Your poem I have read with no inconsiderable pleasure; it is full of natural sentiments and pleasing pictures:  among the minor pieces, the last pleased me much the best, and especially the latter part of it.  This little volume, with what I saw of yourself during a short interview, interest me in your welfare; and the more so, as I always feel some apprehension for the destiny of those who in youth addict themselves to the composition of verse.  It is a very seducing employment, and, though begun in disinterested love of the Muses, is too apt to connect itself with self-love, and the disquieting passions which follow in the train of that our natural infirmity.  Fix your eye upon acquiring independence by honourable business, and let the Muses come after rather than go before.  Such lines as the latter of this couplet,

’Where lovely woman, chaste as heaven above. 
Shines in the golden virtues of her love,’

and many other passages in your poem, give proof of no common-place sensibility.  I am therefore the more earnest that you should guard yourself against this temptation.

Excuse this freedom; and believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully,

Your obliged servant,
WM. WORDSWORTH.[96]

[95] Memoirs, ii. 205-9.

[96] Ibid. ii. 211-12.

60. Of Hamilton’s ‘It haunts me yet’ and Miss Hamilton’s ‘Boys’ School.’

LETTER TO W.R.  HAMILTON, ESQ., OBSERVATORY, NEAR DUBLIN.

Rydal Mount, near Kendal, Sept. 24. 1827.

MY DEAR SIR,

You will have no pain to suffer from my sincerity.  With a safe conscience I can assure you that in my judgment your verses are animated with true poetic spirit, as they are evidently the product of strong feeling.  The sixth and seventh stanzas affected me much, even to the dimming of my eye and faltering of my voice while I was reading them aloud.  Having said this, I have said enough; now for the per contra.

You will not, I am sure, be hurt, when I tell you that the workmanship (what else could be expected from so young a writer?) is not what it ought to be; even in those two affecting stanzas it is not perfect: 

    ’Some touch of human sympathy find way,
    And whisper that though Truth’s and Science’ ray
    With such serene effulgence o’er thee shone.’

Sympathy might whisper, but a ‘touch of sympathy’ could not.  ’Truth’s and Science’ ray,’ for the ray of truth and science, is not only extremely harsh, but a ‘ray shone’ is, if not absolutely a pleonasm, a great awkwardness:  ‘a ray fell’ or ‘shot’ may be said, and a sun or a moon or a candle shone, but not a ray.  I much regret that I did not receive these verses while you were here, that I might have given you, viva voce, a comment upon them, which would be tedious by letter, and after all very imperfect.  If I have the pleasure of seeing you again, I will beg permission to dissect these verses, or any other you may be inclined to show me; but I am certain that without conference with me, or any benefit drawn from my practice in metrical composition, your own high powers of mind will lead you to the main conclusions.