Yours, my dear friend,
Most sincerely,
W. C.
TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.
Weston, June 29, 1793.
Dear architect of fine CHATEAUX in air
Worthier to stand for ever if they could,
Than any built of stone, or yet of wood,
For back of royal elephant to bear!
Oh for permission from the skies to share,
Much to my own, though little to thy good,
With thee (not subject to the jealous mood!)
A partnership of literary ware.
But I am bankrupt now; and doom'd henceforth
To drudge, in descant dry,[705] on others' lays;
Bards, I acknowledge, of unequall'd worth!
But what is commentator's happiest praise?
That he has furnish'd lights for other eyes,
Which they who need them use, and then despise.
What remains for me to say on this subject, my dear brother bard, I will say in prose. There are other impediments which I could not compromise within the bounds of a sonnet.
My poor Mary's infirm condition makes it impossible for me, at present, to engage in a work such as you propose. My thoughts are not sufficiently free, nor have I, or can I, by any means, find opportunity; added to it comes a difficulty which, though you are not at all aware of it, presents itself to me under a most forbidding appearance. Can you guess it? No, not you; neither perhaps will you be able to imagine that such a difficulty can possibly subsist. If your hair begins to bristle, stroke it down again, for there is no need why it should erect itself. It concerns me, not you. I know myself too well not to know that I am nobody in verse, unless in a corner, and alone, and unconnected in my operations. This is not owing to want of love for you, my brother, or the most consummate confidence in you; for I have both in a degree that has not been exceeded in the experience of any friend you have, or ever had. But I am so made up—I will not enter into a metaphysical analysis of my strange composition, in order to detect the true cause of this evil; but on a general view of the matter, I suspect that it proceeds from that shyness which has been my effectual and almost fatal hindrance on many other important occasions, and which I should feel, I well know, on this, to a degree that would perfectly cripple me. No! I shall neither do, nor attempt any thing of consequence more, unless my poor Mary get better; nor even then, unless it should please God to give me another nature, in concert with any man—I could not, even with my own father or brother, were they now alive. Small game must serve me at present, and, till I have done with Homer and Milton, a sonnet, or some such matter, must content me. The utmost that I aspire to, and Heaven knows with how feeble a hope, is to write at some better opportunity, and when my hands are free, "The Four Ages." Thus I have opened my heart unto thee.[706]
W. C.