ppiness, and yet Southey was happy at home and made his
home happy; he not only loved his wife and children _though_ he was a
poet, but he loved them the better _because_ he was a poet. He seems
to have been without taint of worldliness. London with its pomps and
vanities, learned coteries with their dry pedantry, rather scared
than attracted him. He found his prime glory in his genius, and his
chief felicity in home affections. I like Southey.

'I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works--_Emma_--read it
with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss
Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable. Anything
like warmth or enthusiasm--anything energetic, poignant, heart-felt
is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such
demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer,
would have calmly scorned as _outre_ and extravagant. She does her
business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English
people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature
delicacy in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing
vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound. The passions are
perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance
with that stormy sisterhood. Even to the feelings she vouchsafes no
more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition--too
frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her
progress. Her business is not half so much with the human heart as
with the human eyes, mouth, hands, and feet. What sees keenly,
speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs
fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is
the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death--this Miss
Austen ignores. She no more, with her mind's eye, beholds the heart
of her race than each man, with bodily vision, sees the heart in his
heaving breast. Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady,
but a very incomplete and rather insensible (_not senseless_) woman.
If this is heresy, I cannot help it. If I said it to some people
(Lewes for instance) they would directly accuse me of advocating
exaggerated heroics, but I am not afraid of your falling into any
such vulgar error.--Believe me, yours sincerely,