Chapter XII: Letter I: allude. You say, "I fear there is little chance of anything else (6)

[In looking over some of my papers I found the above specimen of my carelessness. It is a sheet you ought to have had long ago--my letter must have appeared very unconnected, but as I number the sheets you must have discovered how the mistake happened. How many things have happened since I wrote it--How have I acted contrary to my resolves. The interval between writing this sheet and the day I put this supplement to it, has been completely filled with generous and most friendly actions of Brown towards me. How frequently I forget to speak of things which I think of and feel most. 'Tis very singular, the idea about Buffon above has been taken up by Hunt in the Examiner, in some papers which he calls "A Preter-natural History."][90]

Friday 19th March.

This morning I have been reading "the False One." Shameful to say, I was in bed at ten--I mean this morning. The Blackwood Reviewers have committed themselves in a scandalous heresy--they have been putting up Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, against Burns: the senseless villains! The Scotch cannot manage themselves at all, they want imagination, and that is why they are so fond of Hogg, who has a little of it. This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless--I long after a Stanza or two of Thomson's Castle of Indolence--my passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me, to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness. If I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor, but as I am[B] I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable power. Neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor Love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me; they seem rather like figures on a Greek vase--a Man and two women whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguisement.[91] This is the only happiness, and is a rare instance of the advantage of the body overpowering the Mind. I have this moment received a note from Haslam, in which he expects the death of his Father, who has been for some time in a state of insensibility; his mother bears up he says very well--I shall go to town to-morrow to see him. This is the world--thus we cannot expect to give way many hours to pleasure. Circumstances are like Clouds continually gathering and bursting--While we are laughing, the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events--while we are laughing it sprouts it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck. Even so we have leisure to reason on the misfortunes of our friends; our own touch us too nearly for words. Very few men have ever arrived at a complete disinterestedness of Mind: very few have been influenced by a pure desire of the benefit of others,--in the greater part of the Benefactors to Humanity some meretricious motive has sullied their greatness--some melodramatic scenery has fascinated them. From the manner in which I feel Haslam's misfortune I perceive how far I am from any humble standard of disinterestedness. Yet this feeling ought to be carried to its highest pitch, as there is no fear of its ever injuring society--which it would do, I fear, pushed to an extremity. For in wild nature the Hawk would lose his Breakfast of Robins and the Robin his of Worms--The Lion must starve as well as the swallow. The greater part of Men make their way with the same instinctiveness, the same unwandering eye from their purposes, the same animal eagerness as the Hawk. The Hawk wants a Mate, so does the Man--look at them both, they set about it and procure one in the same manner. They want both a nest and they both set about one in the same manner--they get their food in the same manner. The noble animal Man for his amusement smokes his pipe--the Hawk balances about the Clouds--that is the only difference of their leisures. This it is that makes the Amusement of Life--to a speculative Mind--I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse of a Stoat or a fieldmouse peeping out of the withered grass--the creature hath a purpose, and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along--to what? the Creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it. But then, as Wordsworth says, "we have all one human heart----" There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify--so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. I have no doubt that thousands of people never heard of have had hearts completely disinterested: I can remember but two--Socrates and Jesus--Their histories evince it. What I heard a little time ago, Taylor observe with respect to Socrates, may be said of Jesus--That he was so great a man that though he transmitted no writing of his own to posterity, we have his Mind and his sayings and his greatness handed to us by others. It is to be lamented that the history of the latter was written and revised by Men interested in the pious frauds of Religion. Yet through all this I see his splendour. Even here, though I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of, I am, however young, writing at random, straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness, without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin? May there not be superior beings amused with any graceful, though instinctive, attitude my mind may fall into as I am entertained with the alertness of a Stoat or the anxiety of a Deer? Though a quarrel in the Streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest Man shows a grace in his quarrel. By a superior Being our reasonings may take the same tone--though erroneous they may be fine. This is the very thing in which consists Poetry, and if so it is not so fine a thing as philosophy--For the same reason that an eagle is not so fine a thing as a truth. Give me this credit--Do you not think I strive--to know myself? Give me this credit, and you will not think that on my own account I repeat Milton's lines--

"How charming is divine Philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute."

No--not for myself--feeling grateful as I do to have got into a state of mind to relish them properly. Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced--Even a Proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it. I am ever afraid that your anxiety for me will lead you to fear for the violence of my temperament continually smothered down: for that reason I did not intend to have sent you the following sonnet--but look over the two last pages and ask yourselves whether I have not that in me which will bear the buffets of the world. It will be the best comment on my sonnet; it will show you that it was written with no Agony but that of ignorance; with no thirst of anything but Knowledge when pushed to the point though the first steps to it were through my human passions--they went away and I wrote with my Mind--and perhaps I must confess a little bit of my heart--

Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell:
No God, no Deamon of severe response
Deigns to reply from heaven or from Hell.--
Then to my human heart I turn at once--
Heart! thou and I are here sad and alone;
Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,
To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain!
Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease,
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads:
Yet could I on this very midnight cease,[92]
And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, fame and Beauty are intense indeed
But Death intenser--Death is Life's high meed.

I went to bed and enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep. Sane I went to bed and sane I arose.

[April 15.]

This is the 15th of April--you see what a time it is since I wrote; all that time I have been day by day expecting Letters from you. I write quite in the dark. In the hopes of a Letter daily I have deferred that I might write in the light. I was in town yesterday, and at Taylor's heard that young Birkbeck had been in Town and was to set forward in six or seven days--so I shall dedicate that time to making up this parcel ready for him. I wish I could hear from you to make me "whole and general as the casing air."[93] A few days after the 19th of April[94] I received a note from Haslam containing the news of his father's death. The Family has all been well. Haslam has his father's situation. The Framptons have behaved well to him. The day before yesterday I went to a rout at Sawrey's--it was made pleasant by Reynolds being there and our getting into conversation with one of the most beautiful Girls I ever saw--She gave a remarkable prettiness to all those commonplaces which most women who talk must utter--I liked Mrs. Sawrey very well. The Sunday before last your Brothers were to come by a long invitation--so long that for the time I forgot it when I promised Mrs. Brawne to dine with her on the same day. On recollecting my engagement with your Brothers I immediately excused myself with Mrs. Brawne, but she would not hear of it, and insisted on my bringing my friends with me. So we all dined at Mrs. Brawne's. I have been to Mrs. Bentley's this morning, and put all the letters to and from you and poor Tom and me.[95] I found some of the correspondence between him and that degraded Wells and Amena. It is a wretched business; I do not know the rights of it, but what I do know would, I am sure, affect you so much that I am in two minds whether I will tell you anything about it. And yet I do not see why--for anything, though it be unpleasant, that calls to mind those we still love has a compensation in itself for the pain it occasions--so very likely to-morrow I may set about copying the whole of what I have about it: with no sort of a Richardson self-satisfaction--I hate it to a sickness--and I am afraid more from indolence of mind than anything else. I wonder how people exist with all their worries. I have not been to Westminster but once lately, and that was to see Dilke in his new Lodgings--I think of living somewhere in the neighbourhood myself. Your mother was well by your Brothers' account. I shall see her perhaps to-morrow--yes I shall. We have had the Boys[96] here lately--they make a bit of a racket--I shall not be sorry when they go. I found also this morning, in a note from George to you and my dear sister a lock of your hair which I shall this moment put in the miniature case. A few days ago Hunt dined here and Brown invited Davenport to meet him, Davenport from a sense of weakness thought it incumbent on him to show off--and pursuant to that never ceased talking and boring all day till I was completely fagged out. Brown grew melancholy--but Hunt perceiving what a complimentary tendency all this had bore it remarkably well--Brown grumbled about it for two or three days. I went with Hunt to Sir John Leicester's gallery; there I saw Northcote--Hilton--Bewick, and many more of great and Little note. Haydon's picture is of very little progress this year--He talks about finishing it next year. Wordsworth is going to publish a Poem called Peter Bell--what a perverse fellow it is! Why will he talk about Peter Bells--I was told not to tell--but to you it will not be telling--Reynolds hearing that said Peter Bell was coming out, took it into his head to write a skit upon it called Peter Bell. He did it as soon as thought on, it is to be published this morning, and comes out before the real Peter Bell, with this admirable motto from the "Bold Stroke for a Wife" "I am the real Simon Pure." It would be just as well to trounce Lord Byron in the same manner. I am still at a stand in versifying--I cannot do it yet with any pleasure--I mean, however, to look round on my resources and means, and see what I can do without poetry--To that end I shall live in Westminster--I have no doubt of making by some means a little to help on, or I shall be left in the Lurch--with the burden of a little Pride--However I look in time. The Dilkes like their Lodgings at Westminster tolerably well. I cannot help thinking what a shame it is that poor Dilke should give up his comfortable house and garden for his Son, whom he will certainly ruin with too much care. The boy has nothing in his ears all day but himself and the importance of his education. Dilke has continually in his mouth "My Boy." This is what spoils princes: it may have the same effect with Commoners. Mrs. Dilke has been very well lately--But what a shameful thing it is that for that obstinate Boy Dilke should stifle himself in Town Lodgings and wear out his Life by his continual apprehension of his Boy's fate in Westminster school, with the rest of the Boys and the Masters. Every one has some wear and tear. One would think Dilke ought to be quiet and happy--but no--this one Boy makes his face pale, his society silent and his vigilance jealous--He would I have no doubt quarrel with any one who snubb'd his Boy--With all this he has no notion how to manage him. O what a farce is our greatest cares! Yet one must be in the pother for the sake of Clothes food and Lodging. There has been a squabble between Kean and Mr. Bucke--There are faults on both sides--on Bucke's the faults are positive to the Question: Kean's fault is a want of genteel knowledge and high Policy. The former writes knavishly foolish, and the other silly bombast. It was about a Tragedy written by said Mr. Bucke which, it appears, Mr. Kean kick'd at--it was so bad--After a little struggle of Mr. Bucke's against Kean, Drury Lane had the Policy to bring it out and Kean the impolicy not to appear in it. It was damn'd. The people in the Pit had a favourite call on the night of "Buck, Buck, rise up" and "Buck, Buck, how many horns do I hold up." Kotzebue the German Dramatist and traitor to his country was murdered lately by a young student whose name I forget--he stabbed himself immediately after crying out Germany! Germany! I was unfortunate to miss Richards the only time I have been for many months to see him.

Shall I treat you with a little extempore?--

When they were come into the Faery's Court
They rang--no one at home--all gone to sport
And dance and kiss and love as faerys do
For Faries be as humans lovers true.
Amid the woods they were so lone and wild,
Where even the Robin feels himself exil'd,
And where the very brooks, as if afraid,
Hurry along to some less magic shade.
'No one at home!' the fretful princess cry'd;
'And all for nothing such a dreary ride,
And all for nothing my new diamond cross;
No one to see my Persian feathers toss,
No one to see my Ape, my Dwarf, my Fool,
Or how I pace my Otaheitan mule.
Ape, Dwarf, and Fool, why stand you gaping there,
Burst the door open, quick--or I declare
I'll switch you soundly and in pieces tear.'
The Dwarf began to tremble, and the Ape
Star'd at the Fool, the Fool was all agape,
The Princess grasp'd her switch, but just in time
The dwarf with piteous face began to rhyme.
'O mighty Princess, did you ne'er hear tell
What your poor servants know but too too well?
Know you the three great crimes in faery land?
The first, alas! poor Dwarf, I understand,
I made a whipstock of a faery's wand;
The next is snoring in their company;
The next, the last, the direst of the three,
Is making free when they are not at home.
I was a Prince--a baby prince--my doom,
You see, I made a whipstock of a wand,
My top has henceforth slept in faery land.
He was a Prince, the Fool, a grown-up Prince,
But he has never been a King's son since
He fell a snoring at a faery Ball.
Your poor Ape was a Prince, and he poor thing
Picklock'd a faery's boudoir--now no king
But ape--so pray your highness stay awhile,
'Tis sooth indeed, we know it to our sorrow--
Persist and _you_ may be an ape to-morrow.'
While the Dwarf spake the Princess, all for spite,
Peel'd the brown hazel twig to lilly white,
Clench'd her small teeth, and held her lips apart,
Try'd to look unconcern'd with beating heart.
They saw her highness had made up her mind,
A-quavering like the reeds before the wind--
And they had had it, but O happy chance
The Ape for very fear began to dance
And grinn'd as all his ugliness did ache--
She staid her vixen fingers for his sake,
He was so very ugly: then she took
Her pocket-mirror and began to look
First at herself and then at him, and then
She smil'd at her own beauteous face again.
Yet for all this--for all her pretty face--
She took it in her head to see the place.
Women gain little from experience
Either in Lovers, husbands, or expense.
The more their beauty the more fortune too--
Beauty before the wide world never knew--
So each fair reasons--tho' it oft miscarries.
She thought _her_ pretty face would please the fairies.
'My darling Ape I won't whip you to-day,
Give me the Picklock sirrah and go play.'
They all three wept but counsel was as vain
As crying cup biddy to drops of rain.
Yet lingering by did the sad Ape forth draw
The Picklock from the Pocket in his Jaw.
The Princess took it, and dismounting straight
Tripp'd in blue silver'd slippers to the gate
And touch'd the wards, the Door full courteously
Opened--she enter'd with her servants three.
Again it clos'd and there was nothing seen
But the Mule grazing on the herbage green.

End of Canto XII.

Canto the XIII.

The Mule no sooner saw himself alone
Than he prick'd up his Ears--and said 'well done;
At least unhappy Prince I may be free--
No more a Princess shall side-saddle me.
O King of Otaheite--tho' a Mule,
Aye, every inch a King'--tho' 'Fortune's fool,'
Well done--for by what Mr. Dwarfy said
I would not give a sixpence for her head.'
Even as he spake he trotted in high glee
To the knotty side of an old Pollard tree,
And rubb'd his sides against the mossed bark
Till his Girths burst and left him naked stark
Except his Bridle--how get rid of that
Buckled and tied with many a twist and plait.
At last it struck him to pretend to sleep,
And then the thievish Monkies down would creep
And filch the unpleasant trammels quite away.
No sooner thought of than adown he lay,
Shamm'd a good snore--the Monkey-men descended,
And whom they thought to injure they befriended.
They hung his Bridle on a topmost bough
And off he went run, trot, or anyhow--

Brown is gone to bed--and I am tired of rhyming--there is a north wind blowing playing young gooseberry with the trees--I don't care so it helps even with a side wind a Letter to me--for I cannot put faith in any reports I hear of the Settlement; some are good and some bad. Last Sunday I took a Walk towards Highgate and in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfield's park I met Mr. Green our Demonstrator at Guy's in conversation with Coleridge--I joined them, after enquiring by a look whether it would be agreeable--I walked with him at his alderman-after-dinner pace for near two miles I suppose. In those two Miles he broached a thousand things--let me see if I can give you a list--Nightingales--Poetry--on Poetical Sensation--Metaphysics--Different genera and species of Dreams--Nightmare--a dream accompanied by a sense of touch--single and double touch--a dream related--First and second consciousness--the difference explained between will and Volition--so say metaphysicians from a want of smoking the second consciousness--Monsters-- the Kraken--Mermaids--Southey believes in them--Southey's belief too much diluted--a Ghost story--Good morning--I heard his voice as he came towards me--I heard it as he moved away--I had heard it all the interval--if it may be called so. He was civil enough to ask me to call on him at Highgate. Good-night!

[Later, April 16 or 17.]

It looks so much like rain I shall not go to town to-day: but put it off till to-morrow. Brown this morning is writing some Spenserian stanzas against Mrs., Miss Brawne and me; so I shall amuse myself with him a little: in the manner of Spenser--

He is to weet a melancholy Carle
Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair
As hath the seeded thistle when in parle
It holds the Zephyr, ere it sendeth fair
Its light balloons into the summer air
Thereto his beard had not begun to bloom
No brush had touch'd his chin or razor sheer
No care had touch'd his cheek with mortal doom,
But new he was and bright as scarf from Persian loom.

Ne cared he for wine, or half-and-half
Ne cared he for fish or flesh or fowl,
And sauces held he worthless as the chaff
He 'sdeign'd the swineherd at the wassail bowl
Ne with lewd ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl
Ne with sly Lemans in the scorner's chair
But after water-brooks this Pilgrim's soul
Panted, and all his food was woodland air
Though he would ofttimes feast on gilliflowers rare--

The slang of cities in no wise he knew
_Tipping the wink_ to him was heathen Greek;
He sipp'd no olden Tom or ruin blue
Or nantz or cherry brandy drunk full meek
By many a Damsel hoarse and rouge of cheek
Nor did he know each aged Watchman's beat--
Nor in obscured purlieus would he seek
For curled Jewesses, with ankles neat
Who as they walk abroad make tinkling with their feet.

This character would ensure him a situation in the establishment of patient Griselda. The servant has come for the little Browns this morning--they have been a toothache to me which I shall enjoy the riddance of--Their little voices are like wasps' stings--Sometimes am I all wound with Browns.[97] We had a claret feast some little while ago. There were Dilke, Reynolds, Skinner, Mancur, John Brown, Martin, Brown and I. We all got a little tipsy--but pleasantly so--I enjoy Claret to a degree.

[Later, April 18 or 19.]

I have been looking over the correspondence of the pretended Amena and Wells this evening--I now see the whole cruel deception. I think Wells must have had an accomplice in it--Amena's letters are in a Man's language and in a Man's hand imitating a woman's. The instigations to this diabolical scheme were vanity, and the love of intrigue. It was no thoughtless hoax--but a cruel deception on a sanguine Temperament, with every show of friendship. I do not think death too bad for the villain. The world would look upon it in a different light should I expose it--they would call it a frolic--so I must be wary--but I consider it my duty to be prudently revengeful. I will hang over his head like a sword by a hair. I will be opium to his vanity--if I cannot injure his interests--He is a rat and he shall have ratsbane to his vanity--I will harm him all I possibly can--I have no doubt I shall be able to do so--Let us leave him to his misery alone, except when we can throw in a little more. The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more--it is that one in which he meets with Paolo and Francesca. I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about the whirling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined as it seemed for an age--and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm--even flowery tree-tops sprung up, and we rested on them, sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us away again. I tried a sonnet upon it--there are fourteen lines, but nothing of what I felt in it--O that I could dream it every night--

As Hermes once took to his feathers light
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept,
So on a delphic reed my idle spright
So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft
The Dragon world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away;--
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove grieved that day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of Rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with about that melancholy storm.

I want very very much a little of your wit, my dear Sister--a Letter or two of yours just to bandy back a pun or two across the Atlantic, and send a quibble over the Floridas. Now you have by this time crumpled up your large Bonnet, what do you wear--a cap? do you put your hair in papers of a night? do you pay the Miss Birkbecks a morning visit--have you any tea? or do you milk-and-water with them--What place of Worship do you go to--the Quakers, the Moravians, the Unitarians, or the Methodists? Are there any flowers in bloom you like--any beautiful heaths--any streets full of Corset Makers? What sort of shoes have you to fit those pretty feet of yours? Do you desire Compliments to one another? Do you ride on Horseback? What do you have for breakfast, dinner, and supper? without mentioning lunch and bever,[98] and wet and snack--and a bit to stay one's stomach? Do you get any Spirits--now you might easily distill some whiskey--and going into the woods, set up a whiskey shop for the Monkeys--Do you and the Miss Birkbecks get groggy on anything--a little so-soish so as to be obliged to be seen home with a Lantern? You may perhaps have a game at puss in the corner--Ladies are warranted to play at this game though they have not whiskers. Have you a fiddle in the Settlement--or at any rate a Jew's harp--which will play in spite of one's teeth--When you have nothing else to do for a whole day I tell you how you may employ it--First get up and when you are dressed, as it would be pretty early with a high wind in the woods, give George a cold Pig with my Compliments. Then you may saunter into the nearest coffee-house, and after taking a dram and a look at the Chronicle--go and frighten the wild boars upon the strength--you may as well bring one home for breakfast, serving up the hoofs garnished with bristles and a grunt or two to accompany the singing of the kettle--then if George is not up give him a colder Pig always with my Compliments--When you are both set down to breakfast I advise you to eat your full share, but leave off immediately on feeling yourself inclined to anything on the other side of the puffy--avoid that, for it does not become young women--After you have eaten your breakfast keep your eye upon dinner--it is the safest way--You should keep a Hawk's eye over your dinner and keep hovering over it till due time then pounce taking care not to break any plates. While you are hovering with your dinner in prospect you may do a thousand things--put a hedgehog into George's hat--pour a little water into his rifle--soak his boots in a pail of water--cut his jacket round into shreds like a Roman kilt or the back of my grandmother's stays--Sew _off_ his buttons--

[Later, April 21 or 22.]

Yesterday I could not write a line I was so fatigued, for the day before I went to town in the morning, called on your Mother, and returned in time for a few friends we had to dinner. These were Taylor, Woodhouse, Reynolds: we began cards at about 9 o'clock, and the night coming on, and continuing dark and rainy, they could not think of returning to town--So we played at Cards till very daylight--and yesterday I was not worth a sixpence. Your Mother was very well but anxious for a Letter. We had half an hour's talk and no more, for I was obliged to be home. Mrs. and Miss Millar were well, and so was Miss Waldegrave. I have asked your Brothers here for next Sunday. When Reynolds was here on Monday he asked me to give Hunt a hint to take notice of his Peter Bell in the Examiner--the best thing I can do is to write a little notice of it myself, which I will do here, and copy out if it should suit my Purpose--

_Peter Bell._ There have been lately advertised two Books both Peter Bell by name; what stuff the one was made of might be seen by the motto--"I am the real Simon Pure." This false Florimel has hurried from the press and obtruded herself into public notice, while for aught we know the real one may be still wandering about the woods and mountains. Let us hope she may soon appear and make good her right to the magic girdle. The Pamphleteering Archimage, we can perceive, has rather a splenetic love than a downright hatred to real Florimels--if indeed they had been so christened--or had even a pretention to play at bob cherry with Barbara Lewthwaite: but he has a fixed aversion to those three rhyming Graces Alice Fell, Susan Gale and Betty Foy; and now at length especially to Peter Bell--fit Apollo. It may be seen from one or two Passages in this little skit, that the writer of it has felt the finer parts of Mr. Wordsworth, and perhaps expatiated with his more remote and sublimer muse. This as far as it relates to Peter Bell is unlucky. The more he may love the sad embroidery of the Excursion, the more he will hate the coarse Samplers of Betty Foy and Alice Fell; and as they come from the same hand, the better will he be able to imitate that which can be imitated, to wit Peter Bell--as far as can be imagined from the obstinate Name. We repeat, it is very unlucky--this real Simon Pure is in parts the very Man--there is a pernicious likeness in the scenery, a 'pestilent humour' in the rhymes, and an inveterate cadence in some of the Stanzas, that must be lamented. If we are one part amused with this we are three parts sorry that an appreciator of Wordsworth should show so much temper at this really provoking name of Peter Bell--![99]

This will do well enough--I have copied it and enclosed it to Hunt. You will call it a little politic--seeing I keep clear of all parties. I say something for and against both parties--and suit it to the tune of the Examiner--I meant to say I do not unsuit it--and I believe I think what I say, nay I am sure I do--I and my conscience are in luck to-day--which is an excellent thing. The other night I went to the Play with Rice, Reynolds, and Martin--we saw a new dull and half-damn'd opera call'd the 'Heart of Midlothian,' that was on Saturday--I stopt at Taylor's on Sunday with Woodhouse--and passed a quiet sort of pleasant day. I have been very much pleased with the Panorama of the Ship at the North Pole--with the icebergs, the Mountains, the Bears, the Wolves--the seals, the Penguins--and a large whale floating back above water--it is impossible to describe the place--

Wednesday Evening [April 28].

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

O what can ail thee Knight at arms
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the Lake
And no birds sing!

O what can ail thee Knight at arms
So haggard, and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast Withereth too--

I met a Lady in the Meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child--
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild--

I made a Garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone
She look'd at me as she did love
And made sweet moan--

I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend and sing
A faery's song--

She found me roots of relish sweet
And honey wild and manna dew
And sure in language strange she said
I love thee true--

She took me to her elfin grot
And there she wept and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four--

And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream'd Ah Woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale Kings and Princes too
Pale warriors death-pale were they all
They cried--La belle dame sans merci
Thee hath in thrall.

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering;
Though the sedge is withered from the Lake
And no birds sing.[100]...

Why four kisses--you will say--why four, because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse--she would have fain said "score" without hurting the rhyme--but we must temper the Imagination, as the Critics say, with Judgment. I was obliged to choose an even number, that both eyes might have fair play, and to speak truly I think two a piece quite sufficient. Suppose I had said seven there would have been three and a half a piece--a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side--

[Later.]

CHORUS OF FAIRIES. 4--FIRE, AIR, EARTH, AND WATER--SALAMANDER, ZEPHYR, DUSKETHA, BREAMA.

_Sal._ Happy happy glowing fire!
_Zep._ Fragrant air, delicious light!
_Dusk._ Let me to my glooms retire.
_Bream._ I to greenweed rivers bright.

_Salam._

Happy, happy glowing fire!
Dazzling bowers of soft retire,
Ever let my nourish'd wing,
Like a bat's still wandering,
Faintly fan your fiery spaces
Spirit sole in deadly places,
In unhaunted roar and blaze
Open eyes that never daze
Let me see the myriad shapes
Of Men and Beasts and Fish and apes,
Portray'd in many a fiery den,
And wrought by spumy bitumen
On the deep intenser roof,
Arched every way aloof.
Let me breathe upon my skies,
And anger their live tapestries;
Free from cold and every care,
Of chilly rain and shivering air.

_Zephyr._

Spright of fire--away away!
Or your very roundelay
Will sear my plumage newly budded
From its quilled sheath and studded
With the self-same dews that fell
On the May-grown Asphodel.
Spright of fire away away!

_Breama._

Spright of fire away away!
Zephyr blue-eyed faery turn,
And see my cool sedge-shaded urn,
Where it rests its mossy brim
Mid water-mint and cresses dim;
And the flowers, in sweet troubles,
Lift their eyes above the bubbles,
Like our Queen when she would please
To sleep, and Oberon will tease--
Love me blue-eyed Faery true
Soothly I am sick for you.

_Zephyr._

Gentle Breama! by the first
Violet young nature nurst,
I will bathe myself with thee,
So you sometime follow me
To my home far far in west,
Far beyond the search and quest
Of the golden-browed sun.
Come with me, o'er tops of trees,
To my fragrant Palaces,
Where they ever-floating are
Beneath the cherish of a star
Call'd Vesper--who with silver veil
Ever Hides his brilliance pale,
Ever gently drows'd doth keep
Twilight of the Fays to sleep.
Fear not that your watery hair
Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there--
Clouds of stored summer rains
Thou shalt taste before the stains
Of the mountain soil they take,
And too unlucent for thee make.
I love thee, Crystal faery true
Sooth I am as sick for you--

_Salam._

Out ye agueish Faeries out!
Chilly Lovers, what a rout
Keep ye with your frozen breath
Colder than the mortal death--
Adder-eyed Dusketha speak,
Shall we leave them and go seek
In the Earth's wide Entrails old
Couches warm as their's is cold?
O for a fiery gloom and thee,
Dusketha, so enchantingly
Freckle-wing'd and lizard-sided!

_Dusketha._

By thee Spright will I be guided
I care not for cold or heat
Frost and Flame or sparks or sleet
To my essence are the same--
But I honour more the flame--
Spright of fire I follow thee
Wheresoever it may be;
To the torrid spouts and fountains,
Underneath earth-quaked mountains
Or at thy supreme desire,
Touch the very pulse of fire
With my bare unlidded eyes.

_Salam._

Sweet Dusketha! Paradise!
Off ye icy Spirits fly!
Frosty creatures of the Sky!

_Dusketha._

Breathe upon them fiery Spright!

_Zephyr, Breama (to each other)._

Away Away to our delight!

_Salam._

Go feed on icicles while we
Bedded in tongued-flames will be.

_Dusketha._

Lead me to those fev'rous glooms,
Spright of fire--

_Breama._

Me to the blooms
Blue-eyed Zephyr of those flowers
Far in the west where the May cloud lours;
And the beams of still Vesper, where winds are all whist
Are shed through the rain and the milder mist,
And twilight your floating bowers--

I have been reading lately two very different books, Robertson's America and Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV. It is like walking arm and arm between Pizarro and the great-little Monarch. In how lamentable a case do we see the great body of the people in both instances; in the first, where Men might seem to inherit quiet of Mind from unsophisticated senses; from uncontamination of civilisation, and especially from their being, as it were, estranged from the mutual helps of Society and its mutual injuries--and thereby more immediately under the Protection of Providence--even there they had mortal pains to bear as bad, or even worse than Bailiffs, Debts, and Poverties of civilised Life. The whole appears to resolve into this--that Man is originally a poor forked creature subject to the same mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to hardships and disquietude of some kind or other. If he improves by degrees his bodily accommodations and comforts--at each stage, at each ascent there are waiting for him a fresh set of annoyances--he is mortal, and there is still a heaven with its Stars above his head. The most interesting question that can come before us is, How far by the persevering endeavours of a seldom appearing Socrates Mankind may be made happy--I can imagine such happiness carried to an extreme, but what must it end in?--Death--and who could in such a case bear with death? The whole troubles of life, which are now frittered away in a series of years, would then be accumulated for the last days of a being who instead of hailing its approach would leave this world as Eve left Paradise. But in truth I do not at all believe in this sort of perfectibility--the nature of the world will not admit of it--the inhabitants of the world will correspond to itself. Let the fish Philosophise the ice away from the Rivers in winter time, and they shall be at continual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at the Poles and at the Sands of Africa, whirlpools and volcanoes--Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at earthly Happiness. The point at which Man may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate nature, and no further. For instance suppose a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning, it enjoys itself, but then comes a cold wind, a hot sun--it cannot escape it, it cannot destroy its annoyances--they are as native to the world as itself: no more can man be happy in spite, the worldly elements will prey upon his nature. The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is "a vale of tears," from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven--What a little circumscribed straightened notion! Call the world if you please "The vale of Soul-making." Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say '_Soul-making_'--Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence. There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions--but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception--they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God--how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them--so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence? How, but by the medium of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion--or rather it is a system of Spirit-creation--This is effected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of years--These three Materials are the _Intelligence_--the _human heart_ (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind), and the _World_ or _Elemental space_ suited for the proper action of _Mind and Heart_ on each other for the purpose of forming the _Soul_ or _Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity_. I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive--and yet I think I perceive it--that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible. I will call the _world_ a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read--I will call the _human heart_ the _horn Book_ used in that School--and I will call the _Child able to read, the Soul_ made from that _School_ and its _horn book_. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways. Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, It is the Mind's Bible, it is the Mind's experience, it is the text from which the Mind or Intelligence sucks its identity. As various as the Lives of Men are--so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence. This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does not offend our reason and humanity--I am convinced that many difficulties which Christians labour under would vanish before it--there is one which even now strikes me--the salvation of Children. In them the spark or intelligence returns to God without any identity--it having had no time to learn of and be altered by the heart--or seat of the human Passions. It is pretty generally suspected that the Christian scheme has been copied from the ancient Persian and Greek Philosophers. Why may they not have made this simple thing even more simple for common apprehension by introducing Mediators and Personages, in the same manner as in the heathen mythology abstractions are personified? Seriously I think it probable that this system of Soul-making may have been the Parent of all the more palpable and personal schemes of Redemption among the Zoroastrians the Christians and the Hindoos. For as one part of the human species must have their carved Jupiter; so another part must have the palpable and named Mediator and Saviour, their Christ, their Oromanes, and their Vishnu. If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will put you in the place where I began in this series of thoughts--I mean I began by seeing how man was formed by circumstances--and what are circumstances but touchstones of his heart? and what are touchstones but provings of his heart, but fortifiers or alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but his Soul?--and what was his Soul before it came into the world and had these provings and alterations and perfectionings?--An intelligence without Identity--and how is this Identity to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? and how is the heart to become this Medium but in a world of Circumstances?

There now I think what with Poetry and Theology, you may thank your stars that my pen is not very long-winded. Yesterday I received two Letters from your Mother and Henry, which I shall send by young Birkbeck with this.

Friday, April 30.

Brown has been here rummaging up some of my old sins--that is to say sonnets. I do not think you remember them, so I will copy them out, as well as two or three lately written. I have just written one on Fame--which Brown is transcribing and he has his book and mine. I must employ myself perhaps in a sonnet on the same subject--

ON FAME

_You cannot eat your cake and have it too._--Proverb.

How fever'd is that Man who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temperate blood
Who vexes all the leaves of his Life's book
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood.
It is as if the rose should pluck herself
Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom,
As if a clear Lake meddling with itself
Should cloud its clearness with a muddy gloom.
But the rose leaves herself upon the Briar
For winds to kiss and grateful Bees to feed,
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire,
The undisturbed Lake has crystal space--
Why then should man, teasing the world for grace
Spoil his salvation by a fierce miscreed?

ANOTHER ON FAME

Fame like a wayward girl will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease--
She is a Gipsy will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her,
A Jilt whose ear was never whisper'd close,
Who think they scandal her who talk about her--
A very Gipsy is she Nilus born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar--
Ye lovesick Bards, repay her scorn for scorn,
Ye lovelorn Artists, madmen that ye are,
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then if she likes it she will follow you.

TO SLEEP

O soft embalmer of the still midnight
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes embowered from the light
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine--
O soothest sleep, if so it please thee close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its dewy Charities.
Then save me or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow breeding many woes.
Save me from curious conscience that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a Mole--
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my soul.

The following Poem--the last I have written--is the first and the only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have for the most part dash'd off my lines in a hurry. This I have done leisurely--I think it reads the more richly for it, and will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the Goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour--and perhaps never thought of in the old religion--I am more orthodox than to let a heathen Goddess be so neglected--

ODE TO PSYCHE

O Goddess hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear!
Surely I dreamt to-day; or did I see
The winged Psyche, with awaked eyes?
I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,
And on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair Creatures couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring fan
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A Brooklet scarce espied
'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, freckle pink, and budded Syrian
They lay, calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bid adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender dawn of aurorian love.
The winged boy I knew:
But who wast thou O happy happy dove?
His Psyche true?
O latest born, and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus' faded Hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,
Or Vesper amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these though Temple thou hadst none,
Nor Altar heap'd with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe no incense sweet
From chain-swung Censer teeming--
No shrine, no grove, no Oracle, no heat
Of pale mouth'd Prophet dreaming!

O Bloomiest! though too late for antique vows;
Too, too late for the fond believing Lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the Air, the water and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir'd
From happy Pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing by my own eyes inspired.
O let me be thy Choir and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged Censer teeming;
Thy Shrine, thy Grove, thy Oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth'd Prophet dreaming!
Yes, I will be thy Priest and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my Mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind.
Far, far around shall those dark cluster'd trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by Zephyrs streams and birds and bees
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep.
And in the midst of this wide-quietness
A rosy Sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain;
With buds and bells and stars without a name;
With all the gardener-fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers will never breed the same--
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win;
A bright torch and a casement ope at night
To let the warm Love in.

Here endethe ye Ode to Psyche.

Incipit altera Sonneta

I have been endeavouring to discover a better Sonnet Stanza than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language over well from the pouncing rhymes--the other kind appears too elegiac--and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect--I do not pretend to have succeeded--it will explain itself.

If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
And, like Andromeda, the sonnet sweet
Fetter'd, in spite of pained Loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;
Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown,
So, if we may not let the muse be free,
She will be bound with Garlands of her own.

[May 3.]