hese. There is a
fine originality certainly in those lines,--

"For she had lived in this bad world
As in a place of tombs,
And touched not the pollutions of the dead;"

but your "fierce vivacity" is a faint copy of the "fierce and terrible
benevolence" of Southey; added to this, that it will look like rivalship
in you, and extort a comparison with Southey,--I think to your
disadvantage. And the lines, considered in themselves as an addition to
what you had before written (strains of a far higher mood), are but such
as Madame Fancy loves in some of her more familiar moods,--at such times
as she has met Noll Goldsmith, and walked and talked with him, calling
him "old acquaintance." Southey certainly has no pretensions to vie with
you in the sublime of poetry; but he tells a plain tale better than you.
I will enumerate some woful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from
that simplicity which was your aim. "Hailed who might be near" (the
"canvas-coverture moving," by the by, is laughable); "a woman and six
children" (by the way, why not nine children? It would have been just
half as pathetic again); "statues of sleep they seemed;" "frost-mangled
wretch;" "green putridity;" "hailed him immortal" (rather ludicrous
again); "voiced a sad and simple tale" (abominable!); "unprovendered;"
"such his tale;" "Ah, suffering to the height of what was sufffered" (a
most _insufferable line_); "amazements of affright;" "The hot, sore
brain attributes its own hues of ghastliness and torture" (what shocking
confusion of ideas!).

In these delineations of common and natural feelings, in the familiar
walks of poetry, you seem to resemble Montauban dancing with Roubigne's
tenants [1], "_much of his native loftiness remained in the execution_."

I was reading your "Religious Musings" the other day, and sincerely I
think it the noblest poem in the language next after the "Paradise
Lost;" and even that was not made the vehicle of such grand truths.
"There is one mind," etc., down to "Almighty's throne," are without a
rival in the whole compass of my poetical reading.

"Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze
Views all creation."

I wish I could have written those lines. I rejoice that I am able to
relish them. The loftier walks of Pindus are your proper region. There
you have no compeer in modern times. Leave the lowlands, unenvied, in
possession of such men as Cowper and Southey. Thus am I pouring balsam
into the wounds