OF POEMS, COLERIDGE, &c. &c.

Letter to Sir George H. Beaumont, Bart.

Grasmere, Sat., Nov. 16. 1811.

MY DEAR SIR GEORGE,

I have to thank you for two letters.  Lady Beaumont also will accept my acknowledgments for the interesting letter with which she favoured me.

* * * * *

I learn from Mrs. Coleridge, who has lately heard from C——­, that Alston, the painter, has arrived in London.  Coleridge speaks of him as a most interesting person.  He has brought with him a few pictures from his own pencil, among others, a Cupid and Psyche, which, in C.’s opinion, has not, for colouring, been surpassed since Titian.  C. is about to deliver a Course of Lectures upon Poetry, at some Institution in the city.  He is well, and I learn that the ‘Friend’ has been a good deal inquired after lately.  For ourselves, we never hear from him.

I am glad that the inscriptions please you.  It did always appear to me, that inscriptions, particularly those in verse, or in a dead language, were never supposed necessarily to be the composition of those in whose name they appeared.  If a more striking, or more dramatic effect could be produced, I have always thought, that in an epitaph or memorial of any kind, a father, or husband, &c. might be introduced, speaking, without any absolute deception being intended:  that is, the reader is understood to be at liberty to say to himself,—­these verses, or this Latin, may be the composition of some unknown person, and not that of the father, widow, or friend, from whose hand or voice they profess to proceed.  If the composition be natural, affecting, or beautiful, it is all that is required.  This, at least, was my view of the subject, or I should not have adopted that mode.  However, in respect to your scruples, which I feel are both delicate and reasonable, I have altered the verses; and I have only to regret that the alteration is not more happily done.  But I never found anything more difficult.  I wished to preserve the expression patrimonial grounds, but I found this impossible, on account of the awkwardness of the pronouns, he and his, as applied to Reynolds, and to yourself.  This, even where it does not produce confusion, is always inelegant.  I was, therefore, obliged to drop it; so that we must be content, I fear, with the inscription as it stands below.  As you mention that the first copy was mislaid, I will transcribe the first part from that; but you can either choose the Dome or the Abbey as you like.

    Ye lime-trees, ranged before this hallowed urn,
    Shoot forth with lively power at Spring’s return;
    And be not slow a stately growth to rear
    Of pillars, branching off from year to year,
    Till ye have framed, at length, a darksome aisle,
    Like a recess within that sacred pile
    Where Reynolds, ’mid our country’s noblest dead,
    In the last sanctity of fame is laid, &c. &c.