You can hardly have got through my last letter by this time. I hope you
liked the verses I sent you. The news of this week is that Thackeray has
come to London, but is going to leave it again for Devonshire directly.
He came very opportunely to divert my Blue Devils: notwithstanding, we do
not see very much of each other: and he has now so many friends
(especially the Bullers) that he has no such wish for my society. He is
as full of good humour and kindness as ever. The next news is that a new
volume of Tennyson is out: containing nothing more than you have in MS.
except one or two things not worth having. . . .
When you write back (of which there is no hurry) send me an account that
you and your Brother were once telling me at Bosherston, of three
Generals condemned to die after the siege of Pembroke in Cromwell's time:
and of the lot being brought by a little child. Give me their names,
etc. (if you can) pretty circumstantially: or else, tell me where I can
find some notice of it. . . .
I have been poring over Wordsworth lately: which has had much effect in
bettering my Blue Devils: for his philosophy does not abjure melancholy,
but puts a pleasant countenance upon it, and connects it with humanity.
It is very well, if the sensibility that makes us fearful of ourselves is
diverted to become a cause of sympathy and interest with Nature and
mankind: and this I think Wordsworth tends to do. I think I told you of
Shakespeare's sonnets before: I cannot tell you what sweetness I find in
them.
So by Shakespeare's Sonnets roasted, and Wordsworth's poems basted,
My heart will be well toasted, and excellently tasted.
This beautiful couplet must delight you, I think. I will also give you
the two last verses about Clora: though it is more complete and better
without them: strange to say. You must have the goodness to repeat those
you know over first, and then fall upon these: for there is a sort of
reasoning in them, which requires proper order, as much as a proposition
of Euclid. The first of them is not to my liking, but it is too much
trouble about a little thing to work it into a better. You have the two
first stanzas {19}--"ergo"
3.
Nothing can utterly die:
Music aloft upspringing
Turns to pure atoms of sky
Each golden note of thy singing:
And that to which morning did listen
At eve in a rainbow may glisten.
4.
Beauty, when laid in the grave,
Feedeth the lily beside her:
Therefore the soul cannot have
Station or honour denied her:
She will not better her essence,
But wear a crown in God's presence.