"If Gray's plan be adopted, there is not time to become acquainted with the arrangement, and to recognise with pleasure the recurrence of the movement.
"Be so good as let me know where you found most difficulty in following me. The passage which I most suspect of being misunderstood is
And thus is missed the sole true glory;
and the passage where I doubt most about the reasonableness of expecting that the reader should follow me in the luxuriance of the imagery and the language, is the one that describes, under so many metaphors, the spreading of the news of the Waterloo victory over the globe."
The last reference in this letter is to the lines in that part of the Ode, which follows—
Joyful annunciation!—it went forth—
It pierced the caverns of the sluggish North, etc."
Ed.
VARIANTS: