Where there is so much sincerity of feeling in a matter so dignified as the renunciation of poetry for science, one feels that an apology is necessary for verbal criticism.  I will therefore content myself with observing that ‘joying’ for joy or joyance is not to my taste.  Indeed I object to such liberties upon principle.  We should soon have no language at all if the unscrupulous coinage of the present day were allowed to pass, and become a precedent for the future.  One of the first duties of a Writer is to ask himself whether his thought, feeling, or image cannot be expressed by existing words or phrases, before he goes about creating new terms, even when they are justified by the analogies of the language.  ‘The cataract’s steep flow’ is both harsh and inaccurate:  ‘thou hast seen me bend over the cataract’ would express one idea in simplicity and all that was required.  Had it been necessary to be more particular, ‘steep flow’ are not the words that ought to have been used.  I remember Campbell says in a composition that is overrun with faulty language, ‘And dark as winter was the flow of Iser rolling rapidly;’ that is, ‘flowing rapidly.’  The expression ought to have been ‘stream’ or ‘current...’  These may appear to you frigid criticisms, but depend upon it no writings will live in which these rules are disregarded....

Female authorship is to be shunned as bringing in its train more and heavier evils than have presented themselves to your sister’s ingenuous mind.  No true friend I am sure will endeavour to shake her resolution to remain in her own quiet and healthful obscurity.  This is not said with a view to discourage her from writing, nor have the remarks made above any aim of the kind; they are rather intended to assist her in writing with more permanent satisfaction to herself.  She will probably write less in proportion as she subjects her feelings to logical forms, but the range of her sensibilities so far from being narrowed will extend as she improves in the habit of looking at things thro’ a steady light of words; and, to speak a little metaphysically, words are not a mere vehicle, but they are powers either to kill or animate.[106]

[106] Extract of letter to Professor Hamilton, Dublin, Dec. 23d, 1829.

67. His ‘Play:’  Hone:  Eyesight failing, &c.

TO CHARLES LAMB, ESQ. 
Jan. 10. 1830. 
MY DEAR LAMB,

A whole twelvemonth have I been a letter in your debt, for which fault I have been sufficiently punished by self-reproach.

I liked your Play marvellously, having no objection to it but one, which strikes me as applicable to a large majority of plays, those of Shakspeare himself not entirely excepted—­I mean a little degradation of character for a more dramatic turn of plot.  Your present of Hone’s book was very acceptable; and so much so, that your part of the book is the cause why I did not write long ago.  I wished to enter a little minutely into notice of the dramatic