“You make a confession respecting Milton which nine hundred and ninety-nine
persons out of the thousand would make if they were honest enough; for his main
excellencies are like M. Angelo’s,
only to be thoroughly appreciated by an artist. This, however, by no means
incapacitates you from reviewing Hayley’s book, in which your business lies with Cowper and with his biographer, one of whose
works (his Animal Ballads)
I once reviewed by quoting from O’Keefe’s song,—Hayley, gaily, gamboraily, higgledy,
pigglegy, galloping, draggle-tail, dreary dun. Hayley, as
Miss Seward has just remarked to me
in a letter, is perfectly insane upon the subject of
Cowper’s resemblance to
Milton; there is no other resemblance between them
than that both wrote in blank verse—but blank verse as different as
possible. You may compare Cowper’s translations
(which, I suppose are very bad, as many of his lesser pieces are, and as
Miss Seward tells me) with Langhorne’s; and you may estimate
Cowper himself as a poet, as a man of intellect, and
as a translator of Homer, showing that he
is not over-valued; but
| Ætat. 35. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 205 |
“Ah, Grosvenor! the very way in which you, admire that passage in Kehama* convinces me that it ought not to be there. Did I not tell you it was clap-trappish? you are clapping as hard as you can to prove the truth of my opinion. That it grew there naturally is certain, but does it suit with the poem? is it of a piece or colour with the whole? Is not the poet speaking in himself, whereas the whole character of the poem requires that he should be out of himself! I know very well that three parts of the public will agree with you in calling it the best thing in the poem; but my poem ought to have no things which do not necessarily belong to it. There will be a great deal to do to it, and a good deal is already done in the preceding parts.
“I have long expected a schism between the Grenvilles and the Foxites. Jeffrey has been trying to unite the Opposition and the Jacobins, as they are called. He hurts the Opposition, and he wrongs the Jacobins; he hurts the former by associating them with a name that is still unpopular, and he wrongs the friends of liberty by supposing that they are not the deadliest enemies of Bonaparte. Walter Scott,
* See Curse of Kehama, Canto x. verse 20. commencing—
|
| 206 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 35. |
“I have had a grievous cold, which has prevented me from rising as soon as it is light, and thereby, for awhile, stopped Kehama. This evening I have corrected the fourth sheet of Brazil; the volume will be ready in the spring. I am now busy in filling up some skeleton chapters in the middle of the volume. This will be as true a history, and as industriously and painfully made, as ever yet appeared; yet I cannot say that I expect much present approbation for it. It is deficient in fine circumstances; and as for what is called fine writing, the public will get none of that article from me; sound sense, sound philosophy, and sound English I will give them.
“I was beginning to wonder what was become of Wynn. Can you procure for me a copy of the
report of the Court of Inquiry, or will you ask Rickman if he can? I do not write to him till the
| Ætat. 35. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 207 |
