t the plan and scope of the Work might be,
he had not said, and I could not judge; but here was a light opulence of
airy fancy, picturesque conception, vigorous delineation, all marching
on as with cheerful drum and fife, if without more rich and complicated
forms of melody: if a man _would_ write in metre, this sure enough
was the way to try doing it." For such encouragement from that stinted
quarter, Sterling, I doubt not, was very thankful; and of course it
might co-operate with the inspirations from his Naples Tour to further
him a little in this his now chief task in the way of Poetry; a thought
which, among my many almost pathetic remembrances of contradictions to
his Poetic tendency, is pleasant for me.

But, on the whole, it was no matter. With or without encouragement, he
was resolute to persevere in Poetry, and did persevere. When I think now
of his modest, quiet steadfastness in this business of Poetry; how, in
spite of friend and foe, he silently persisted, without wavering, in
the form of utterance he had chosen for himself; and to what length he
carried it, and vindicated himself against us all;--his character comes
out in a new light to me, with more of a certain central inflexibility
and noble silent resolution than I had elsewhere noticed in it. This
summer, moved by natural feelings, which were sanctioned, too, and in a
sort sanctified to him, by the remembered counsel of his late Wife,
he printed the _Tragedy of Strafford_. But there was in the public no
contradiction to the hard vote I had given about it: the little
Book fell dead-born; and Sterling had again to take his
disappointment;--which it must be owned he cheerfully did; and, resolute
to try it again and ever again, went along with his _Coeur-de-Lion_,
as if the public had been all with him. An honorable capacity to stand
single against the whole world; such as all men need, from time to time!
After all, who knows whether, in his overclouded, broken, flighty way
of life, incapable of long hard drudgery, and so shut out from the solid
forms of Prose, this Poetic Form, which he could well learn as he could
all forms, was not the suitablest for him?

This work of _Coeur-de-Lion_ he prosecuted steadfastly in his new home;
and indeed employed on it henceforth all the available days that were
left him in this world. As was already said, he did not live to complete
it; but some eight Cantos, three or four of which I know to possess high
worth, were