“I heartily give you joy of your dear wife’s safe deliverance, and of the birth of your first child,—an event which, of all others in the course of human life, produces the deepest and most permanent impression.
“Who hath not proved it, ill can estimate The feeling of that stirring hour,—the weight Of that new sense; the thoughtful, pensive bliss. In all the changes of our changeful state, Even from the cradle to the grave, I wis The heart doth undergo no change so great as this. |
“So I have written in that poem which will be the next that I hope to send you; but I transcribe the lines here because you will feel their truth at this time. Parental love, however, is of slower growth in a father’s than in a mother’s heart: the child, at its birth, continues, as it were, to be a part of its mother’s life; but, upon the father’s heart it is a graft, and some little time elapses before he feels that it has united and is become inseparable. God bless the babe and its parents, and spare it and them, each for the other’s sake, amen!
| Ætat. 47. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 77 |
“Tilbrook wrote to tell me his disapprobation of my hexameters. His reasons were founded upon some musical theory, which I did not understand farther than to perceive that it was not applicable. His opinion is the only unfavourable one that has reached me; that of my friend Wynn, from whom I expected the most decided displeasure, was, that he ‘disliked them less than he expected.’ Women, as far as I can learn, feel and like the metre universally, without attempting to understand its construction. My brethren of the art approve it, and those whom I acknowledge for my peers are decidedly in its favour. Many persons have thanked me for that part of the preface in which Lord Byron and his infamous works are alluded to. . . . .
“I am going on steadily with many things, the foremost of which is the History of the War. The first volume will be printed in the course of September next. Whether it will be published before the other two, depends upon the booksellers, and is a matter in which I have no concern. I am proceeding also with my Dialogues, and with the Book of the Church,—two works by which I shall deserve well of posterity, whatever treatment they may provoke now from the bigoted, the irreligious, and the factious. But you know how perfectly regardless I am of obloquy and insult. Your brother Henry gave me that kind of praise which is thoroughly gratifying, because I know that I deserve it, when he described me as fearlessly pursuing that course which my own sense of propriety points out, without reference to the humour of the public.
| 78 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 47. |
“In the last Quarterly Review you would recognise me in the account of Huntington. I am preparing a life of Oliver Cromwell for the next. . . . .
