was Mr. Pitt aware of this, that he would never allow of any intercourse with literary men of eminence; fearing, doubtless, that the charm which spell-bound his political adherents would, at least for the time, fail of its effect." "There is a great, a general want of intellect at this time; so much so, that when any convulsion occurs, it will tell fatally. The fabric of our society resembles a house of cards built by children, which, so long as the squares support a roof, and that roof an angle, and the inter-dependance is sufficient, all seems well; but the moment the fabric is shaken, and when the component parts can no longer form an angle, it will assuredly fall to the ground. See First Lay Sermon. The Second Lay Sermon, and the Letters to Judge Fletcher, are in truth wonderful prophecies." "If I should finish Christabel,' I shall certainly extend it, and give new characters, and a greater number of incidents. This the 'reading public' require, and this is the reason that Sir Walter Scott's poems, though so loosely written, are pleasing, and interest us by their picturesqueness. "If a genial recurrence of the ray divine should occur for a few weeks, I shall certainly attempt it. I had the whole of the two cantos in my mind before I began it; certainly, the first canto is more perfect, has more of the true wild weird spirit, than the last. I laughed heartily at the continuation in Blackwood, which I have been told is by Maginn: it is in appearance, and in appearance only, a good imitation; I do not doubt but that it gave more pleasure, and to a greater number, than a continuation by myself in the spirit of the two first cantos. "The Ancient Mariner' cannot be imitated, nor the poem 'Love.' They may be excelled; they are not imitable." "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk* seem to have originated in a sort of familiar conversation between two clever men, who have said, 'Let us write a book that will sell; you write this, and I will write that,' and in a sort of laughing humour set to work. This was the way that Southey and myself wrote many things together." "I am glad you are now to see the Wallenstein for the first time, as you will then see a specimen of my happiest attempt, during the prime manhood of my intellect, before I had been buffeted by adversity or crossed by fatality. The 'Remorse' is certainly a great favourite of mine, the more so, as certain pet abstract notions of mine are therein expounded." "Mr. Green is indeed a worthy man, at least so all my friends say. Bred up from the age of twelve in an hospital, he has yet not failed to shun their horrid materialism. He has come to a very different conclusion to that at which most other operators, most psychologists, have arrived. He has been able to believe in a * I have extracted from the above work the following tribute to the genius of Coleridge by Professor Wilson, clarum et venerabile nomen. "If there be any man of grand and original genius alive at this moment in Europe, it is Coleridge: nothing can surpass the melodious richness of words which he heaps around his images-images which are not glaring in themselves, but which are always affecting to the very verge of tears, because they have all been formed and nourished in the recesses of one of the most deeply musing spirits that ever breathed forth its inspirations in the majestic language of England. Who that ever read Genevieve can doubt this? That poem is known to all readers of poetry, although comparatively few of them are aware that it is the work of Coleridge. His love-poetry is, throughout, the finest that has been produced in England since the days of Shakspeare and the old dramatists. The old dramatists, and Coleridge, regard women with far higher reverence-far deeper insight into the true grandeur of their gentleness. I do not think there is any poet in the world who ever touched so truly the mystery of the passion as he has done in Genevieve, and in that other exquisite poem where he speaks of Her voice Her voice, that, even in its mirthful mood, spiritual first cause and in a presiding free-will. This you will see in his preface.* "I deplore in my inmost heart the present mental degradation of E., who, not contented with denying the primal truths of religion and the divine nature of man, holds opinions which were ever considered as base, hateful, and to be abhorred; opinions which degrade man below the beast. Quoted that passage of Cicero, wherein he says,-' Concerning these things there are (or may be) different opinions; but those who disbelieve the existence of goodness, not only from the want of it themselves, but after much consideration, are to be held as out of the pale of society."" "Tobin came one morning with a face of much interest to inform me that Davy had made a wonderful discovery. I doubt it not; I think he will make many discoveries.'-'Yes, yes; but I mean in philosophy. He tells me he has discovered that it is possible there may be a God!'" "I once asked Tom Clarkson whether he ever thought of his probable fate in the next world, to which he replied, 'How can I? I think only of the slaves in Barbadoes!' Does Mr. Wilberforce care a farthing for the slaves in the West Indies, or if they were all at the devil, so that his soul were saved? "As there is a worldliness, or the too-much of this life, so there is another-worldliness, or rather other-worldliness, equally hateful and selfish with this-worldliness.” "Lord Erskine, speaking of animals, hesitating to call them brutes, hit upon that happy phrase-the mute creation.'" "Lord Kenyon, on the trial of a bookseller, for publishing Paine's Age of Reason,' in his charge to the jury, enumerated many celebrated men who had been * It is to be hoped that Mr. Green will favour the world with the process by which he has arrived at these conclusions. sincere Christians; and, after having enforced the example of Locke and Newton,--both of whom were Unitarians, and therefore not Christians,-proceeded : 1 Nor, gentlemen, is this belief confined to men of comparative seclusion, since men, the greatest and most distinguished both as philosophers and as monarchs, have enforced this belief, and shown its influence by their conduct. Above all, gentlemen, need I name to you the Emperor Julian, who was so celebrated for the practice of every Christian virtue that he was called Julian the Apostle.' ”* "It is indisputable that nervous excitation is contagious. The greater part of ghost stories may be traced to this source." "Forms exist before the substance out of which they are shaped." "One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe. "I hold with St. Paul, that charity is the greatest of the virtues. Original sin is best explained by depravation of the will. Calvinism, or the belief in election, is not simply blasphemy, but superfetation of blasphemy." "For one person who has remarked or praised a beautiful passage in Walter Scott's works, a hundred have said, How many volumes he has written!' So of Mathews: it is not, How admirable such and such parts are!' but, 'It is wonderful that one man should do all this? * This most extraordinary blunder must have arisen from the judge's reading having been more select than various. It is probable that all the knowledge he had of Julian was picked out of Fielding's Journey to the Next World," which, however, he seems not to have understood. LETTER X. MY VERY DEAR FRIEND, August 8th, 1820. Neither indolence nor procrastination has had any place among the causes of my silence, least of all either yourself, or the subject of your letter, or the purpose of answering it, having been absent from my thoughts. You may with almost literal truth attribute it to want of time, from the number, quantity, and quality of my engagements, the necessity of several journeys to and (still worse) in town being the largest waster of time and spirits. At length I have settled J. for the next six or eight weeks with Mr. Montague, where he is engaged on an Essay on the Principles of Taste in relation to Metre and Rhythm, containing, first, a new scheme of prosody, as applied to the choral and lyrical stanzas of the Greek drama; secondly, the possibility of improving and enriching our English versification by digging in the original mines, viz.—the tunes of nature and impassioned conversation, both of which may be illustrated from Mr. Frere's* Aristo * As these poems, the precursors of "Beppo" and "Don Juan," are not now in general circulation, I subjoin two short extracts, one a sketch of a gallant knight; the second showing the advantage of being well victualled. On every point, in earnest and in jest, His judgment, and his prudence, and his wit His memory was the magazine and hoard Where claims and grievances, from year to year, And confidences and complaints were stored, From dame and knight, from damsel, boor, and peer; |