23d January, 1818.

MY DEAR BROTHERS,

I was thinking what hindered me from writing so long, for I have so many things to say to you, and know not where to begin. It shall be upon a thing most interesting to you, my Poem. Well! I have given the first Book to Taylor; he seemed more than satisfied with it, and, to my surprise, proposed publishing it in quarto, if Haydon could make a drawing of some event therein, for a frontispiece. I called on Haydon. He said he would do any thing I liked, but said he would rather paint a finished picture from it, which he seems eager to do. This, in a year or two, will be a glorious thing for us; and it will be, for Haydon is struck with the first Book. I left Haydon, and the next day received a letter from him, proposing to make, as he says, with all his might, a finished chalk sketch of my head, to be engraved in the first style, and put at the head of my Poem, saying, at the same time, he had never done the thing for any human being, and that it must have considerable effect, as he will put his name to it. I begin to-day to copy my second Book: "thus far into the bowels of the land.” You shall hear whether it will be quarto or non-quarto, picture or non-picture. Leigh Hunt I showed my first Book to. He allows it not much merit as a whole; says it is unnatural, and made ten objections to it, in the mere skimming over. He says the conversation is unnatural, and too high-flown for Brother and Sister; says it should be simple,-forgetting, do ye mind, that they are both overshadowed by a supernatural Power, and of force could not speak like Francesca, in the “Rimini." He must first prove that Caliban's poetry is unnatural. This, with me, completely overturns his objections. The fact is, he and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not having showed them the affair officiously; and, from several hints I had had, they appear much disposed to dissect and anatomize any trip or slip I may have made. But who's afraid? Ay! Tom! Demme if I am. I went last Tuesday, an hour too late, to Hazlitt's Lecture on Poetry; got there just as they were coming out, when all these pounced upon me:-Hazlitt, John Hunt and Son, Wells, Bewick, all the Landseers, Bob Harris, aye and more.

I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately;

I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed, I, who for so long a time have been addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. As an instance of this-observe-I sat down yesterday to read "King Lear" once again: the thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet. I wrote it, and began

to read. (I know you would like to see it.)

ON SITTING DOWN TO READ "KING LEAR" ONCE AGAIN.

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen! if far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden volume, and be mute.
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
Betwixt Hell torment and impassioned clay,
Must I burn through; once more assay
The bitter sweet of this Shakspearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When I am through the old oak forest gone,

Let me not wander in a barren dream,

But when I am consumed with the Fire,

Give me new Phoenix-wings to fly at my desire.

So you see I am getting at it with a sort of determination and strength, though, verily, I do not feel it at this moment: this is my fourth letter this morning, and I feel rather tired, and my head rather swimming--so I will leave it open till to-morrow's post.

*

*

I am in the habit of taking my papers to Dilke's and copying there; so I chat and proceed at the same time. I have been there at my work this evening, and the walk over the Heath takes off all sleep, so I will even proceed with you. Constable, the bookseller, has offered Reynolds ten guineas a sheet to write for his Magazine. It is an Edinburgh one, which Blackwood's started up in opposition to. Hunt said he was nearly sure that the "Cockney School" was written by Scott;* so you are

*There seems to be no foundation for this assertion.

right, Tom! There are no more little bits of news I can remem

ber at present.

I remain,

My dear brothers, your affectionate brother,

JOHN.

HAMPSTEAD, February 16, [1818.]

MY DEAR BROTHERS,

When once a man delays a letter beyond the proper time, he delays it longer, for one or two reasons; first, because he must begin in a very common-place style, that is to say, with an excuse; and secondly, things and circumstances become so jumbled in his mind, that he knows not what, or what not, he has said in his last. I shall visit you as soon as I have copied my Poem all out. I am now much beforehand with the printers; they have done none yet, and I am half afraid they will let half the season by before the printing. I am determined they shall not trouble me when I have copied it all. Hazlitt's last lecture was on Thomson, Cowper, and Crabbe. He praised Thomson and Cowper, but he gave Crabbe an unmerciful licking. I saw Fazio the first night; it hung rather heavily on me. I am in the high way of being introduced to a squad of people, Peter Pindar, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Scott. Mr. Robinson, a great friend of Coleridge's, called on me. Richards tells me that my Poems are known in the west country, and that he saw a very clever copy of verses headed with a motto from my sonnet to George. nors rush so thickly upon me that I shall not be able to bear up against them. What think you--am I to be crowned in the Capitol? Am I to be made a Mandarin? No! I am to be invited, Mrs. Hunt tells me, to a party at Ollier's, to keep Shakspeare's birth-day. Shakspeare would stare to see me there. The Wednesday before last, Shelley, Hunt, and I, wrote each a sonnet on the river Nile some day you shall read them all. I saw a sheet of "Endymion," and have all reason to suppose they will soon get it done; there shall be nothing wanting on my part. I have been writing, at intervals, many songs and sonnets, and I long to be at Teignmouth to read them over to you; however, I think I had better wait till this book is off my mind; it will not be long first.

:

Ho

Reynolds has been writing two very capital articles, in the "Yellow Dwarf," on Popular Preachers.

Your most affectionate brother,

JOHN.

These are the three sonnets on the Nile here alluded to, and very characteristic they are.

TO THE NILE.

Son of the old moon-mountains African!
Stream of the Pyramid and Crocodile !
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse of swart nations since the world began,
Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Those men to honor thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest them a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.

J. K.

THE NILE.

It flows through old hush'd Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream ;
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,-

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roam'd through the young earth, the glory extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,
As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the frightful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

L. H.

OZYMANDIAS.

I saw a traveler from an antique land,
Who said :-Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed; .

I am extremely sorry to have given you so much uneasiness by not writing; however, you know good news is no news, or vice versa. I do not like to write a short letter to you, or you would have had one long before. The weather, although boisterous to-day, has been very much milder, and I think Devonshire is not the last place to receive a temperate change. I have been abominably idle ever since you left, but have just turned over a new leaf, and used as a marker a letter of excuse to an invitation from Horace Smith. I received a letter the other day from Haydon, in which he says, his "Essays on the Elgin Marbles are being translated into Italian, the which he superintends. I did not mention that I had seen the British Gallery; there are some nice things by Stark, and "Bathsheba," by Wilkie, which is condemned. I could not bear Alston's "Uriel."