Chapter LXXIV: Letter LXXIII

BREAKFAST WITH BARRY CORNWALL--LUXURY OF THE FOLLOWERS OF THE
MODERN MUSE--BEAUTY OF THE DRAMATIC SKETCHES GAINS PROCTOR A
WIFE--HAZLITT'S EXTRAORDINARY TASTE FOR THE PICTURESQUE IN
WOMEN--COLERIDGE'S OPINION OF CORNWALL.

Breakfasted with Mr. Procter (known better as Barry Cornwall). I gave a partial description of this most delightful of poets in a former letter. In the dazzling circle of rank and talent with which he was surrounded at Lady Blessington's, however, it was difficult to see so shrinkingly modest a man to advantage, and with the exception of the keen gray eye, living with thought and feeling, I should hardly have recognised him, at home, for the same person.

Mr. Procter is a barrister; and his "whereabout" is more like that of a lord chancellor than a poet proper. With the address he had given me at parting, I drove to a large house in Bedford square; and, not accustomed to find the children of the Muses waited on by servants in livery, I made up my mind as I walked up the broad staircase, that I was blundering upon some Mr. Procter of the exchange, whose respect for his poetical namesake, I hoped would smooth my apology for the intrusion. Buried in a deep morocco chair, in a large library, notwithstanding, I found the poet himself--choice old pictures, filling every nook between the book-shelves, tables covered with novels and annuals, rolls of prints, busts and drawings in all corners; and, more important for the nonce, a breakfast table at the poet's elbow, spicily set forth, not with flowers or ambrosia, the canonical food of rhymers, but with cold ham and ducks, hot rolls and butter, coffee-pot and tea-urn--as sensible a breakfast, in short, as the most unpoetical of men could desire.

Procter is indebted to his poetry for a very charming wife, the daughter of Basil Montague, well known as a collector of choice literature, and the friend and patron of literary men. The exquisite beauty of the Dramatic Sketches interested this lovely woman in his favor before she knew him, and, far from worldly-wise as an attachment so grounded would seem, I never saw two people with a more habitual air of happiness. I thought of his touching song,

"How many summers, love,
Hast thou been mine?"

and looked at them with an inexpressible feeling of envy. A beautiful girl, of eight or nine years, the "golden-tressed Adelaide," delicate, gentle and pensive, as if she was born on the lip of Castaly, and knew she was a poet's child, completed the picture of happiness.

The conversation ran upon various authors, whom Procter had known intimately--Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Keats, Shelley, and others, and of all he gave me interesting particulars, which I could not well repeat in a public letter. The account of Hazlitt's death-bed, which appeared in one of the magazines, he said was wholly untrue. This extraordinary writer was the most reckless of men in money matters, but he had a host of admiring friends who knew his character, and were always ready to assist him. He was a great admirer of the picturesque in women. He was one evening at the theatre with Procter, and pointed out to him an Amazonian female, strangely dressed in black velvet and lace, but with no beauty that would please an ordinary eye. "Look at her!" said Hazlitt, "isn't she fine!--isn't she magnificent? Did you ever see anything more Titianesque?"[12]

After breakfast, Procter took me into a small closet adjoining his library, in which he usually writes. There was just room enough in it for a desk and two chairs, and around were piled in true poetical confusion, his favorite books, miniature likenesses of authors, manuscripts, and all the interesting lumber of a true poet's corner. From a drawer, very much thrust out of the way, he drew a volume of his own, into which he proceeded to write my name--a collection of songs, published since I have been in Europe, which I had never seen. I seized upon a worn copy of the Dramatic Sketches, which I found crossed and interlined in every direction. "Don't look at them," said Procter, "they are wretched things, which should never have been printed, or at least with a world of correction. You see how I have mended them; and, some day, perhaps, I will publish a corrected edition, since I can not get them back." He took the book from my hand, and opened to "The Broken Heart," certainly the most highly-finished and exquisite piece of pathos in the language, and read it to me with his alterations. It was to "gild refined gold, and paint the lily." I would recommend to the lovers of Barry Cornwall, to keep their original copy, beautifully as he has polished his lines anew.

On a blank leaf of the same copy of the Dramatic Sketches, I found some indistinct writing in pencil, "Oh! don't read that," said Procter, "the book was given me some years ago, by a friend at whose house Coleridge had been staying, for the sake of the criticisms that great man did me the honor to write at the end." I insisted on reading them, however, and his wife calling him out presently, I succeeded in copying them in his absence. He seemed a little annoyed, but on my promising to make no use of them in England, he allowed me to retain them. They are as follows:

"Barry Cornwall is a poet, _me saltem judice_, and in that
sense of the word, in which I apply it to Charles Lamb and W.
Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the authors of
which, I should not yet feel impelled so to designate.

"The faults of these poems are no less things of hope than the
beauties. Both are just what they ought to be: i. e. _now_.

"If B. C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn
him that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledge, so
a poet can not be a great poet, but as being likewise and
inclusively an historian and a naturalist in the light as well
as the life of philosophy. All other men's worlds are his
chaos.

"Hints--Not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce
into effeminacy.

"Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerism.

"To be jealous of fragmentary composition as epicurism of
genius--apple-pie made all of quinces.

"Item. That dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and
passion, not thought or passion hid in the dregs of poetry.

"Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similes, figures,
etc. They will all find their place sooner or later, each in
the luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in
poetry, because it is language, _ergo_, successive, _ergo_
every the smallest star must be seen singly.

"There are not five metrists in the kingdom whose works are
known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed to speak
so plainly; but B. C. is a man of genius, and it depends on
himself (_competence protecting him from gnawing and
distracting cares_), to become a rightful poet--i. e. a great
man.

"Oh, for such a man; worldly prudence is transfigured into the
high spiritual duty. How generous is self-interest in him,
whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages as
far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, is the
mother tongue.

"A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory on the
confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819."

I took my leave of this true poet after half a day passed in his company, with the impression that he makes upon every one--of a man whose sincerity and kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in his character. Simple in his language and feelings, a fond father, an affectionate husband, businessman of the closest habits of industry--one reads his strange imaginations, and passionate, high-wrought, and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which most to wonder--the man as he is, or the poet as we know him in his books.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] The following story has been told me by another gentleman. Hazlitt was married to an amiable woman, and divorced after a few years, at his own request. He left London, and returned with another wife. The first thing he did, was to send to his first wife to borrow five pounds! She had not so much in the world, but she sent to a friend (the gentleman who told me the story), borrowed it, and sent it to him! It seems to me there is a whole drama in this single fact.