as to practice, with their gaudy hot types and poetical
vanities, they are much at one with the sinful.
Martin’s frontispiece is a very fine thing, let
C.L. say what he please to the contrary. Of the
Poems, I like them as a volume better than any one
of the preceding; particularly, Power and Gentleness;
The Present; Lady Russell—with the exception
that I do not like the noble act of Curtius, true
or false, one of the grand foundations of old Roman
patriotism, to be sacrificed to Lady R.’s taking
notes on her husband’s trial. If a thing
is good, why invidiously bring it into light with
something better? There are too few heroic things
in this world to admit of our marshalling them in
anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would you make
a poetn on the Story of Ruth (pretty Story!) and then
say, Aye, but how much better is the story of Joseph
and his Brethren! To go on, the Stanzas to “Chalon”
want the name of Clarkson in the body of them;
it is left to inference. The Battle of Gibeon
is spirited again—but you sacrifice it
in last stanza to the Song at Bethlehem. Is it
quite orthodox to do so. The first was good,
you suppose, for that dispensation. Why set the
word against the word? It puzzles a weak Christian.
So Watts’s Psalms are an implied censure on David’s.
But as long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally
divine Emanation with the Testament, so long it will
stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition.
Godiva is delicately touch’d. I have always
thought it a beautiful story characteristic of old
English times. But I could not help amusing myself
with the thought—if Martin had chosen this
subject for a frontispiece, there would have been
in some dark corner a white Lady, white as the Walker
on the waves—riding upon some mystical
quadruped —and high above would have risen
“tower above tower a massy structure high”
the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross
would scarce have known itself among the clouds, and
far above them all, the distant Clint hills peering
over chimney pots, piled up, Ossa-on-Olympus fashion,
till the admiring Spectator (admirer of a noble deed)
might have gone look for the Lady, as you must hunt
for the other in the Lobster. But M. should be
made Royal Architect. What palaces he would pile—but
then what parliamentary grants to make them good!
ne’ertheless I like the frontispiece. The
Elephant is pleasant; and I am glad you are getting
into a wider scope of subjects. There may be too
much, not religion, but too many good words
into a book, till it becomes, as Sh. says of religion,
a rhapsody of words. I will just name that you
have brought in the Song to the Shepherds in four or
five if not six places. Now this is not good
economy. The Enoch is fine; and here I can sacrifice
Elijah to it, because ’tis illustrative only,
and not disparaging of the latter prophet’s
departure. I like this best in the Book.
Lastly, I much like the Heron, ’tis exquisite:
know you Lord Thurlow’s Sonnet to a Bird of