“Yesterday evening, on my return from the raceground, I found your poem* lying on the table. A provoking engagement called me from it for two or three hours; but notwithstanding this, and my obstinate habit of getting early to bed, I did not go to rest till I had finished the book. Every reader’s first thought, when he begins to think at all, will be to compare you with yourself. If I may judge from my own feelings, the Lady will be a greater favourite than either of her elder brethren. There is in all,
| Ætat. 36. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 285 |
“I wished most of the songs away on the first perusal;
on recurring to them, I was glad they were there; yet, wherever they interrupt
the narrative, without in any way tending to carry on the business of the
story, my admiration of the things themselves does not prevent me from thinking
them misplaced. Your title is likely to be a popular one; and for that very
reason, I wish it had not been chosen. Of course it led me to expect some tale
of Merlin or King
Arthur’s days; but what is of real consequence to one who
loves old lays is, that whenever hereafter the Lady of the Lake will be
mentioned, most readers will suppose your Ellen is intended; and in this way a sort of offence against
antiquity has been committed. This is something in the manner of Momus’s criticism, to find fault with the
trinkets of the Lady and with her name. But I heartily give you joy of the
poem, and congratulate you with perfect confidence upon the success which you
have a right to expect, which you deserve, and which you will find. The
| 286 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 36. |
“Longman was instructed to send you my Brazil. I hope to get a long spell at the concluding volume before it is necessary to fall seriously to work upon the second Register. What you will think of Kehama I am not quite sure,—of what the public will think, I can have, and never have had, the slightest doubt. No subject could have been devised more remote from human sympathies; and there are so few persons who are capable of standing aloof from them, that the subject must be admitted to have been imprudently chosen, if in choosing it I had had any other motive than that of pleasing myself and some half a dozen others. If it had been my intention to provoke censure, I could not have done it more effectually; for without intending any innovation, or being at first sensible of any, I have fallen into a style of versification as unusual as the ground-work of the story; with this, however, I am well satisfied. I have written the first canto of Pelayo in blank verse, and without machinery. This promises to be a striking poem, and, if it were ready now, might perhaps, in some degree, be a useful one.
“The metre of the Lady is to me less agreeable than the more varied measure. There is
an advantage in writing in a metre to which one has been little accustomed; it
necessarily induces a certain change of style, and thus enables the writer to
clothe his old
| Ætat. 36. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 287 |
“I shall return home in the course of a fortnight; a short interval of idleness makes me feel impatient to get once more to my books and my desk. Pray remember me to Mrs. Scott, and believe me,
