plan be suggested?... Of course you have read the “Joan of Arc.”[127] Homer is the poet for the warrior, Milton for the religionist, Tasso for women, Robert Southey for the patriot. The first and fourth books of the “Joan of Arc” are to me more interesting than the same number of lines in any poem whatever. But you and I, my dear Thelwall, hold different creeds in poetry as well as religion. N’importe! By the bye, of your works I have now all, except your “Essay on Animal Vitality” which I never had, and your Poems, which I bought on their first publication, and lost them. From these poems I should have supposed our poetical tastes more nearly alike than, I find, they are. The poem on the Sols [?] flashes genius through Strophe I, Antistrophe I, and Epode I. The rest I do not perhaps understand, only I love these two lines:—
“Yet sure the verse that shews the friendly mind
To Friendship’s ear not harshly flows.”
Your larger narrative affected me greatly. It is admirably written, and displays strong sense animated by feeling, and illumined by imagination, and neither in the thoughts nor rhythm does it encroach on poetry.
There have been two poems of mine in the new “Monthly Magazine,”[128] with my name; indeed, I make it a scruple of conscience never to publish anything, however trifling, without it. Did you like them? The first was written at the desire of a beautiful little aristocrat; consider it therefore as a lady’s poem. Bowles (the bard of my idolatry) has written a poem lately without plan or meaning, but the component parts are divine. It is entitled “Hope, an Allegorical Sketch.” I will copy two of the stanzas, which must be peculiarly interesting to you, virtuous high-treasonist, and your friends the democrats.
“But see, as one awaked from deadly trance,
With hollow and dim eyes, and stony stare,
Captivity with faltering step advance!
Dripping and knotted was her coal-black hair:
For she had long been hid, as in the grave;
No sounds the silence of her prison broke,
Nor one companion had she in her cave
Save Terror’s dismal shape, that no word spoke,
But to a stony coffin on the floor
With lean and hideous finger pointed evermore.
“The lark’s shrill song, the early village chime,
The upland echo of the winding horn,
The far-heard clock that spoke the passing time,
Had never pierced her solitude forlorn:
At length released from the deep dungeon’s gloom
She feels the fragrance of the vernal gale,
She sees more sweet the living landscape bloom,
And while she listens to Hope’s tender tale,
She thinks her long-lost friends shall bless her sight,
And almost faints for joy amidst the broad daylight.”
The last line is exquisite.
Your portrait of yourself interested me. As to me, my face, unless when animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed, almost idiotic good-nature. ’Tis a mere carcass of a face;[129] fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, ’tis a good shape enough if measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man indicates indolence capable of energies. I am, and ever have been, a great reader, and have read almost everything—a library cormorant. I am deep in all out of the way books, whether of the monkish times, or of the puritanical era. I have read and digested most of the historical writers; but I do not like history. Metaphysics and poetry and “facts of mind,” that is, accounts of all the strange phantasms that ever possessed “your philosophy;” dreamers, from Thoth the Egyptian to Taylor the English pagan, are my darling studies. In short, I seldom read except to amuse myself, and I am almost always reading. Of useful knowledge, I am a so-so chemist, and I love chemistry. All else is blank; but I will be (please God) an horticulturalist and a farmer. I compose very little, and I absolutely hate composition, and such is my dislike that even a sense of duty is sometimes too weak to overpower it.
I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing that I perfectly forget my opponent. Such am I. I am just going to read Dupuis’ twelve octavos,[130] which I have got from London. I shall read only one octavo a week, for I cannot speak French at all and I read it slowly.
My wife is well and desires to be remembered to you and your Stella and little ones. N. B. Stella (among the Romans) was a man’s name. All the classics are against you; but our Swift, I suppose, is authority for this unsexing.
Write on the receipt of this, and believe me as ever, with affectionate esteem,