“In one of the first books which I published a crazy compositor took it into his head to correct the proofs after me; and this he did so assiduously, that it cost me no fewer than sixteen cancels to get rid of the most intolerable of his blunders. One of his principles was, that in printing verse, wherever the lines were so indented that two in succession did not begin in the same perpendicular, there was to be a full stop at the end of the former; and upon this principle he punctuated my verses. I discovered it at last in the printing-office, upon inquiring how it happened that the very faults for which a leaf was cancelled appeared most perseveringly in the reprint. The man then came forward, quite in a fit of madness, told me I should have made a pretty book of it if he had not corrected it for me, and it was as much as the master of the office could do to pacify him.
“You have, I think, at Tours, the grave of Ronsard, who would have been a great poet if
he had not been a Frenchman. I have read his works in those odds and ends of
time which can be afforded to such reading, and have so much respect for him,
Frenchman as he was, that I shall not visit Tours without inquiring for his
grave. Never did man more boldly promise immortality to himself,—never
did man more ardently aspire after it; and no Frenchman has ever impressed me
with an equal sense of power; but poetry of the higher order is as impossible
in that
| Ætat. 40. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 101 |
“I have begun my Quaker poem, and written the first
book in irregular rhyme,—a measure which allows of a lower key than any
structure of rhymeless verse, and may be laid aside, when the passion requires
it, for dialogue. The principal character is rather a Seeker (in the language
of that day) than a Quaker, a son of Goffe, the King’s Judge, a godson of Cromwell, a friend of Milton, a companion of William Penn. The plan is sufficiently made
out; but I have no longer that ardour of execution which I possessed twenty
years ago. I have the disheartening conviction that my best is done, and that
to add to the bulk of my works will not be to add to their estimation.
Doubtless I shall go on with the poem, and complete it if I live; but it will
be to please others, not myself; and will be so long in progress, that in all
likelihood I shall never begin another. You see I am not without those autumnal
feelings
| 102 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 40. |
“I hope to see you in the autumn, and will, if it be possible. God bless you!
