My dear Reynolds, you must forgive all this ranting— but the fact is, I cannot write sense this Morning-however you shall have some-I will copy out my last Sonnet. When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain- Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; I must take a turn, and then write to Teignmouth. Remember me to all, not excepting yourself. To JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. Hampstead, Tuesday [3 February 1818]. My dear Reynolds, I thank you for your dish of Filberts-would I could get a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the sum of twopence.' Would we were a sort of 1 Two sonnets on Robin Hood, sent by the "twopenny post ",printed in The Yellow Dwarf in 1818, and in The Garden of Florence (1821.) ethereal Pigs, and turned loose to feed upon spiritual Mast and Acorns-which would be merely being a squirrel and feeding upon filberts, for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a throng of delightful Images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. The first is the best on account of the first line, and the "arrow, foil'd of its antler'd food," and moreover (and this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more because I have had so much reason to shun it as a quicksand) the last has "tender and true ". We must cut this, and not be rattlesnaked into any more of the like. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth &c. should have their due from us. But, for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist? Every man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a Journey heavenward as well as anybody. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway, crying out, "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose!" Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this: each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state, and knows how many straws are swept daily from G the Causeways in all his dominions, and has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have their coppers well scoured. The ancients were Emperors of vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut all this-I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be teazed with "nice-eyed wagtails," when we have in sight "the Cherub Contemplation?" Why with Wordsworth's "Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand," when we can have Jacques "under an oak," &c.? The secret of the Bough of Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens in an Evening Walk to imagine the figure of the old Man, he must stamp it down in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be teazed with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of "Childe Harold" and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your dish of filberts, I have gathered a few catkins. I hope they'll look pretty. To J. H. R. in Answer to his Robin Hood Sonnets. No! those days are gone away, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years: Past the heath and up the Hill; On the fairest time of June Gone the merry morris din, Gone the song of Gamelyn, Gone the tough-belted outlaw Idling in the "grenè shawe" : All are gone away and past! And if Robin should be cast Sudden from his turfed grave, She would weep, and he would craze : He would swear, for all his oaks, Fall'n beneath the Dock-yard strokes, Have rotted on the briny seas; She would weep that her wild bees So it is! yet let us sing, And to all the Sherwood clan Though their days have hurried by Let us two a burden try. I hope you will like them-they are at least written in the spirit of outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines. Souls of Poets dead and gone, Have ye tippled drink more fine |