“I have just been honoured with your letter.—I feel sorry
that you should have thought it worth while to notice the ‘evil works of my
nonage,’ as the thing is suppressed voluntarily, and your
explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The Satire was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on
displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale
assertions. I cannot sufficiently thank you for your praise; and now, waving myself, let
me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to
be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal
lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities: he preferred
you to every bard past and present, and asked which of your works pleased me most. It
was a difficult question. I answered, I thought the ‘Lay.’ He said his own opinion was nearly similar. In
speaking of the others. I told him that I thought you more particularly the poet of Princes, as they never appeared more
fascinating than in ‘Marmion’ and the ‘Lady of the
Lake.’ ‘He was pleased to coincide, and to dwell on the
description of your Jameses as no less royal than poetical. He spoke alternately of
Homer and yourself, and seemed
| 360 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1812. |
“This interview was accidental. I never went to the levee; for having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns, my curiosity was sufficiently allayed; and my politics being as perverse as my rhymes, I had, in fact, ‘no business there.’ To be thus praised by your Sovereign must be gratifying to you; and if that gratification is not alloyed by the communication being made through me, the bearer of it will consider himself very fortunately and sincerely
“P.S. Excuse this scrawl, scratched in a great hurry and just after a journey.”
