it was over — when by Wells's interest we got behind the scenes there was not a yard wide all the way round for actors, scene-shifters, and interlopers to move in

for 'Nota Bene' the Green Room was under the stage, and there was I threatened over and over again to be turned out by the oily scene-shifters, there did I hear a little painted Trollop own, very candidly, that she had failed in Mary, with a 'damn'd if she'd play a serious part again, as long as she lived,' and at the same time she was habited as the Quaker in the Review.There was a quarrel, and a fat goodnatured looking girl in soldiers' clothes wished she had only been a man for Tom's sake. One fellow began a song, but an unlucky finger-point from the Gallery sent him off like a shot. One chap was dressed to kill for the King in Bombastes, and he stood at the edge of the scene in the very sweat of anxiety to show himself, but Alas the thing was not played. The sweetest morsel of the night moreover was, that the musicians began pegging and fagging away

at an overture -never did you see faces more in earnest, three times did they play it over, dropping all kinds of corrections and still did not the curtain go up. Well then they went into a country dance, then into a region they well knew, into the old boonsome Pothouse, and then to see how pompous o' the sudden they turned; how they looked about and chatted; how they did not care a damn; was a great treat

I hope I have not tired you by this filling up of the dash in my last. Constable the bookseller has offered Reynolds ten guineas a sheet to write for his Magazine — it is an Edinburgh one, which Blackwood's started up in opposition to. Hunt said he was nearly sure that the 'Cockney School' was written by Scott 29 so you are right Tom!

How has that unfortunate family lived through the twelve? One saying of yours I shall never forget — you may not recollect it it being perhaps said when you were looking on the Surface and seeming of Humanity alone, without a thought of the past or the future- or the deeps of good and evil you were at that moment estranged from speculation, and I think you have arguments ready for the Man who would utter it to you- this is a formidable preface for a simple thing — merely you said, 'Why should woman suffer?' Aye, why should she? 'By heavens I'd coin my very Soul, and drop my Blood for Drachmas!' These things are, and he, who feels how incompetent the most skyey Knight-errantry is to heal this bruised fairness, is like a sensitive leaf on the hot hand of thought. Your tearing, my dear friend, a spiritless and gloomy letter up, to re-write to me, is what I shall never forget-it was to me a real thing—Things have happened lately of great perplexity you must have heard of them Reynolds and Haydon retorting and recriminating and parting for ever the same thing has happened between Haydon and Hunt. It is unfortunate Men should bear with each other: there lives not the Man who may not be cut up, aye Lashed to pieces on his weakest side. The best of Men have but a portion of good in thema kind of spiritual yeast in their frames, which creates the ferment of existence by which a Man is propelled to act, and strive, and buffet with Circumstance. The

sure way, Bailey, is first to know a Man's faults, and then be passive if after that he insensibly draws you towards him then you have no power to break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or Haydon, I was well read in their faults; yet, knowing them, I have been cementing gradually with both. I have an affection for them both, for reasons almost opposite

and to both must I of necessity cling, supported always by the hope that, when a little time, a few years, shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may be able to bring them together. The time must come, because they have both hearts: and they will recollect the best parts of each other, when this gust is overblown. — I had a message from you through a letter to Jane - I think, about Cripps there can

I trust you and Gleig pass much fine time together. Remember me to him and Whitehead. My Brother Tom is getting stronger, but his spitting of Blood continues. I sat down to read King Lear yesterday, and felt the greatness of the thing up to the Writing of a Sonnet preparatory thereto in my next you shall There were some miserable reports of Rice's health—I went, and lo! Master Jemmy had been to the play the night before, and was out at the time-he always comes on his legs like a Cat. I have seen a good deal of Wordsworth. Hazlitt is lecturing on Poetry at the Surrey Institution - I shall be there next Tuesday. Your most affectionate friend

have it.

Wherein lies happiness, Peona ? fold, etc.'

It appears to me the very contrary of blessed. I hope this will appear to you more eligible.

'Wherein lies Happiness? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with Essence till we shine Full alchemised, and free of space - Behold The clear religion of Heaven-fold, etc.' You must indulge me by putting this in, for setting aside the badness of the other, such a preface is necessary to the subject. The whole thing must, I think, have appeared to you, who are a consecutive man, as a thing almost of mere words, but I assure you that, when I wrote it, it was a regular stepping of the Imagination towards a truth. My having written that argument will perhaps be of the greatest service to me of anything I ever did. It set before me the gradations of happiness, even

33. TO THE SAME

Hampstead, Tuesday [February 3, 1818]. MY DEAR REYNOLDS — I thank you for your dish of Filberts would I could get

a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the sum of twopence.81 Would we were a sort of ethereal Pigs, and turned loose to feed upon spiritual Mast and Acorns which would be merely being a squirrel and feeding upon filberts, for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a throng of delightful Images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. The first is the best on account of the first line, and the 'arrow, foil'd of its antler'd food,' and moreover (and this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more because I have had so much reason to shun it as a quicksand) the last has 'tender and true.' We must cut this, and not be rattlesnaked into any more of the like. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth, etc. should have their due from us. But, for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist? Every man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a Journey heavenward as well as anybody. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself - but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway, crying out, Admire me, I am a

violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose !' Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this: each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state and knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all his dominions, and has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have their coppers well scoured: The ancients were Emperors of vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut all this - I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular - Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be teased with 'nice-eyed wagtails,' when we have in sight 'the Cherub Contemplation'? Why with Wordsworth's 'Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand,' when we can have Jacques under an oak,' etc.? The secret of the Bough of Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens in an Evening Walk to imagine the figure of the old Man, he must stamp it down in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be teased with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of Childe Harold and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll look pretty.

[To J. H. R. in answer to his Robin Hood Sonnets. See p. 41.]

I hope you will like them

Hampstead, Saturday Night [February 14, 1818]. MY DEAR BROTHERS When once a man delays a letter beyond the proper time, he delays it longer, for one or two reasons — first, because he must begin in a very common-place style, that is to say, with an excuse; and secondly things and circumstances become so jumbled in his mind, that he knows not what, or what not, he has said in his last - I shall visit you as soon as I have copied my poem all out, I am now much beforehand with the printer, they have done none yet, and I am half afraid they will let half the season by before the printing. I am determined they shall not trouble me when I have copied it Horace Smith has lent me his manuscript called 'Nehemiah Muggs, an exposure of the Methodists'—perhaps I may send you a few extracts Hazlitt's last

at least written in the Spirit of Outlawry.

Here are the Mermaid lines,

[See p. 40.]

32

Lecture was on Thomson, Cowper, and Crabbe, he praised Thomson and Cowper but he gave Crabbe an unmerciful licking I think Hunt's article of Fazio no it was not, but I saw Fazio the first night, it hung rather heavily on me - - I am in the high way of being introduced to a squad of people, Peter Pindar, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Scott Mr. Robinson a great friend of Coleridge's called on me. Richards tells me that my poems are known in the west country, and that he saw a very clever copy of verses, headed with a Motto from my Sonnet to George-Honours rush so thickly upon me that I shall not be able to bear up against them. What think you - am I to be crowned in the Capitol, am I to be made a Mandarin - No! I am to be invited, Mrs. Hunt tells me, to a party at Ollier's, to keep Shakspeare's birthday - Shakspeare would stare to see me there. The Wednesday before last Shelley, Hunt and I wrote each a Sonnet on the River Nile, some day you shall read them all. I saw a sheet of Endymion, and have all reason to suppose they will soon get it done, there shall be nothing wanting on my part. I have been writing at intervals many songs and Sonnets, and I long to be at Teignmouth, to read them over to you: however I think I had better wait till this Book is off my mind; it will not be long first.

Reynolds has been writing two very capital articles, in the Yellow Dwarf, on popular Preachers - All the talk here is about Dr. Croft the Duke of Devon etc. Your most affectionate Brother JOHN.

and dream upon it: until it becomes stale

But when will it do so? Never-When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post towards all 'the two-and-thirty Palaces.' How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent indolence! A doze upon a

sofa does not hinder it, and a nap upon Clover engenders ethereal finger-pointings

-the prattle of a child gives it wings, and the converse of middle-age a strength to beat them a strain of music conducts to 'an odd angle of the Isle,' and when the leaves whisper it puts a girdle round the earth. Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the benefit done by great works to the 'spirit and pulse of good' by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called Knowledge Many have original minds who do not think it - they are led away by Custom. Now it appears to me that almost any Man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadel the points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine Web of his Soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean full of sym

bols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his luxury. But the minds of mortals are so different and bent on such diverse journeys that it may at first appear impossible for any common taste and fellowship to exist between two or three under these suppositions. It is however quite the contrary. Minds would leave each other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points, and at last greet each other at the journey's end. An old man and a child would talk together and the old man be led on his path and the child left thinking. Man should not dispute