I would have made it mostly all plain by commentary:—so
I had to read for myself; and can say, in spite of
my hard-heartedness, I did gain, though under impediments,
a real satisfaction and some tone of the Eternal Melodies
sounding, afar off, ever and anon, in my ear!
This is fact; a truth in Natural History; from
which you are welcome to draw inferences. A grand
View of the Universe, everywhere the sound (unhappily
far of, as it were) of a valiant, genuine Human
Soul: this, even under rhyme, is a satisfaction
worth some struggling for. But indeed you are
very perverse; and through this perplexed undiaphanous
element, you do not fall on me like radiant summer
rainbows, like floods of sunlight, but with thin piercing
radiances which affect me like the light of the
stars.
It is so: I wish you would become
concrete,
and write in prose the straightest way; but under
any form I must put up with you; that is my lot.—Chapman’s
edition, as you probably know, is very beautiful.
I believe there are enough of ardent silent seekers
in England to buy up this edition from him, and resolutely
study the same: as for the review multitude,
they dare not exactly call it “unintelligible
moonshine,” and so will probably hold their
tongue. It is my fixed opinion that we are all
at sea as to what is called Poetry, Art, &c., in these
times; laboring under a dreadful incubus of
Tradition,
and mere “Cant heaped balefully on us up to
the very Zenith,” as men, in nearly all other
provinces of their Life, except perhaps the railway
province, do now labor and stagger;—in a
word, that Goethe-and-Schiller’s
"Kunst"
has far more brotherhood with Pusey-and-Newman’s
Shovelhattery, and other the like deplorable
phenomena, than it is in the least aware of!
I beg you take warning: I am more serious in
this than you suppose. But no, you will not;
you whistle lightly over my prophecies, and go your
own stiff-necked road. Unfortunate man!—
I had read in the Newspapers, and even heard in speech
from Manchester people, that you were certainly coming
this very summer to lecture among us: but now
it seems, in your Letter, all postponed into the vague
again. I do not personally know your Manchester
negotiators, but I know in general that they are men
of respectability, insight, and activity; much connected
with the lecturing department, which is a very growing
one, especially in Lancashire, at present;—men
likely, for the rest, to fulfil whatsoever
they may become engaged for to you. My own ignorant
though confident guess, moreover, is, that you would,
in all senses of the word, succeed there; I
think, also rather confidently, we could promise you
an audience of British aristocracy in London here,—and
of British commonalty all manner of audiences that
you liked to stoop to. I heard an ignorant blockhead
(or mainly so) called —– bow-wowing
here, some months ago, to an audience of several thousands,