Tuesday, December 13, 1796.
LXVIII. TO JOHN THELWALL.
December 17, 1796.
My dear Thelwall,—I should have written you long ere this, had not the settlement of my affairs previous to my leaving Bristol and the organization of my new plan occupied me with bulky anxieties that almost excluded everything but self from my thoughts. And, besides, my health has been very bad, and remains so. A nervous affection from my right temple to the extremity of my right shoulder almost distracted me, and made the frequent use of laudanum absolutely necessary. And, since I have subdued this, a rheumatic complaint in the back of my head and shoulders, accompanied with sore throat and depression of the animal spirits, has convinced me that a man may change bad lodgers without bettering himself. I write these things, not so much to apologise for my silence, or for the pleasure of complaining, as that you may know the reason why I have not given you a “strict account” how I have disposed of your books. This I will shortly do, with all the veracity which that solemn incantation, “upon your honour,” must necessarily have conjured up.
Your second and third part promise great things. I have counted the subjects, and by a nice calculation find that eighteen Scotch doctors would write fifty-four quarto volumes, each choosing his thesis out of your syllabus. May you do good by them, and moreover enable yourself to do more good, I should say, to continue to do good. My farm will be a garden of one acre and a half, in which I mean to raise vegetables and corn enough for myself and wife, and feed a couple of snouted and grunting cousins from the refuse. My evenings I shall devote to literature; and, by reviews, the magazine, and the other shilling-scavenger employments, shall probably gain forty pounds a year; which economy and self-denial, gold-beaters, shall hammer till it cover my annual expenses. Now, in favour of this scheme, I shall say nothing, for the more vehement my ratiocinations were, previous to the experiment, the more ridiculous my failure would appear; and if the scheme deserve the said ratiocinations I shall live down all your objections. I doubt not that the time will come when all our utilities will be directed in one simple path. That time, however, is not come; and imperious circumstances point out to each one his particular road. Much good may be done in all. I am not fit for public life; yet the light shall stream to a far distance from my cottage window. Meantime, do you uplift the torch dreadlessly, and show to mankind the face of that idol which they have worshipped in darkness! And now, my dear fellow, for a little sparring about poetry. My first sonnet[133] is obscure; but you ought to distinguish between obscurity residing in the uncommonness of the thought, and that which proceeds from thoughts unconnected and language not adapted to the expression of them. Where you do find out the meaning of my poetry, can you (in general, I mean) alter the language so as to make it more perspicuous—the thought remaining the same? By “dreamy semblance” I did mean semblance of some unknown past, like to a dream, and not “a semblance presented in a dream.” I meant to express that ofttimes, for a second or two, it flashed upon my mind that the then company, conversation, and everything, had occurred before with all the precise circumstances; so as to make reality appear a semblance, and the present like a dream in sleep. Now this thought is obscure; because few persons have experienced the same feeling. Yet several have; and they were proportionably delighted with the lines, as expressing some strange sensations, which they themselves had never ventured to communicate, much less had ever seen developed in poetry. The lines I have altered to,—
Oft o’er my brain does that strange rapture roll
Which makes the present (while its brief fit last)
Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,
Mixed with such feelings as distress the soul
When dreaming that she dreams.[134]
Next as to “mystical.” Now that the thinking part of man, that is, the soul, existed previously to its appearance in its present body may be very wild philosophy, but it is very intelligible poetry; inasmuch as “soul” is an orthodox word in all our poets, they meaning by “soul” a being inhabiting our body, and playing upon it, like a musician enclosed in an organ whose keys were placed inwards. Now this opinion I do not hold; not that I am a materialist, but because I am a Berkleyan. Yet as you, who are not a Christian, wished you were, that we might meet in heaven, so I, who did not believe in this descending and incarcerated soul, yet said if my baby had died before I had seen him I should have struggled to believe it. Bless me! a commentary of thirty-five lines in defence of a sonnet! and I do not like the sonnet much myself. In some (indeed, in many of my poems) there is a garishness and swell of diction which I hope that my poems in future, if I write any, will be clean of, but seldom, I think, any conceits. In the second edition, now printing, I have swept the book with the expurgation-besom to a fine tune, having omitted nearly one third. As to Bowles, I affirm that the manner of his accentuation in the words “brōad dāylīght” (three long syllables) is a beauty, as it admirably expresses the captive’s dwelling on the sight of noon with rapture and a kind of wonder.
The common sun, the air, the skies
To him are opening paradise.
Gray.
But supposing my defence not tenable; yet how a blunder in metre stamps a man Italian or Della Cruscan I cannot perceive. As to my own poetry, I do confess that it frequently, both in thought and language, deviates from “nature and simplicity.” But that Bowles, the most tender, and, with the exception of Burns, the only always natural in our language, that he should not escape the charge of Della Cruscanism,—this cuts the skin and surface of my heart. “Poetry to have its highest relish must be impassioned.” True. But, firstly, poetry ought not always to have its highest relish; and, secondly, judging of the cause from its effect, poetry, though treating on lofty and abstract truths, ought to be deemed impassioned by him who reads it with impassioned feelings. Now Collins’s “Ode on the Poetical Character,”—that part of it, I should say, beginning with “The band (as faery legends say) Was wove on that creating day,”—has inspired and whirled me along with greater agitations of enthusiasm than any the most impassioned scene in Schiller or Shakespeare, using “impassioned” in its confined sense, for writing in which the human passions of pity, fear, anger, revenge, jealousy, or love are brought into view with their workings. Yet I consider the latter poetry as more valuable, because it gives more general pleasure, and I judge of all things by their utility. I feel strongly and I think strongly, but I seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence, though my poetry has in general a hue of tenderness or passion over it, yet it seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness or passion. My philosophical opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings, and this, I think, peculiarises my style of writing, and, like everything else, it is sometimes a beauty and sometimes a fault. But do not let us introduce an Act of Uniformity against Poets. I have room enough in my brain to admire, aye, and almost equally, the head and fancy of Akenside, and the heart and fancy of Bowles, the solemn lordliness of Milton, and the divine chit-chat of Cowper.[135] And whatever a man’s excellence is, that will be likewise his fault.
There were some verses of yours in the last “Monthly Magazine” with which I was much pleased—calm good sense combined with feeling, and conveyed in harmonious verse and a chaste and pleasing imagery. I wish much, very much, to see your other poem. As to your Poems which you informed me in the accompanying letter that you had sent in the same parcel with the pamphlets, whether or no your verses had more than their proper number of feet I cannot say; but certain it is, that somehow or other they marched off. No “Poems by John Thelwall” could I find. When I charged you with anti-religious bigotry, I did not allude to your pamphlet, but to passages in your letters to me, and to a circumstance which Southey, I think, once mentioned, that you had asserted that the name of God ought never to be produced in poetry.[136] Which, to be sure, was carrying hatred to your Creator very far indeed.