en it first came out, now some five and
twenty years ago! I am always glad to know that it, or any of your
writings, Prose or Verse, still flourish--which I think not many others
of the kind will do after the Generation they are born in. I remember
that you regretted having tried the asonante, and you now decide that
Prose is best for English Translation. It may be so; in a great degree
it must be so; but I think the experiment might yet be tried; namely, the
short trochaic line, regardless of an assonant that will not speak in our
thin vowels, but looped up at intervals with a strong monosyllabic rhyme,
without which the English trochaic, assonant or not, is apt to fray out,
or run away too watery-like without some such interruption; I mean when
running to any considerable length, as I should think would be the case
in Longfellow's Hiawatha; which I have not however seen since it
appeared. Were I a dozen years younger I might try this with Calderon
which I think I have found to succeed in some much shorter flights: but
it is too late now, and you may think it well that it is so, with one who
takes such great liberties with great Poets, himself pretending to be
little more than a Versifier. I know not how it is with you who are
really a Poet; and perhaps you may think I am as wrong about my trochee
as about my iambic.

As for the modern Poetry, I have cared for none of the last thirty years,
not even Tennyson, except in parts: pure, lofty and noble as he always
is. Much less can I endure the _Gurgoyle_ school (I call it) begun, I
suppose, by V. Hugo. . . . I do think you will find something better
than that in the discarded Crabbe; whose writings Wordsworth (not given
to compliment any man on any occasion) wrote to Crabbe's Son and Editor
would continue as long at least as any Poetry written since, on account
of its mingled 'Truth and Poetry.' And this includes Wordsworth's own.
So I must think my old Crabbe will come up again, though never to be
popular.

This reminds me that just after I had written to you, Crabbe's Grandson,
one of the best, most amiable, and most agreeable, of my friends, paid me
a two days' Visit, and told me that a Nephew of yours was learning to
farm with a Steward of Lord Walsingham at Merton in Norfolk, George
Crabbe's own parish; I mean the living George, who spoke of your Nephew
as a very gentlemanly young man indeed. I think _he_ will not gainsay
what I write to you of his 'Parson.