I have to thank you for your very welcome present of our pleasant historian of New York; I have seldom found so much amusement in a book of that kind, and certainly never met with illustrations* which embodied so truly the peculiar and happy spirit of the author.
I am afraid you will think I take an ungenerous advantage of your kindness in adding to my thanks something about myself. I have long felt like Burns the wish to write “a Book or sing a song at least,” and this I have accomplished with more success than I had any right to expect; but here I have no wish to stop. I am anxious to put forth all my strength, my knowledge of nature, and character, and all my sympathy with the purer feelings and superstitious beliefs of my native land. I wish to put them forth in a Poem or a Prose Romance. Something of this kind it has long been my wish to do, and Sir Walter Scott was so good as urge me to imagine a Romantic Drama, and fill it with lyrics; and he went farther—he pointed out a subject. It is true that in poetry and also in prose there are giants in the land, and by no person could such a circumstance be more felt than by the illustrious friend who gave me this counsel. To a mind which thinks and sees and feels for itself there is enough of originality in nature, and, possest as my heart is with an impressive
* They were by Charles Leslie, R.A. |
| 154 | MEMOIRS OF JOHN MURRAY |
I could certainly find a way to the world for such a work as I shall write, and also obtain a moderate recompense; but need I tell you the reasons which induce me to think of you? The external grace which you cast over all your productions, the certainty of their winning public favour if they deserve it, and the liberality which you show to all those, and they are many, who are so fortunate as walk in the highway to fame, of which the English name is Albemarle Street.
I know that to many, a Book written by one in humble life suggests immediate images of rudeness and vulgarity. It is true I have not been so well educated as some of the foremost favourites of literature; but there are two kinds of knowledge and two kinds of taste—of the latter there is the natural and the acquired—the first is the more spirited monitor and the latter the dullest. Of education there is the kind infused by the stripes or the persuasion of a teacher, and that which is obtained by observing men, and musing on nature and seeking for knowledge among the works of the wise and the gifted which are open to all. In such a school has my mind been disciplined, and I can see nothing to interpose between a scholar of this sort and the greatest purity of thought and delicacy of expression. I have read much and observed much and stored my mind with the characters and feelings and actions and superstitious beliefs of the poetic people of a region into which the muse has but partially penetrated.
If you put faith in me, may I ask what encouragement you would offer for a Dramatic Romance in blank verse of three hundred octavo pages, or a Prose Romance in three volumes.
