Though advanced in life, yet from an
education
of
peculiar simplicity, and from never having been long absent from my
retired native village, I am too little acquainted with decorum.
peculiar simplicity, and from never having been long absent from my
retired native village, I am too little acquainted with decorum.
Selection of English Letters
I look back
into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days before
this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated
eyes. I see our houses of eternity which can never be separated,
though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of
heaven from each other.
Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and
friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to
entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold.
TO THOMAS BUTTS
_Trouble in the path_
Felpham, 10 _Jan. _ 1802.
Dear Sir,
Your very kind and affectionate letter, and the many kind things you
have said in it, called upon me for an immediate answer. But it found
my wife and myself so ill, and my wife so very ill, that till now I
have not been able to do this duty. The ague and rheumatism have been
almost her constant enemies, which she has combated in vain almost
ever since we have been here, and her sickness is always my sorrow,
of course. But what you tell me about your sight afflicted me not a
little, and that about your health, in another part of your letter,
makes me entreat you to take due care of both. It is a part of our
duty to God and man to take due care of His gifts; and though we ought
not to think _more_ highly of ourselves, yet we ought to think _as_
highly of ourselves as immortals ought to think.
When I came down here, I was more sanguine than I am at present;
but it was because I was ignorant of many things which have since
occurred, and chiefly the unhealthiness of the place. Yet I do not
repent of coming on a thousand accounts; and Mr. Hayley, I doubt not,
will do ultimately all that both he and I wish--that is, to lift me
out of difficulty. But this is no easy matter to a man who, having
spiritual enemies of such formidable magnitude, cannot expect to want
natural hidden ones.
Your approbation of my pictures is a multitude to me, and I doubt not
that all your kind wishes in my behalf shall in due time be fulfilled.
Your kind offer of pecuniary assistance I can only thank you for at
present, because I have enough to serve my present purpose here. Our
expenses are small, and our income, from our incessant labour, fully
adequate to these at present. I am now engaged in engraving six small
plates for a new edition of Mr. Hayley's _Triumphs of Temper_, from
drawings by Maria Flaxman, sister to my friend the sculptor. And it
seems that other things will follow in course, if I do but copy these
well. But patience! If great things do not turn out, it is because
such things depend on the spiritual and not on the natural world; and
if it was fit for me, I doubt not that I should be employed in greater
things; and when it is proper, my talents shall be properly exercised
in public, as I hope they are now in private. For till then I leave no
stone unturned, and no path unexplored that leads to improvement in
my beloved arts. One thing of real consequence I have accomplished by
coming into the country, which is to me consolation enough: namely,
I have re-collected all my scattered thoughts on art, and resumed
my primitive and original ways of execution in both painting and
engraving, which in the confusion of London I had very much lost and
obliterated from my mind. But whatever becomes of my labours, I would
rather that they should be preserved in your greenhouse (not, as you
mistakenly call it, dunghill) than in the cold gallery of fashion. The
sun may yet shine, and then they will be brought into open air.
But you have so generously and openly desired that I will divide my
griefs with you that I cannot hide what it has now become my duty to
explain. My unhappiness has arisen from a source which, if explored
too narrowly, might hurt my pecuniary circumstances; as my dependence
is on engraving at present, and particularly on the engravings I have
in hand for Mr. Hayley, and I find on all hands great objections to
my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business, and intimations
that, if I do not confine myself to this, I shall not live. This has
always pursued me. You will understand by this the source of all my
uneasiness. This from Johnson and Fuseli brought me down here, and
this from Mr. Hayley will bring me back again. For that I cannot live
without doing my duty to lay up treasures in heaven is certain and
determined, and to this I have long made up my mind. And why this
should be made an objection to me, while drunkenness, lewdness,
gluttony, and even idleness itself, does not hurt other men, let Satan
himself explain. The thing I have most at heart--more than life, or
all that seems to make life comfortable without--is the interest of
true religion and science. And whenever anything appears to affect
that interest (especially if I myself omit any duty to my station as
a soldier of Christ), it gives me the greatest of torments. I am not
ashamed, afraid, or averse to tell you what ought to be told--that I
am under the direction of messengers from heaven, daily and nightly.
But the nature of such things is not, as some suppose, without trouble
or care. Temptations are on the right hand and on the left. Behind,
the sea of time and space roars and follows swiftly. He who keeps not
right onwards is lost; and if our footsteps slide in clay, how can we
do otherwise than fear and tremble? But I should not have troubled you
with this account of my spiritual state, unless it had been necessary
in explaining the actual cause of my uneasiness, into which you are so
kind as to inquire: for I never obtrude such things on others unless
questioned, and then I never disguise the truth. But if we fear to do
the dictates of our angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us;
if we refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears or natural
desires; who can describe the dismal torments of such a state! --I
too well remember the threats I heard! --'If you, who are organized
by Divine Providence for spiritual communion, refuse, and bury
your talent in the earth, even though you should want natural
bread,--sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after
death shame and confusion of face to eternity. Every one in eternity
will leave you, aghast at the man who was crowned with glory and
honour by his brethren, and betrayed their cause to their enemies. You
will be called the base Judas who betrayed his friend! '--Such words
would make any stout man tremble, and how then could I be at ease? But
I am now no longer in that state, and now go on again with my task,
fearless though my path is difficult. I have no fear of stumbling
while I keep it.
My wife desires her kindest love to Mrs. Butts, and I have permitted
her to send it to you also. We often wish that we could unite again
in society, and hope that the time is not distant when we shall do so,
being determined not to remain another winter here, but to return to
London.
I hear a Voice you cannot hear, that says
I must not stay,
I see a Hand you cannot see, that beckons
me away.
Naked we came here--naked of natural things--and naked we shall
return: but while clothed with the Divine mercy, we are richly clothed
in spiritual, and suffer all the rest gladly. Pray, give my love to
Mrs. Butts and your family.
PS. Your obliging proposal of exhibiting my two pictures likewise
calls for my thanks; I will finish the others, and then we shall judge
of the matter with certainty.
To THE SAME
_The wonderful poem_
(Felpham), 25 _April_, 1803.
MY DEAR SIR,
I write in haste, having received a pressing letter from my Brother.
I intended to have sent the Picture of the _Riposo_, which is nearly
finished much to my satisfaction, but not quite. You shall have it
soon. I now send the four numbers for Mr. Birch with best respects to
him. The reason the _Ballads_ have been suspended is the pressure of
other business, but they will go on again soon.
Accept of my thanks for your kind and heartening letter. You have
faith in the endeavours of me, your weak brother and fellow-disciple;
how great must be your faith in our Divine Master! You are to me
a lesson of humility, while you exalt me by such distinguishing
commendations. I know that you see certain merits in me, which, by
God's grace, shall be made fully apparent and perfect in Eternity.
In the meantime I must not bury the talents in the earth, but do my
endeavour to live to the glory of our Lord and Saviour; and I am
also grateful to the kind hand that endeavours to lift me out of
despondency, even if it lifts me too high.
And now, my dear Sir, congratulate me on my return to London with the
full approbation of Mr. Hayley and with promise. But alas! now I may
say to you--what perhaps I should not dare to say to anyone else--that
I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoyed, and
that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, see visions, dream
dreams, and prophesy and speak parables, unobserved, and at liberty
from the doubts of other mortals: perhaps doubts proceeding from
kindness; but doubts are always pernicious, especially when we doubt
our friends. Christ is very decided on this point: 'He who is not with
me is against me. ' There is no medium or middle state; and if a man is
the enemy of my spiritual life while he pretends to be the friend of
my corporeal, he is a real enemy; but the man may be the friend of my
spiritual life while he seems the enemy of my corporeal, though not
vice versa.
What is very pleasant, every one who hears of my going to London again
applauds it as the only course for the interest of all concerned in
my works; observing that I ought not to be away from the opportunities
London affords of seeing fine pictures, and the various improvements
in works of art going on in London.
But none can know the spiritual acts of my three years' slumber on the
banks of Ocean, unless he has seen them in the spirit, or unless he
should read my long Poem descriptive of those acts; for I have in
these years composed an immense number of verses on one grand theme,
similar to Homer's _Iliad_ or Milton's _Paradise Lost_; the persons
and machinery entirely new to the inhabitants of earth (some of the
persons excepted). I have written this Poem from immediate dictation,
twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without
premeditation, and even against my will. The time it has taken in
writing was thus rendered nonexistent, and an immense Poem exists
which seems to be the labour of a long life, all produced without
labour or study. I mention this to show you what I think the grand
reason of my being brought down here.
I have a thousand and ten thousand things to say to you. My heart
is full of futurity. I perceive that the sore travail which has been
given me these three years leads to glory and honour. I rejoice and
tremble: 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made. ' I had been reading the
CXXXIX Psalm a little before your letter arrived. I take your advice.
I see the face of my Heavenly Father; He lays His hand upon my head,
and gives a blessing to all my work. Why should I be troubled? Why
should my heart and flesh cry out? I will go on in the strength of the
Lord; through Hell will I sing forth His praises: that the dragons of
the deep may praise Him, and that those who dwell in darkness, and in
the sea coasts may be gathered into His Kingdom. Excuse my perhaps too
great enthusiasm. Please to accept of and give our loves to Mrs. Butts
and your amiable family, and believe me ever yours affectionately.
TO THE SAME
_The poet and William Hayley_
Felpham, 6 _July_, 1803.
. . . We look forward every day with pleasure toward our meeting again
in London with those whom we have learned to value by absence no less
perhaps than we did by presence; for recollection often surpasses
everything. Indeed, the prospect of returning to our friends is
supremely delightful. Then, I am determined that Mrs. Butts shall have
a good likeness of you, if I have hands and eyes left; for I am become
a likeness-taker, and succeed admirably well. But this is not to be
achieved without the original sitting before you for every touch, all
likenesses from memory being necessarily very, very defective; but
Nature and Fancy are two things, and can never be joined, neither
ought any one to attempt it, for it is idolatry, and destroys the
Soul.
I ought to tell you that Mr. H. is quite agreeable to our return,
and that there is all the appearance in the world of our being fully
employed in engraving for his projected works, particularly Cowper's
_Milton_--a work now on foot by subscription, and I understand that
the subscription goes on briskly. This work is to be a very elegant
one, and to consist of all Milton's Poems with Cowper's Notes, and
translations by Cowper from Milton's Latin and Italian poems. These
works will be ornamented with engravings from designs by Romney,
Flaxman, and your humble servant, and to be engraved also by
the last-mentioned. The profits of the work are intended to be
appropriated to erect a monument to the memory of Cowper in St. Paul's
or Westminster Abbey. Such is the project; and Mr. Addington and Mr.
Pitt are both among the subscribers, which are already numerous and of
the first rank. The price of the work is six guineas. Thus I hope that
all our three years' trouble ends in good-luck at last, and shall be
forgot by my affections, and only remembered by my understanding, to
be a memento in time to come, and to speak to future generations by a
sublime allegory, which is now perfectly completed into a grand Poem.
I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the
secretary; the authors are in Eternity. I consider it as the grandest
Poem that this world contains. Allegory addressed to the
intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal
understanding, is my definition of the most sublime Poetry. It is
also somewhat in the same manner defined by Plato. This Poem shall,
by Divine assistance, be progressively printed and ornamented with
prints, and given to the public. But of this work I take care to say
little to Mr. H. , since he is as much averse to my Poetry as he is to
a chapter in the Bible. He knows that I have writ it, for I have shown
it to him, and he has read part by his own desire, and has looked with
sufficient contempt to enhance my opinion of it. But I do not wish to
imitate by seeming too obstinate in poetic pursuits. But if all the
world should set their faces against this, I have orders to set my
face like a flint (Ezek. iii. 8) against their faces, and my forehead
against their foreheads.
As to Mr. H. , I feel myself at liberty to say as follows upon this
ticklish subject. I regard fashion in Poetry as little as I do in
Painting: so, if both Poets and Painters should alternately dislike
(but I know the majority of them will not), I am not to regard it
at all. But Mr. H. approves of my Designs as little as he does of my
Poems, and I have been forced to insist on his leaving me, in both,
to my own self-will; for I am determined to be no longer pestered with
his genteel ignorance and polite disapprobation. I know myself both
Poet and Painter, and it is not his affected contempt that can move to
anything but a more assiduous pursuit of both arts. Indeed, by my late
firmness, I have brought down his affected loftiness, and he begins
to think I have some genius: as if genius and assurance were the same
thing! But his imbecile attempts to depress me only deserve laughter.
I say thus much to you, knowing that you will not make a bad use of
it. But it is a fact too true that, if I had only depended on mortal
things, both myself and my wife must have been lost. I shall leave
every one in this country astonished at my patience and forbearance
of injuries upon injuries; and I do assure you that, if I could have
returned to London a month after my arrival here, I should have done
so. But I was commanded by my spiritual friends to bear all and be
silent, and to go through all without murmuring, and, in fine, to hope
till my three years should be almost accomplished; at which time I was
set at liberty to remonstrate against former conduct, and to demand
justice and truth; which I have done in so effectual a manner that my
antagonist is silenced completely, and I have compelled what should
have been of freedom--my just right as an artist and as a man. And
if any attempt should be made to refuse me this, I am inflexible, and
will relinquish any engagement of designing at all, unless altogether
left to my own judgement, as you, my dear friend, have always left me;
for which I shall never cease to honour and respect you.
When we meet, I will perfectly describe to you my conduct and the
conduct of others towards me, and you will see that I have laboured
hard indeed, and have been borne on angels' wings. Till we meet I beg
of God our Saviour to be with you and me, and yours and mine. Pray
give my and my wife's love to Mrs. Butts and family, and believe me to
remain
Yours in truth and sincerity.
MARY LEADBEATER
1758-1826
TO EDMUND BURKE
_Reply to his last letter_
28 _May_, 1797.
With a heart melted to overflowing, I cannot restrain the attempt to
express my grateful sensations on receiving the greatest, and, alas!
I fear, the last proof of that unvarying friendship with which our
ever-loved, our ever-honoured friend has favoured us! I may transgress
the bounds by intruding at this awful period; but I cannot help it. My
affection and my sorrow will be excused, I believe, for thou hast ever
looked kindly and partially upon me, and so has thy beloved wife, with
whose feelings I sympathize, could that avail. This day's post brought
me thy letter of the 23rd instant, dictated and signed by thee. Such
attention, at such a time, and in such a situation! It was like Edmund
Burke! It was like few others, but it is not bestowed upon hearts who
do not feel it. --I look back on that friendship formed in the precious
days of innocent childhood, between thee and my lamented parent. --I
trace its progress, which is so imprinted on my mind, that I almost
seem to myself to have been a witness to it. --I see it continue
unabated, notwithstanding the different sphere of life in which you
moved, to the period of it;--and may we not hope that there is an
union of souls beyond the grave? The composure and fortitude displayed
in thy letter, is the greatest consolation we could receive with the
tidings it conveyed of thy health. Since thou dost not allow us to
hope for its restoration, we will hope better things than is in the
power of this world to bestow. --My mother appears to decline, and
looks to the end of her race as near. All the other branches of
this family, I believe, are well in health. My brother continues
the school, which, I believe, was never in higher estimation than at
present. My husband regrets very much that he never shared with us
the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with thee. We all unite in
cordial, unaffected love to thee. I thought I would say how we were,
believing thou would be pleased to hear of our welfare, though how
long that may be continued, seems doubtful. --The general fermentation
throughout this nation, forebodes some sudden and dreadful eruption,
and, however obscure or retired our situations may be, there is little
prospect of escaping the calamity. This may cause us to admire, nay,
adore the mercy, as well as wisdom of Him, who gives and takes life,
in removing those so dear to us from the evil to come. My mother
desires thou may accept as much love as she is capable of sending
thee; her heart is full of it towards thee; and she bids me say, she
hopes thou hast lived such a life, that thy end will be crowned with
peace! So be it, with my whole heart! Thy affectionate and obliged
friend.
Our best wishes, and dear love to thy wife.
Abraham Shackleton has the melancholy satisfaction of perusing dear
Edmund Burke's account of his poor state of health. He hopes (trusts)
that a quiet resting place is prepared for him. The memory of E.
Burke's philanthropic virtues will out-live the period when his
shining political talents will cease to act. New fashions of political
sentiment will exist; but philanthropy,--_immortale manet! _
TO GEORGE CRABBE
_She writes to remind him_
Ballitore, 7th of Eleventh-month, 1816.
I believe it will surprise George Crabbe to receive a letter from an
entire stranger, whom most probably he does not remember to have ever
seen or heard of, but who cannot forget having met him at the house of
Edmund Burke, Charles Street, James's Square, in the year 1784. I
was brought thither by my father, Richard Shackleton, the friend
from their childhood of Edmund Burke. My dear father told thee that
Goldsmith's would now be the _deserted village_; perhaps thou dost not
remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which
disclaimed it. He admired '_The Village', 'The Library_,' and '_The
Newspaper_' exceedingly, and the delight with which he read them to
his family could not but be acceptable to the author, had he known
the sound judgement and the exquisite taste which that excellent
man possessed. But he saw no more of the productions of the Muse he
admired; whose originality was not the least charm. He is dead--the
friend whom he loved and honoured, and to whose character thou dost so
much justice in the preface to '_The Parish_ _Register_', is also gone
to the house appointed for all living. A splendid constellation of
poets arose in the literary horizon; I looked around for Crabbe. Why
does not he, who shines as brightly as any of these, add his lustre?
I had not long thought thus when, in an Edinburgh Review, I met
with reflections similar to my own, which introduced '_The Parish
Register_'. Oh, it was like the voice of a long-lost friend, and glad
was I to hear that voice again in '_The Borough_'! --still more in
'_The Tales_,' which appear to me excelling all that preceded them!
Every work is so much in unison with our own feelings, that a wish for
information concerning them and their author is strongly excited.
One of our friends, Dykes Alexander, who was in Ballitore in 1810, I
think, said he was personally acquainted with thee, and spoke highly
of thy character. I regretted I had not an opportunity of conversing
with him on this subject, as perhaps he would have been able to decide
arguments which have arisen; namely, whether we owe to truth or to
fiction that 'ever new delight' which thy poetry affords us. The
characters, however singular some of them may be, are never unnatural,
and thy sentiments so true to domestic and social feelings, as well as
to those of a higher nature, have the convincing power of reality
over the mind, and _I_ maintain that all thy pictures _are drawn from
life_. To inquire whether this be the case is the excuse which I make
to myself for writing this letter. I wish the excuse may be accepted
by thee, for I greatly fear I have taken an unwarrantable liberty in
making the inquiry.
Though advanced in life, yet from an education of
peculiar simplicity, and from never having been long absent from my
retired native village, I am too little acquainted with decorum. If I
have now transgressed the rules it prescribes, I appeal to the candour
and liberality of thy mind to forgive a fault caused by a strong
enthusiasm.
PS. Ballitore is the village in which Edmund Burke was educated by
Abraham Shackleton, whose pupil he became in 1741, and from whose
school he entered the college of Dublin in 1744. The school is still
flourishing.
ROBERT BURNS
1759-1796
TO MISS CHALMERS
_Marriage with Jean_
Ellisland, near Dumfries, 16 _Sept_. 1788.
Where are you? and how are you? and is Lady M'Kenzie recovering her
health? for I have had but one solitary letter from you. I will not
think you have forgot me, Madam; and for my part--
When thee, Jerusalem, I forget,
Skill part from my right hand!
'My heart is not of that rock, nor my soul careless as that sea. ' I
do not make my progress among mankind as a bowl does among its
fellows--rolling through the crowd without bearing away any mark or
impression, except where they hit in hostile collision.
I am here, driven in with my harvest-folks by bad weather; and as you
and your sister once did me the honour of interesting yourselves
much _à l'égard de moi_, I sit down to beg the continuation of your
goodness. --I can truly say that, all the exterior of life apart,
I never saw two, whose esteem flattered the nobler feelings of my
soul--I will not say, more, but so much as Lady M'Kenzie and Miss
Chalmers. When I think of you--hearts the best, minds the noblest, of
human kind--unfortunate, even in the shades of life--when I think I
have met with you, and have lived more of real life with you in
eight days, than I can do with almost any body I meet with in eight
years--when I think on the improbability of meeting you in this world
again--I could sit down and cry like a child! --If ever you honoured me
with a place in your esteem, I trust I can now plead more desert. --I
am secure against that crushing grip of iron poverty, which, alas!
is less or more fatal to the native worth and purity of, I fear, the
noblest souls; and a late, important step in my life has kindly taken
me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities, which, however
overlooked in fashionable license, or varnished in fashionable phrase,
are indeed but lighter and deeper shades of VILLAINY.
Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire, I married 'my Jean'. This
was not in consequence of the attachment of romance perhaps; but I
had a long and much-loved fellow creature's happiness or misery in my
determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor
have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish
manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with
the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the
handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and
the kindest heart in the county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her
creed, that I am _le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnête homme_ in
the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in
metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse.
I must except also from this last, a certain late publication of Scots
poems, which she has perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in
the country, as she has (O the partial lover! you will cry) the finest
'wood-note wild' I ever heard. --I am the more particular in this
lady's character, as I know she will henceforth have the honour of a
share in your best wishes. She is still at Mauchline, as I am building
my house; for this hovel that I shelter in, while occasionally here,
is pervious to every blast that blows, and every shower that falls;
and I am only preserved from being chilled to death, by being
suffocated with smoke. I do not find my farm that pennyworth I was
taught to expect, but I believe, in time, it may be a saving bargain.
You will be pleased to hear that I have laid aside idle _éclat_, and
bind every day after my reapers.
To save me from that horrid situation of at any time going down, in
a losing bargain of a farm, to misery, I have taken my excise
instructions, and have my commission in my pocket for any emergency
of fortune. If I could set _all_ before your view, whatever disrespect
you in common with the world, have for this business, I know you would
approve of my idea.
I will make no apology, dear Madam, for this egotistic detail: I know
you and your sister will be interested in every circumstance of it.
What signify the silly, idle gewgaws of wealth, or the ideal trumpery
of greatness! When fellow partakers of the same nature fear the same
God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul,
the same detestation at every thing dishonest, and the same scorn at
every thing unworthy--if they are not in the dependance of absolute
beggary, in the name of common sense are they not EQUALS? And if the
bias, the instinctive bias of their souls run the same way, why may
they not be FRIENDS? . . .
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE
_A gauger_
Ellisland, 1 _Nov_. 1789.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I had written you long ere now, could I have guessed where to find
you, for I am sure you have more good sense than to waste the precious
days of vacation time in the dirt of business and Edinburgh. Wherever
you are, God bless you, and lead you not into temptation, but deliver
you from evil!
I do not know if I have informed you that I am now appointed to an
excise division, in the middle of which my house and farm lie. In this
I was extremely lucky. Without ever having been an expectant, as they
call their journeymen excisemen, I was directly planted down to all
intents and purposes an officer of excise; there to flourish and bring
forth fruits--worthy of repentance.
I know not how the word exciseman, or still more opprobrious, gauger,
will sound in your ears. I too have seen the day when my auditory
nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife
and children are things which have a wonderful power in blunting these
kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life, and a provision for
widows and orphans, you will allow is no bad settlement for a _poet_.
For the ignominy of the profession, I have the encouragement which
I once heard a recruiting sergeant give to a numerous, if not a
respectable audience, in the streets of Kilmarnock. --'Gentlemen,
for your further and better encouragement, I can assure you that
our regiment is the most blackguard corps under the crown, and
consequently with us an honest fellow has the surest chance for
preferment. '
You need not doubt that I find several very unpleasant and
disagreeable circumstances in my business; but I am tired with and
disgusted at the language of complaint against the evils of life.
Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with
pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious foolish man
mistakes these inconveniences and ills as if they were the peculiar
property of his particular situation; and hence that eternal
fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does
ruin many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead; and is, almost
without exception, a constant source of disappointment and misery. . . .
TO FRANCIS GROSE
_Witch tales_
Dumfries, 1792.
Among the many witch stories I have heard relating to Alloway Kirk, I
distinctly remember only two or three.
Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind and bitter blasts
of hail--in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take
the air in--a farmer, or farmer's servant, was plodding and plashing
homeward, with his plough irons on his shoulder, having been getting
some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the Kirk
of Alloway, and being rather on the anxious look-out in approaching
a place so well known to be a favourite haunt of the devil and the
devil's friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering
through the horrors of the storm and stormy night a light, which, on
his nearer approach, plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted
edifice. Whether he had been fortified from above, on his devout
supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the
immediate presence of Satan; or whether, according to another custom,
he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to
determine; but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay, into, the
very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished.
The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight
business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or
cauldron, depending from the roof over the fire, simmering some heads
of unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, &c. , for the
business of the night. It was in for a penny, in for a pound, with the
honest ploughman; so, without ceremony, he unhooked the cauldron from
off the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it
on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the
family, a living evidence of the truth of the story.
Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as
follows: On a market day, in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick,
and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway Kirkyard,
in order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about
two or three hundred yards further on than the said gate, had been
detained by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was
the wizard hour between night and morning.
Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet
as it is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is
running by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced
on his road. When he had reached the gate of the kirkyard he was
surprised and entertained through the ribs and arches of an old Gothic
window which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches,
merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was
keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer,
stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the
faces of many old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the
gentleman was dressed tradition does not say, but that the ladies were
all in their smocks; and one of them, happening unluckily to have a
smock which was considerably too short to answer all the purposes of
that piece of dress, our farmer was so tickled that he involuntarily
burst out with a loud laugh: 'Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark! '
and recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of
his speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no
diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream.
Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for,
notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against
he reached the middle of the arch of the bridge, and consequently the
middle of the stream, the pursuing vengeful hags were so close at his
heels, that one of them actually sprang to seize him; but it was too
late, nothing was on her side of the stream but the horse's tail,
which immediately gave way at her infernal grip, as if blasted by a
stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond her reach. However, the
unsightly tailless condition of the vigorous steed was, to the last
hour of the noble creature's life, an awful warning to the Carrick
farmer not to stay too late in Ayr markets.
The last relation I shall give you, though equally true, is not so
well identified as the two former, with regard to the scene; but as
the best authorities give it for Alloway, I shall relate it.
On a summer's evening, about the time that nature puts on her sables
to mourn the expiry of the cheerful day, a shepherd boy, belonging
to a farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of Alloway Kirk, had just
folded his charge and was returning home. As he passed the kirk, in
the adjoining field, he fell in with a crew of men and women, who
were busy pulling stems of the plant ragwort. He observed that as each
person pulled a ragwort, he or she got astride of it, and called out,
'Up, horsie', on which the ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the
air, with its rider. The foolish boy likewise pulled his ragwort and
cried with the rest, 'Up, horsie', and, strange to tell, away he flew
with the company. The first stage at which the cavalcade stopped was
a merchant's wine-cellar in Bordeaux, where, without saying by your
leave, they quaffed away at the best the cellar could afford, until
the morning, foe to the imps and works of darkness, threatened to
throw light on the matter, and frightened them from their carousals.
The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the
liquor, heedlessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse he
fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging
to the merchant. Somebody that understood Scotch, asking him what he
was, he said he was such-a-one's herd in Alloway, and by some means or
other getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous
tale.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
1770-1850
TO SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT
_A brother's character_
Grasmere, 20 _Feb_. 1805.
Having spoken of worldly affairs, let me again mention my beloved
brother. It is now just five years since, after a separation of
fourteen years (I may call it a separation, for we only saw him four
or five times, and by glimpses), he came to visit his sister and me
in this cottage, and passed eight blessed months with us. He was then
waiting for the command of the ship to which he was appointed when he
quitted us. As you will have seen, we had little to live upon, and he
as little (Lord Lonsdale being then alive). But he encouraged me to
persist, and to keep my eye steady on its object. He would work for me
(that was his language), for me and his sister; and I was to endeavour
to do something for the world. He went to sea, as commander, with
this hope; his voyage was very unsuccessful, he having lost by it
considerably. When he came home, we chanced to be in London, and saw
him. 'Oh! ' said he, 'I have thought of you, and nothing but you; if
ever of myself, and my bad success, it was only on your account. ' He
went again to sea a second time, and also was unsuccessful; still
with the same hopes on our account, though then not so necessary,
Lord Lowther having paid the money. Lastly came the lamentable voyage,
which he entered upon, full of expectation, and love to his sister
and myself, and my wife, whom, indeed, he loved with all a brother's
tenderness. This is the end of his part of the agreement--of his
efforts for my welfare! God grant me life and strength to fulfil mine!
I shall never forget him--never lose sight of him: there is a bond
between us yet, the same as if he were living, nay, far more sacred,
calling upon me to do my utmost, as he to the last did his utmost
to live in honour and worthiness. Some of the newspapers carelessly
asserted that he did not wish to survive his ship. This is false. He
was heard by one of the surviving officers giving orders, with all
possible calmness, a very little before the ship went down; and when
he could remain at his post no longer, then, and not till then,
he attempted to save himself. I knew this would be so, but it was
satisfactory for me to have it confirmed by external evidence. Do not
think our grief unreasonable. Of all human beings whom I ever knew, he
was the man of the most rational desires, the most sedate habits, and
the most perfect self-command. He was modest and gentle, and shy even
to disease; but this was wearing off. In everything his judgements
were sound and original; his taste in all the arts, music and poetry
in particular (for these he, of course, had had the best opportunities
of being familiar with), was exquisite; and his eye for the beauties
of nature was as fine and delicate as ever poet or painter was gifted
with, in some discriminations, owing to his education and way of life,
far superior to any person's I ever knew. But, alas! what avails it?
It was the will of God that he should be taken away. . . .
I trust in God that I shall not want fortitude; but my loss is great
and irreparable. . . .
TO WALTER SCOTT
_Dryden_
Patterdale, 7 _Nov_. 1805.
MY DEAR SCOTT,
I was much pleased to hear of your engagement with Dryden: not that he
is, as a poet, any great favourite of mine: I admire his talents and
genius highly, but his is not a poetical genius. The only qualities
I can find in Dryden that are _essentially_ poetical, are a certain
ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear. It may seem
strange that I do not add to this, great command of language: _that_
he certainly has, and of such language too, as it is most desirable
that a poet should possess, or rather that he should not be without.
But it is not language that is, in the highest sense of the word,
poetical, being neither of the imagination nor of the passions; I mean
the amiable, the ennobling, or the intense passions. I do not mean to
say that there is nothing of this in Dryden, but as little, I think,
as is possible, considering how much he has written. You will easily
understand my meaning, when I refer to his versification of _Palamon
and Arcite_, as contrasted with the language of Chaucer. Dryden had
neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of moral dignity. Whenever
his language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly upon unpleasing
subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crimes of classes of men or
of individuals, That his cannot be the language of imagination, must
have necessarily followed from this,--that there is not a single image
from nature in the whole body of his works; and in his translation
from Virgil, wherever Virgil can be fairly said to have had his _eye_
upon his object, Dryden always spoils the passage.
But too much of this; I am glad that you are to be his editor.
His political and satirical pieces may be greatly benefited by
illustration, and even absolutely require it. A correct text is the
first object of an editor, then such notes as explain difficult or
obscure passages; and lastly, which is much less important, notes
pointing out authors to whom the poet has been indebted, not in the
fiddling way of phrase here and phrase there, (which is detestable as
a general practice), but where he has had essential obligations either
as to matter or manner.
If I can be of any use to you, do not fail to apply to me. One thing
I may take the liberty to suggest, which is, when you come to the
fables, might it not be advisable to print the whole of the Tales of
Boccace in a smaller type in the original language? If this should
look too much like swelling a book, I should certainly make such
extracts as would show where Dryden has most strikingly improved upon,
or fallen below, his original. I think his translations from Boccace
are the best, at least the most poetical, of his poems. It is many
years since I saw Boccace, but I remember that Sigismunda is not
married by him to Guiscard (the names are different in Boccace in both
tales, I believe--certainly in Theodore, &c. ). I think Dryden has much
injured the story by the marriage, and degraded Sigismunda's character
by it. He has also, to the best of my remembrance, degraded her still
more, by making her love absolute sensuality and appetite; Dryden had
no other notion of the passion. With all these defects, and they are
very gross ones, it is a noble poem. Guiscard's answer, when first
reproached by Tancred, is noble in Boccace--nothing but this: _Amor
può molto più che ne voi ne io possiamo_. This, Dryden has spoiled. He
says first very well, 'the faults of love by love are justified,' and
then come four lines of miserable rant, quite _à la Maximin_.
TO LADY BEAUMONT
_The destiny of his poems_
Coleorton, 21 _May_, 1807.
MY DEAR LADY BEAUMONT,
Though I am to see you so soon, I cannot but write a word or two, to
thank you for the interest you take in my poems, as evinced by your
solicitude about their immediate reception. I write partly to thank
you for this, and to express the pleasure it has given me, and partly
to remove any uneasiness from your mind which the disappointments you
sometimes meet with, in this labour of love, may occasion. I see that
you have many battles to fight for me--more than, in the ardour and
confidence of your pure and elevated mind, you had ever thought of
being summoned to; but be assured that this opposition is nothing more
than what I distinctly foresaw that you and my other friends would
have to encounter. I say this, not to give myself credit for an eye of
prophecy, but to allay any vexatious thoughts on my account which this
opposition may have produced in you.
It is impossible that any expectations can be lower than mine
concerning the immediate effect of this little work upon what is
called the public. I do not here take into consideration the envy and
malevolence, and all the bad passions which always stand in the way of
a work of any merit from a living poet; but merely think of the pure,
absolute, honest ignorance in which all worldlings of every rank and
situation must be enveloped, with respect to the thoughts, feelings
and images on which the life of my poems depends. The things which I
have taken, whether from within or without, what have they to do with
routs, dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door, from street to
street, on foot or in carriage; with Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, Mr. Paul
or Sir Francis Burdett, the Westminster election or the borough of
Honiton? In a word--for I cannot stop to make my way through the hurry
of images that present themselves to me--what have they to do with the
endless talking about things nobody cares anything for except as far
as their own vanity is concerned, and this with persons they care
nothing for but as their vanity or _selfishness_ is concerned? --what
have they to do (to say all at once) with a life without love? In such
a life there can be no thought; for we have no thought (save thoughts
of pain) but as far as we have love and admiration.
It is an awful truth, that there neither is, nor can be, any genuine
enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons who
live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the world--among
those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, people of
consideration in society. This is a truth, and an awful one, because
to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to
be without love of human nature and reverence for God.
Upon this I shall insist elsewhere; at present let me confine myself
to my object; which is to make you, my dear friend, as easy-hearted
as myself with respect to these poems. Trouble not yourself upon their
present reception; of what moment is that compared with what I trust
is their destiny? --to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to
daylight, by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the
gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore, to
become more actively and securely virtuous; this is their office,
which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is,
all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves. I am well aware
how far it would seem to many I overrate my own exertions, when I
speak in this way, in direct connexion with the volume I have just
made public.
I am not, however, afraid of such censure, insignificant as probably
the majority of those poems would appear to very respectable persons.
I do not mean London wits and witlings, for these have too many foul
passions about them to be respectable, even if they had more intellect
than the benign laws of Providence will allow to such a heartless
existence as theirs is; but grave, kindly-natured, worthy persons,
who would be pleased if they could. I hope that these volumes are
not without some recommendations, even for readers of this class: but
their imagination has slept; and the voice which is the voice of my
poetry, without imagination, cannot be heard. . . .
My letter (as this second sheet, which I am obliged to take,
admonishes me) is growing to an enormous length; and yet, saving that
I have expressed my calm confidence that these poems will live, I have
said nothing which has a particular application to the object of it,
which was to remove all disquiet from your mind on account of the
condemnation they may at present incur from that portion of my
contemporaries who are called the public. I am sure, my dear Lady
Beaumont, if you attach any importance to it, it can only be from an
apprehension that it may affect me, upon which I have already set you
at ease; or from a fear that this present blame is ominous of their
future or final destiny. If this be the case, your tenderness for me
betrays you. Be assured that the decision of these persons has nothing
to do with the question; they are altogether incompetent judges. These
people, in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not _read_
books, they merely snatch a glance at them, that they may talk about
them. And even if this were not so, never forget what, I believe, was
observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in
proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste
by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to
be seen; this, in a certain degree, even to all persons, however wise
and pure may be their lives, and however unvitiated their taste. But
for those who dip into books in order to give an opinion of them, or
talk about them to take up an opinion--for this multitude of unhappy
and misguided, and misguiding beings, an entire regeneration must
be produced; and if this be possible, it must be a work of time. To
conclude, my ears are stone-dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as
insensible as iron to these petty stings; and after what I have said,
I am sure yours will be the same. I doubt not that you will share with
me an invincible confidence that my writings (and among them these
little poems) will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human
nature and society, wherever found; and that they will in their degree
be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier. Farewell.
I will not apologize for this letter, though its length demands an
apology. . . .
TO SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT
_The language of poetry_
[c. 1807. ]
MY DEAR SIR GEORGE,
I am quite delighted to hear of your picture for _Peter Bell_; I was
much pleased with the sketch, and I have no doubt that the picture
will surpass it as far as a picture ought to do. I long much to see
it. I should approve of any engraver approved by you. But remember
that no poem of mine will ever be popular; and I am afraid that the
sale of _Peter_ would not carry the expense of the engraving, and that
the poem, in the estimation of the public, would be a weight upon
the print. I say not this in modest disparagement of the poem, but in
sorrow for the sickly taste of the public in verse. The _people_ would
love the poem of _Peter Bell_, but the _public_ (a very different
being) will never love it. Thanks for dear Lady B. 's transcript from
your friend's letter; it is written with candour, but I must say a
word or two not in praise of it. 'Instances of what I mean,' says your
friend, 'are to be found in a poem on a Daisy' (by the by, it is on
_the_ Daisy, a mighty difference! ) 'and on _Daffodils reflected in the
Water_'. Is this accurately transcribed by Lady Beaumont? If it
be, what shall we think of criticism or judgement founded upon, and
exemplified by, a poem which must have been so inattentively perused?
My language is precise; and, therefore, it would be false modesty to
charge myself with blame.
Beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the _breeze_.
into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days before
this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated
eyes. I see our houses of eternity which can never be separated,
though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of
heaven from each other.
Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and
friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to
entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold.
TO THOMAS BUTTS
_Trouble in the path_
Felpham, 10 _Jan. _ 1802.
Dear Sir,
Your very kind and affectionate letter, and the many kind things you
have said in it, called upon me for an immediate answer. But it found
my wife and myself so ill, and my wife so very ill, that till now I
have not been able to do this duty. The ague and rheumatism have been
almost her constant enemies, which she has combated in vain almost
ever since we have been here, and her sickness is always my sorrow,
of course. But what you tell me about your sight afflicted me not a
little, and that about your health, in another part of your letter,
makes me entreat you to take due care of both. It is a part of our
duty to God and man to take due care of His gifts; and though we ought
not to think _more_ highly of ourselves, yet we ought to think _as_
highly of ourselves as immortals ought to think.
When I came down here, I was more sanguine than I am at present;
but it was because I was ignorant of many things which have since
occurred, and chiefly the unhealthiness of the place. Yet I do not
repent of coming on a thousand accounts; and Mr. Hayley, I doubt not,
will do ultimately all that both he and I wish--that is, to lift me
out of difficulty. But this is no easy matter to a man who, having
spiritual enemies of such formidable magnitude, cannot expect to want
natural hidden ones.
Your approbation of my pictures is a multitude to me, and I doubt not
that all your kind wishes in my behalf shall in due time be fulfilled.
Your kind offer of pecuniary assistance I can only thank you for at
present, because I have enough to serve my present purpose here. Our
expenses are small, and our income, from our incessant labour, fully
adequate to these at present. I am now engaged in engraving six small
plates for a new edition of Mr. Hayley's _Triumphs of Temper_, from
drawings by Maria Flaxman, sister to my friend the sculptor. And it
seems that other things will follow in course, if I do but copy these
well. But patience! If great things do not turn out, it is because
such things depend on the spiritual and not on the natural world; and
if it was fit for me, I doubt not that I should be employed in greater
things; and when it is proper, my talents shall be properly exercised
in public, as I hope they are now in private. For till then I leave no
stone unturned, and no path unexplored that leads to improvement in
my beloved arts. One thing of real consequence I have accomplished by
coming into the country, which is to me consolation enough: namely,
I have re-collected all my scattered thoughts on art, and resumed
my primitive and original ways of execution in both painting and
engraving, which in the confusion of London I had very much lost and
obliterated from my mind. But whatever becomes of my labours, I would
rather that they should be preserved in your greenhouse (not, as you
mistakenly call it, dunghill) than in the cold gallery of fashion. The
sun may yet shine, and then they will be brought into open air.
But you have so generously and openly desired that I will divide my
griefs with you that I cannot hide what it has now become my duty to
explain. My unhappiness has arisen from a source which, if explored
too narrowly, might hurt my pecuniary circumstances; as my dependence
is on engraving at present, and particularly on the engravings I have
in hand for Mr. Hayley, and I find on all hands great objections to
my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business, and intimations
that, if I do not confine myself to this, I shall not live. This has
always pursued me. You will understand by this the source of all my
uneasiness. This from Johnson and Fuseli brought me down here, and
this from Mr. Hayley will bring me back again. For that I cannot live
without doing my duty to lay up treasures in heaven is certain and
determined, and to this I have long made up my mind. And why this
should be made an objection to me, while drunkenness, lewdness,
gluttony, and even idleness itself, does not hurt other men, let Satan
himself explain. The thing I have most at heart--more than life, or
all that seems to make life comfortable without--is the interest of
true religion and science. And whenever anything appears to affect
that interest (especially if I myself omit any duty to my station as
a soldier of Christ), it gives me the greatest of torments. I am not
ashamed, afraid, or averse to tell you what ought to be told--that I
am under the direction of messengers from heaven, daily and nightly.
But the nature of such things is not, as some suppose, without trouble
or care. Temptations are on the right hand and on the left. Behind,
the sea of time and space roars and follows swiftly. He who keeps not
right onwards is lost; and if our footsteps slide in clay, how can we
do otherwise than fear and tremble? But I should not have troubled you
with this account of my spiritual state, unless it had been necessary
in explaining the actual cause of my uneasiness, into which you are so
kind as to inquire: for I never obtrude such things on others unless
questioned, and then I never disguise the truth. But if we fear to do
the dictates of our angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us;
if we refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears or natural
desires; who can describe the dismal torments of such a state! --I
too well remember the threats I heard! --'If you, who are organized
by Divine Providence for spiritual communion, refuse, and bury
your talent in the earth, even though you should want natural
bread,--sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after
death shame and confusion of face to eternity. Every one in eternity
will leave you, aghast at the man who was crowned with glory and
honour by his brethren, and betrayed their cause to their enemies. You
will be called the base Judas who betrayed his friend! '--Such words
would make any stout man tremble, and how then could I be at ease? But
I am now no longer in that state, and now go on again with my task,
fearless though my path is difficult. I have no fear of stumbling
while I keep it.
My wife desires her kindest love to Mrs. Butts, and I have permitted
her to send it to you also. We often wish that we could unite again
in society, and hope that the time is not distant when we shall do so,
being determined not to remain another winter here, but to return to
London.
I hear a Voice you cannot hear, that says
I must not stay,
I see a Hand you cannot see, that beckons
me away.
Naked we came here--naked of natural things--and naked we shall
return: but while clothed with the Divine mercy, we are richly clothed
in spiritual, and suffer all the rest gladly. Pray, give my love to
Mrs. Butts and your family.
PS. Your obliging proposal of exhibiting my two pictures likewise
calls for my thanks; I will finish the others, and then we shall judge
of the matter with certainty.
To THE SAME
_The wonderful poem_
(Felpham), 25 _April_, 1803.
MY DEAR SIR,
I write in haste, having received a pressing letter from my Brother.
I intended to have sent the Picture of the _Riposo_, which is nearly
finished much to my satisfaction, but not quite. You shall have it
soon. I now send the four numbers for Mr. Birch with best respects to
him. The reason the _Ballads_ have been suspended is the pressure of
other business, but they will go on again soon.
Accept of my thanks for your kind and heartening letter. You have
faith in the endeavours of me, your weak brother and fellow-disciple;
how great must be your faith in our Divine Master! You are to me
a lesson of humility, while you exalt me by such distinguishing
commendations. I know that you see certain merits in me, which, by
God's grace, shall be made fully apparent and perfect in Eternity.
In the meantime I must not bury the talents in the earth, but do my
endeavour to live to the glory of our Lord and Saviour; and I am
also grateful to the kind hand that endeavours to lift me out of
despondency, even if it lifts me too high.
And now, my dear Sir, congratulate me on my return to London with the
full approbation of Mr. Hayley and with promise. But alas! now I may
say to you--what perhaps I should not dare to say to anyone else--that
I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoyed, and
that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, see visions, dream
dreams, and prophesy and speak parables, unobserved, and at liberty
from the doubts of other mortals: perhaps doubts proceeding from
kindness; but doubts are always pernicious, especially when we doubt
our friends. Christ is very decided on this point: 'He who is not with
me is against me. ' There is no medium or middle state; and if a man is
the enemy of my spiritual life while he pretends to be the friend of
my corporeal, he is a real enemy; but the man may be the friend of my
spiritual life while he seems the enemy of my corporeal, though not
vice versa.
What is very pleasant, every one who hears of my going to London again
applauds it as the only course for the interest of all concerned in
my works; observing that I ought not to be away from the opportunities
London affords of seeing fine pictures, and the various improvements
in works of art going on in London.
But none can know the spiritual acts of my three years' slumber on the
banks of Ocean, unless he has seen them in the spirit, or unless he
should read my long Poem descriptive of those acts; for I have in
these years composed an immense number of verses on one grand theme,
similar to Homer's _Iliad_ or Milton's _Paradise Lost_; the persons
and machinery entirely new to the inhabitants of earth (some of the
persons excepted). I have written this Poem from immediate dictation,
twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without
premeditation, and even against my will. The time it has taken in
writing was thus rendered nonexistent, and an immense Poem exists
which seems to be the labour of a long life, all produced without
labour or study. I mention this to show you what I think the grand
reason of my being brought down here.
I have a thousand and ten thousand things to say to you. My heart
is full of futurity. I perceive that the sore travail which has been
given me these three years leads to glory and honour. I rejoice and
tremble: 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made. ' I had been reading the
CXXXIX Psalm a little before your letter arrived. I take your advice.
I see the face of my Heavenly Father; He lays His hand upon my head,
and gives a blessing to all my work. Why should I be troubled? Why
should my heart and flesh cry out? I will go on in the strength of the
Lord; through Hell will I sing forth His praises: that the dragons of
the deep may praise Him, and that those who dwell in darkness, and in
the sea coasts may be gathered into His Kingdom. Excuse my perhaps too
great enthusiasm. Please to accept of and give our loves to Mrs. Butts
and your amiable family, and believe me ever yours affectionately.
TO THE SAME
_The poet and William Hayley_
Felpham, 6 _July_, 1803.
. . . We look forward every day with pleasure toward our meeting again
in London with those whom we have learned to value by absence no less
perhaps than we did by presence; for recollection often surpasses
everything. Indeed, the prospect of returning to our friends is
supremely delightful. Then, I am determined that Mrs. Butts shall have
a good likeness of you, if I have hands and eyes left; for I am become
a likeness-taker, and succeed admirably well. But this is not to be
achieved without the original sitting before you for every touch, all
likenesses from memory being necessarily very, very defective; but
Nature and Fancy are two things, and can never be joined, neither
ought any one to attempt it, for it is idolatry, and destroys the
Soul.
I ought to tell you that Mr. H. is quite agreeable to our return,
and that there is all the appearance in the world of our being fully
employed in engraving for his projected works, particularly Cowper's
_Milton_--a work now on foot by subscription, and I understand that
the subscription goes on briskly. This work is to be a very elegant
one, and to consist of all Milton's Poems with Cowper's Notes, and
translations by Cowper from Milton's Latin and Italian poems. These
works will be ornamented with engravings from designs by Romney,
Flaxman, and your humble servant, and to be engraved also by
the last-mentioned. The profits of the work are intended to be
appropriated to erect a monument to the memory of Cowper in St. Paul's
or Westminster Abbey. Such is the project; and Mr. Addington and Mr.
Pitt are both among the subscribers, which are already numerous and of
the first rank. The price of the work is six guineas. Thus I hope that
all our three years' trouble ends in good-luck at last, and shall be
forgot by my affections, and only remembered by my understanding, to
be a memento in time to come, and to speak to future generations by a
sublime allegory, which is now perfectly completed into a grand Poem.
I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the
secretary; the authors are in Eternity. I consider it as the grandest
Poem that this world contains. Allegory addressed to the
intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal
understanding, is my definition of the most sublime Poetry. It is
also somewhat in the same manner defined by Plato. This Poem shall,
by Divine assistance, be progressively printed and ornamented with
prints, and given to the public. But of this work I take care to say
little to Mr. H. , since he is as much averse to my Poetry as he is to
a chapter in the Bible. He knows that I have writ it, for I have shown
it to him, and he has read part by his own desire, and has looked with
sufficient contempt to enhance my opinion of it. But I do not wish to
imitate by seeming too obstinate in poetic pursuits. But if all the
world should set their faces against this, I have orders to set my
face like a flint (Ezek. iii. 8) against their faces, and my forehead
against their foreheads.
As to Mr. H. , I feel myself at liberty to say as follows upon this
ticklish subject. I regard fashion in Poetry as little as I do in
Painting: so, if both Poets and Painters should alternately dislike
(but I know the majority of them will not), I am not to regard it
at all. But Mr. H. approves of my Designs as little as he does of my
Poems, and I have been forced to insist on his leaving me, in both,
to my own self-will; for I am determined to be no longer pestered with
his genteel ignorance and polite disapprobation. I know myself both
Poet and Painter, and it is not his affected contempt that can move to
anything but a more assiduous pursuit of both arts. Indeed, by my late
firmness, I have brought down his affected loftiness, and he begins
to think I have some genius: as if genius and assurance were the same
thing! But his imbecile attempts to depress me only deserve laughter.
I say thus much to you, knowing that you will not make a bad use of
it. But it is a fact too true that, if I had only depended on mortal
things, both myself and my wife must have been lost. I shall leave
every one in this country astonished at my patience and forbearance
of injuries upon injuries; and I do assure you that, if I could have
returned to London a month after my arrival here, I should have done
so. But I was commanded by my spiritual friends to bear all and be
silent, and to go through all without murmuring, and, in fine, to hope
till my three years should be almost accomplished; at which time I was
set at liberty to remonstrate against former conduct, and to demand
justice and truth; which I have done in so effectual a manner that my
antagonist is silenced completely, and I have compelled what should
have been of freedom--my just right as an artist and as a man. And
if any attempt should be made to refuse me this, I am inflexible, and
will relinquish any engagement of designing at all, unless altogether
left to my own judgement, as you, my dear friend, have always left me;
for which I shall never cease to honour and respect you.
When we meet, I will perfectly describe to you my conduct and the
conduct of others towards me, and you will see that I have laboured
hard indeed, and have been borne on angels' wings. Till we meet I beg
of God our Saviour to be with you and me, and yours and mine. Pray
give my and my wife's love to Mrs. Butts and family, and believe me to
remain
Yours in truth and sincerity.
MARY LEADBEATER
1758-1826
TO EDMUND BURKE
_Reply to his last letter_
28 _May_, 1797.
With a heart melted to overflowing, I cannot restrain the attempt to
express my grateful sensations on receiving the greatest, and, alas!
I fear, the last proof of that unvarying friendship with which our
ever-loved, our ever-honoured friend has favoured us! I may transgress
the bounds by intruding at this awful period; but I cannot help it. My
affection and my sorrow will be excused, I believe, for thou hast ever
looked kindly and partially upon me, and so has thy beloved wife, with
whose feelings I sympathize, could that avail. This day's post brought
me thy letter of the 23rd instant, dictated and signed by thee. Such
attention, at such a time, and in such a situation! It was like Edmund
Burke! It was like few others, but it is not bestowed upon hearts who
do not feel it. --I look back on that friendship formed in the precious
days of innocent childhood, between thee and my lamented parent. --I
trace its progress, which is so imprinted on my mind, that I almost
seem to myself to have been a witness to it. --I see it continue
unabated, notwithstanding the different sphere of life in which you
moved, to the period of it;--and may we not hope that there is an
union of souls beyond the grave? The composure and fortitude displayed
in thy letter, is the greatest consolation we could receive with the
tidings it conveyed of thy health. Since thou dost not allow us to
hope for its restoration, we will hope better things than is in the
power of this world to bestow. --My mother appears to decline, and
looks to the end of her race as near. All the other branches of
this family, I believe, are well in health. My brother continues
the school, which, I believe, was never in higher estimation than at
present. My husband regrets very much that he never shared with us
the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with thee. We all unite in
cordial, unaffected love to thee. I thought I would say how we were,
believing thou would be pleased to hear of our welfare, though how
long that may be continued, seems doubtful. --The general fermentation
throughout this nation, forebodes some sudden and dreadful eruption,
and, however obscure or retired our situations may be, there is little
prospect of escaping the calamity. This may cause us to admire, nay,
adore the mercy, as well as wisdom of Him, who gives and takes life,
in removing those so dear to us from the evil to come. My mother
desires thou may accept as much love as she is capable of sending
thee; her heart is full of it towards thee; and she bids me say, she
hopes thou hast lived such a life, that thy end will be crowned with
peace! So be it, with my whole heart! Thy affectionate and obliged
friend.
Our best wishes, and dear love to thy wife.
Abraham Shackleton has the melancholy satisfaction of perusing dear
Edmund Burke's account of his poor state of health. He hopes (trusts)
that a quiet resting place is prepared for him. The memory of E.
Burke's philanthropic virtues will out-live the period when his
shining political talents will cease to act. New fashions of political
sentiment will exist; but philanthropy,--_immortale manet! _
TO GEORGE CRABBE
_She writes to remind him_
Ballitore, 7th of Eleventh-month, 1816.
I believe it will surprise George Crabbe to receive a letter from an
entire stranger, whom most probably he does not remember to have ever
seen or heard of, but who cannot forget having met him at the house of
Edmund Burke, Charles Street, James's Square, in the year 1784. I
was brought thither by my father, Richard Shackleton, the friend
from their childhood of Edmund Burke. My dear father told thee that
Goldsmith's would now be the _deserted village_; perhaps thou dost not
remember this compliment, but I remember the ingenuous modesty which
disclaimed it. He admired '_The Village', 'The Library_,' and '_The
Newspaper_' exceedingly, and the delight with which he read them to
his family could not but be acceptable to the author, had he known
the sound judgement and the exquisite taste which that excellent
man possessed. But he saw no more of the productions of the Muse he
admired; whose originality was not the least charm. He is dead--the
friend whom he loved and honoured, and to whose character thou dost so
much justice in the preface to '_The Parish_ _Register_', is also gone
to the house appointed for all living. A splendid constellation of
poets arose in the literary horizon; I looked around for Crabbe. Why
does not he, who shines as brightly as any of these, add his lustre?
I had not long thought thus when, in an Edinburgh Review, I met
with reflections similar to my own, which introduced '_The Parish
Register_'. Oh, it was like the voice of a long-lost friend, and glad
was I to hear that voice again in '_The Borough_'! --still more in
'_The Tales_,' which appear to me excelling all that preceded them!
Every work is so much in unison with our own feelings, that a wish for
information concerning them and their author is strongly excited.
One of our friends, Dykes Alexander, who was in Ballitore in 1810, I
think, said he was personally acquainted with thee, and spoke highly
of thy character. I regretted I had not an opportunity of conversing
with him on this subject, as perhaps he would have been able to decide
arguments which have arisen; namely, whether we owe to truth or to
fiction that 'ever new delight' which thy poetry affords us. The
characters, however singular some of them may be, are never unnatural,
and thy sentiments so true to domestic and social feelings, as well as
to those of a higher nature, have the convincing power of reality
over the mind, and _I_ maintain that all thy pictures _are drawn from
life_. To inquire whether this be the case is the excuse which I make
to myself for writing this letter. I wish the excuse may be accepted
by thee, for I greatly fear I have taken an unwarrantable liberty in
making the inquiry.
Though advanced in life, yet from an education of
peculiar simplicity, and from never having been long absent from my
retired native village, I am too little acquainted with decorum. If I
have now transgressed the rules it prescribes, I appeal to the candour
and liberality of thy mind to forgive a fault caused by a strong
enthusiasm.
PS. Ballitore is the village in which Edmund Burke was educated by
Abraham Shackleton, whose pupil he became in 1741, and from whose
school he entered the college of Dublin in 1744. The school is still
flourishing.
ROBERT BURNS
1759-1796
TO MISS CHALMERS
_Marriage with Jean_
Ellisland, near Dumfries, 16 _Sept_. 1788.
Where are you? and how are you? and is Lady M'Kenzie recovering her
health? for I have had but one solitary letter from you. I will not
think you have forgot me, Madam; and for my part--
When thee, Jerusalem, I forget,
Skill part from my right hand!
'My heart is not of that rock, nor my soul careless as that sea. ' I
do not make my progress among mankind as a bowl does among its
fellows--rolling through the crowd without bearing away any mark or
impression, except where they hit in hostile collision.
I am here, driven in with my harvest-folks by bad weather; and as you
and your sister once did me the honour of interesting yourselves
much _à l'égard de moi_, I sit down to beg the continuation of your
goodness. --I can truly say that, all the exterior of life apart,
I never saw two, whose esteem flattered the nobler feelings of my
soul--I will not say, more, but so much as Lady M'Kenzie and Miss
Chalmers. When I think of you--hearts the best, minds the noblest, of
human kind--unfortunate, even in the shades of life--when I think I
have met with you, and have lived more of real life with you in
eight days, than I can do with almost any body I meet with in eight
years--when I think on the improbability of meeting you in this world
again--I could sit down and cry like a child! --If ever you honoured me
with a place in your esteem, I trust I can now plead more desert. --I
am secure against that crushing grip of iron poverty, which, alas!
is less or more fatal to the native worth and purity of, I fear, the
noblest souls; and a late, important step in my life has kindly taken
me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities, which, however
overlooked in fashionable license, or varnished in fashionable phrase,
are indeed but lighter and deeper shades of VILLAINY.
Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire, I married 'my Jean'. This
was not in consequence of the attachment of romance perhaps; but I
had a long and much-loved fellow creature's happiness or misery in my
determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor
have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish
manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with
the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the
handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and
the kindest heart in the county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her
creed, that I am _le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnête homme_ in
the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in
metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse.
I must except also from this last, a certain late publication of Scots
poems, which she has perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in
the country, as she has (O the partial lover! you will cry) the finest
'wood-note wild' I ever heard. --I am the more particular in this
lady's character, as I know she will henceforth have the honour of a
share in your best wishes. She is still at Mauchline, as I am building
my house; for this hovel that I shelter in, while occasionally here,
is pervious to every blast that blows, and every shower that falls;
and I am only preserved from being chilled to death, by being
suffocated with smoke. I do not find my farm that pennyworth I was
taught to expect, but I believe, in time, it may be a saving bargain.
You will be pleased to hear that I have laid aside idle _éclat_, and
bind every day after my reapers.
To save me from that horrid situation of at any time going down, in
a losing bargain of a farm, to misery, I have taken my excise
instructions, and have my commission in my pocket for any emergency
of fortune. If I could set _all_ before your view, whatever disrespect
you in common with the world, have for this business, I know you would
approve of my idea.
I will make no apology, dear Madam, for this egotistic detail: I know
you and your sister will be interested in every circumstance of it.
What signify the silly, idle gewgaws of wealth, or the ideal trumpery
of greatness! When fellow partakers of the same nature fear the same
God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul,
the same detestation at every thing dishonest, and the same scorn at
every thing unworthy--if they are not in the dependance of absolute
beggary, in the name of common sense are they not EQUALS? And if the
bias, the instinctive bias of their souls run the same way, why may
they not be FRIENDS? . . .
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE
_A gauger_
Ellisland, 1 _Nov_. 1789.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I had written you long ere now, could I have guessed where to find
you, for I am sure you have more good sense than to waste the precious
days of vacation time in the dirt of business and Edinburgh. Wherever
you are, God bless you, and lead you not into temptation, but deliver
you from evil!
I do not know if I have informed you that I am now appointed to an
excise division, in the middle of which my house and farm lie. In this
I was extremely lucky. Without ever having been an expectant, as they
call their journeymen excisemen, I was directly planted down to all
intents and purposes an officer of excise; there to flourish and bring
forth fruits--worthy of repentance.
I know not how the word exciseman, or still more opprobrious, gauger,
will sound in your ears. I too have seen the day when my auditory
nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife
and children are things which have a wonderful power in blunting these
kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life, and a provision for
widows and orphans, you will allow is no bad settlement for a _poet_.
For the ignominy of the profession, I have the encouragement which
I once heard a recruiting sergeant give to a numerous, if not a
respectable audience, in the streets of Kilmarnock. --'Gentlemen,
for your further and better encouragement, I can assure you that
our regiment is the most blackguard corps under the crown, and
consequently with us an honest fellow has the surest chance for
preferment. '
You need not doubt that I find several very unpleasant and
disagreeable circumstances in my business; but I am tired with and
disgusted at the language of complaint against the evils of life.
Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with
pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious foolish man
mistakes these inconveniences and ills as if they were the peculiar
property of his particular situation; and hence that eternal
fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does
ruin many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead; and is, almost
without exception, a constant source of disappointment and misery. . . .
TO FRANCIS GROSE
_Witch tales_
Dumfries, 1792.
Among the many witch stories I have heard relating to Alloway Kirk, I
distinctly remember only two or three.
Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind and bitter blasts
of hail--in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take
the air in--a farmer, or farmer's servant, was plodding and plashing
homeward, with his plough irons on his shoulder, having been getting
some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the Kirk
of Alloway, and being rather on the anxious look-out in approaching
a place so well known to be a favourite haunt of the devil and the
devil's friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering
through the horrors of the storm and stormy night a light, which, on
his nearer approach, plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted
edifice. Whether he had been fortified from above, on his devout
supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the
immediate presence of Satan; or whether, according to another custom,
he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to
determine; but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay, into, the
very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished.
The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight
business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or
cauldron, depending from the roof over the fire, simmering some heads
of unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, &c. , for the
business of the night. It was in for a penny, in for a pound, with the
honest ploughman; so, without ceremony, he unhooked the cauldron from
off the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it
on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the
family, a living evidence of the truth of the story.
Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as
follows: On a market day, in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick,
and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway Kirkyard,
in order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about
two or three hundred yards further on than the said gate, had been
detained by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was
the wizard hour between night and morning.
Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet
as it is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is
running by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced
on his road. When he had reached the gate of the kirkyard he was
surprised and entertained through the ribs and arches of an old Gothic
window which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches,
merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was
keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer,
stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the
faces of many old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the
gentleman was dressed tradition does not say, but that the ladies were
all in their smocks; and one of them, happening unluckily to have a
smock which was considerably too short to answer all the purposes of
that piece of dress, our farmer was so tickled that he involuntarily
burst out with a loud laugh: 'Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark! '
and recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of
his speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no
diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream.
Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for,
notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against
he reached the middle of the arch of the bridge, and consequently the
middle of the stream, the pursuing vengeful hags were so close at his
heels, that one of them actually sprang to seize him; but it was too
late, nothing was on her side of the stream but the horse's tail,
which immediately gave way at her infernal grip, as if blasted by a
stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond her reach. However, the
unsightly tailless condition of the vigorous steed was, to the last
hour of the noble creature's life, an awful warning to the Carrick
farmer not to stay too late in Ayr markets.
The last relation I shall give you, though equally true, is not so
well identified as the two former, with regard to the scene; but as
the best authorities give it for Alloway, I shall relate it.
On a summer's evening, about the time that nature puts on her sables
to mourn the expiry of the cheerful day, a shepherd boy, belonging
to a farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of Alloway Kirk, had just
folded his charge and was returning home. As he passed the kirk, in
the adjoining field, he fell in with a crew of men and women, who
were busy pulling stems of the plant ragwort. He observed that as each
person pulled a ragwort, he or she got astride of it, and called out,
'Up, horsie', on which the ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the
air, with its rider. The foolish boy likewise pulled his ragwort and
cried with the rest, 'Up, horsie', and, strange to tell, away he flew
with the company. The first stage at which the cavalcade stopped was
a merchant's wine-cellar in Bordeaux, where, without saying by your
leave, they quaffed away at the best the cellar could afford, until
the morning, foe to the imps and works of darkness, threatened to
throw light on the matter, and frightened them from their carousals.
The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the
liquor, heedlessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse he
fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging
to the merchant. Somebody that understood Scotch, asking him what he
was, he said he was such-a-one's herd in Alloway, and by some means or
other getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous
tale.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
1770-1850
TO SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT
_A brother's character_
Grasmere, 20 _Feb_. 1805.
Having spoken of worldly affairs, let me again mention my beloved
brother. It is now just five years since, after a separation of
fourteen years (I may call it a separation, for we only saw him four
or five times, and by glimpses), he came to visit his sister and me
in this cottage, and passed eight blessed months with us. He was then
waiting for the command of the ship to which he was appointed when he
quitted us. As you will have seen, we had little to live upon, and he
as little (Lord Lonsdale being then alive). But he encouraged me to
persist, and to keep my eye steady on its object. He would work for me
(that was his language), for me and his sister; and I was to endeavour
to do something for the world. He went to sea, as commander, with
this hope; his voyage was very unsuccessful, he having lost by it
considerably. When he came home, we chanced to be in London, and saw
him. 'Oh! ' said he, 'I have thought of you, and nothing but you; if
ever of myself, and my bad success, it was only on your account. ' He
went again to sea a second time, and also was unsuccessful; still
with the same hopes on our account, though then not so necessary,
Lord Lowther having paid the money. Lastly came the lamentable voyage,
which he entered upon, full of expectation, and love to his sister
and myself, and my wife, whom, indeed, he loved with all a brother's
tenderness. This is the end of his part of the agreement--of his
efforts for my welfare! God grant me life and strength to fulfil mine!
I shall never forget him--never lose sight of him: there is a bond
between us yet, the same as if he were living, nay, far more sacred,
calling upon me to do my utmost, as he to the last did his utmost
to live in honour and worthiness. Some of the newspapers carelessly
asserted that he did not wish to survive his ship. This is false. He
was heard by one of the surviving officers giving orders, with all
possible calmness, a very little before the ship went down; and when
he could remain at his post no longer, then, and not till then,
he attempted to save himself. I knew this would be so, but it was
satisfactory for me to have it confirmed by external evidence. Do not
think our grief unreasonable. Of all human beings whom I ever knew, he
was the man of the most rational desires, the most sedate habits, and
the most perfect self-command. He was modest and gentle, and shy even
to disease; but this was wearing off. In everything his judgements
were sound and original; his taste in all the arts, music and poetry
in particular (for these he, of course, had had the best opportunities
of being familiar with), was exquisite; and his eye for the beauties
of nature was as fine and delicate as ever poet or painter was gifted
with, in some discriminations, owing to his education and way of life,
far superior to any person's I ever knew. But, alas! what avails it?
It was the will of God that he should be taken away. . . .
I trust in God that I shall not want fortitude; but my loss is great
and irreparable. . . .
TO WALTER SCOTT
_Dryden_
Patterdale, 7 _Nov_. 1805.
MY DEAR SCOTT,
I was much pleased to hear of your engagement with Dryden: not that he
is, as a poet, any great favourite of mine: I admire his talents and
genius highly, but his is not a poetical genius. The only qualities
I can find in Dryden that are _essentially_ poetical, are a certain
ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear. It may seem
strange that I do not add to this, great command of language: _that_
he certainly has, and of such language too, as it is most desirable
that a poet should possess, or rather that he should not be without.
But it is not language that is, in the highest sense of the word,
poetical, being neither of the imagination nor of the passions; I mean
the amiable, the ennobling, or the intense passions. I do not mean to
say that there is nothing of this in Dryden, but as little, I think,
as is possible, considering how much he has written. You will easily
understand my meaning, when I refer to his versification of _Palamon
and Arcite_, as contrasted with the language of Chaucer. Dryden had
neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of moral dignity. Whenever
his language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly upon unpleasing
subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crimes of classes of men or
of individuals, That his cannot be the language of imagination, must
have necessarily followed from this,--that there is not a single image
from nature in the whole body of his works; and in his translation
from Virgil, wherever Virgil can be fairly said to have had his _eye_
upon his object, Dryden always spoils the passage.
But too much of this; I am glad that you are to be his editor.
His political and satirical pieces may be greatly benefited by
illustration, and even absolutely require it. A correct text is the
first object of an editor, then such notes as explain difficult or
obscure passages; and lastly, which is much less important, notes
pointing out authors to whom the poet has been indebted, not in the
fiddling way of phrase here and phrase there, (which is detestable as
a general practice), but where he has had essential obligations either
as to matter or manner.
If I can be of any use to you, do not fail to apply to me. One thing
I may take the liberty to suggest, which is, when you come to the
fables, might it not be advisable to print the whole of the Tales of
Boccace in a smaller type in the original language? If this should
look too much like swelling a book, I should certainly make such
extracts as would show where Dryden has most strikingly improved upon,
or fallen below, his original. I think his translations from Boccace
are the best, at least the most poetical, of his poems. It is many
years since I saw Boccace, but I remember that Sigismunda is not
married by him to Guiscard (the names are different in Boccace in both
tales, I believe--certainly in Theodore, &c. ). I think Dryden has much
injured the story by the marriage, and degraded Sigismunda's character
by it. He has also, to the best of my remembrance, degraded her still
more, by making her love absolute sensuality and appetite; Dryden had
no other notion of the passion. With all these defects, and they are
very gross ones, it is a noble poem. Guiscard's answer, when first
reproached by Tancred, is noble in Boccace--nothing but this: _Amor
può molto più che ne voi ne io possiamo_. This, Dryden has spoiled. He
says first very well, 'the faults of love by love are justified,' and
then come four lines of miserable rant, quite _à la Maximin_.
TO LADY BEAUMONT
_The destiny of his poems_
Coleorton, 21 _May_, 1807.
MY DEAR LADY BEAUMONT,
Though I am to see you so soon, I cannot but write a word or two, to
thank you for the interest you take in my poems, as evinced by your
solicitude about their immediate reception. I write partly to thank
you for this, and to express the pleasure it has given me, and partly
to remove any uneasiness from your mind which the disappointments you
sometimes meet with, in this labour of love, may occasion. I see that
you have many battles to fight for me--more than, in the ardour and
confidence of your pure and elevated mind, you had ever thought of
being summoned to; but be assured that this opposition is nothing more
than what I distinctly foresaw that you and my other friends would
have to encounter. I say this, not to give myself credit for an eye of
prophecy, but to allay any vexatious thoughts on my account which this
opposition may have produced in you.
It is impossible that any expectations can be lower than mine
concerning the immediate effect of this little work upon what is
called the public. I do not here take into consideration the envy and
malevolence, and all the bad passions which always stand in the way of
a work of any merit from a living poet; but merely think of the pure,
absolute, honest ignorance in which all worldlings of every rank and
situation must be enveloped, with respect to the thoughts, feelings
and images on which the life of my poems depends. The things which I
have taken, whether from within or without, what have they to do with
routs, dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door, from street to
street, on foot or in carriage; with Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, Mr. Paul
or Sir Francis Burdett, the Westminster election or the borough of
Honiton? In a word--for I cannot stop to make my way through the hurry
of images that present themselves to me--what have they to do with the
endless talking about things nobody cares anything for except as far
as their own vanity is concerned, and this with persons they care
nothing for but as their vanity or _selfishness_ is concerned? --what
have they to do (to say all at once) with a life without love? In such
a life there can be no thought; for we have no thought (save thoughts
of pain) but as far as we have love and admiration.
It is an awful truth, that there neither is, nor can be, any genuine
enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons who
live, or wish to live, in the broad light of the world--among
those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, people of
consideration in society. This is a truth, and an awful one, because
to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to
be without love of human nature and reverence for God.
Upon this I shall insist elsewhere; at present let me confine myself
to my object; which is to make you, my dear friend, as easy-hearted
as myself with respect to these poems. Trouble not yourself upon their
present reception; of what moment is that compared with what I trust
is their destiny? --to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to
daylight, by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the
gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore, to
become more actively and securely virtuous; this is their office,
which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is,
all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves. I am well aware
how far it would seem to many I overrate my own exertions, when I
speak in this way, in direct connexion with the volume I have just
made public.
I am not, however, afraid of such censure, insignificant as probably
the majority of those poems would appear to very respectable persons.
I do not mean London wits and witlings, for these have too many foul
passions about them to be respectable, even if they had more intellect
than the benign laws of Providence will allow to such a heartless
existence as theirs is; but grave, kindly-natured, worthy persons,
who would be pleased if they could. I hope that these volumes are
not without some recommendations, even for readers of this class: but
their imagination has slept; and the voice which is the voice of my
poetry, without imagination, cannot be heard. . . .
My letter (as this second sheet, which I am obliged to take,
admonishes me) is growing to an enormous length; and yet, saving that
I have expressed my calm confidence that these poems will live, I have
said nothing which has a particular application to the object of it,
which was to remove all disquiet from your mind on account of the
condemnation they may at present incur from that portion of my
contemporaries who are called the public. I am sure, my dear Lady
Beaumont, if you attach any importance to it, it can only be from an
apprehension that it may affect me, upon which I have already set you
at ease; or from a fear that this present blame is ominous of their
future or final destiny. If this be the case, your tenderness for me
betrays you. Be assured that the decision of these persons has nothing
to do with the question; they are altogether incompetent judges. These
people, in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not _read_
books, they merely snatch a glance at them, that they may talk about
them. And even if this were not so, never forget what, I believe, was
observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in
proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste
by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to
be seen; this, in a certain degree, even to all persons, however wise
and pure may be their lives, and however unvitiated their taste. But
for those who dip into books in order to give an opinion of them, or
talk about them to take up an opinion--for this multitude of unhappy
and misguided, and misguiding beings, an entire regeneration must
be produced; and if this be possible, it must be a work of time. To
conclude, my ears are stone-dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as
insensible as iron to these petty stings; and after what I have said,
I am sure yours will be the same. I doubt not that you will share with
me an invincible confidence that my writings (and among them these
little poems) will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human
nature and society, wherever found; and that they will in their degree
be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier. Farewell.
I will not apologize for this letter, though its length demands an
apology. . . .
TO SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT
_The language of poetry_
[c. 1807. ]
MY DEAR SIR GEORGE,
I am quite delighted to hear of your picture for _Peter Bell_; I was
much pleased with the sketch, and I have no doubt that the picture
will surpass it as far as a picture ought to do. I long much to see
it. I should approve of any engraver approved by you. But remember
that no poem of mine will ever be popular; and I am afraid that the
sale of _Peter_ would not carry the expense of the engraving, and that
the poem, in the estimation of the public, would be a weight upon
the print. I say not this in modest disparagement of the poem, but in
sorrow for the sickly taste of the public in verse. The _people_ would
love the poem of _Peter Bell_, but the _public_ (a very different
being) will never love it. Thanks for dear Lady B. 's transcript from
your friend's letter; it is written with candour, but I must say a
word or two not in praise of it. 'Instances of what I mean,' says your
friend, 'are to be found in a poem on a Daisy' (by the by, it is on
_the_ Daisy, a mighty difference! ) 'and on _Daffodils reflected in the
Water_'. Is this accurately transcribed by Lady Beaumont? If it
be, what shall we think of criticism or judgement founded upon, and
exemplified by, a poem which must have been so inattentively perused?
My language is precise; and, therefore, it would be false modesty to
charge myself with blame.
Beneath the trees,
Ten thousand dancing in the _breeze_.
