This ship was nought to me, nor I to her,
    Yet I pursued her with a lover’s look.

My mind wantons with grateful joy in the exercise of its own powers, and, loving its own creation,

    This ship to all the rest I did prefer,

making her a sovereign or a regent, and thus giving body and life to all the rest; mingling up this idea with fondness and praise—­

    where she comes the winds must stir;

and concluding the whole with,

    On went she, and due north her journey took;

thus taking up again the reader with whom I began, letting him know how long I must have watched this favourite vessel, and inviting him to rest his mind as mine is resting.

Having said so much upon mere fourteen lines, which Mrs. Fermor did not approve, I cannot but add a word or two upon my satisfaction in finding that my mind has so much in common with hers, and that we participate so many of each other’s pleasures.  I collect this from her having singled out the two little poems, ‘The Daffodils,’ and ’The Rock crowned with Snowdrops.’  I am sure that whoever is much pleased with either of these quiet and tender delineations must be fitted to walk through the recesses of my poetry with delight, and will there recognise, at every turn, something or other in which, and over which, it has that property and right which knowledge and love confer.  The line,

    Come, blessed barrier, &c.

in the ‘Sonnet upon Sleep,’ which Mrs. F. points out, had before been mentioned to me by Coleridge, and, indeed, by almost every body who had heard it, as eminently beautiful.  My letter (as this second sheet, which I am obliged to take, admonishes me) is growing to an enormous length; and yet, saving that I have expressed my calm confidence that these poems will live, I have said nothing which has a particular application to the object of it, which was to remove all disquiet from your mind on account of the condemnation they may at present incur from that portion of my contemporaries who are called the public.  I am sure, my dear Lady Beaumont, if you attach any importance to it, it can only be from an apprehension that it may affect me, upon which I have already set you at ease; or from a fear that this present blame is ominous of their future or final destiny.  If this be the case, your tenderness for me betrays you.  Be assured that the decision of these persons has nothing to do with the question; they are altogether incompetent judges.  These people, in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not read books, they merely snatch a glance at them, that they may talk about them.  And even if this were not so, never forget what, I believe, was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach the art by which he is to be seen; this, in a certain