. . . I saw Alfred in London--pretty well, I thought. He has written
songs to be stuck between the cantos of the Princess, none of them of the
old champagne flavour, as I think. But I am in a minority about the
Princess, I believe. If you print any poems, I especially desire you
will transmit them to me. I wish I was with you to consider about these:
for though I cannot write poems, you know I consider that I have the old
woman's faculty of judging of them: yes, much better than much cleverer
and wiser men; I pretend to no Genius, but to Taste: which, according to
my aphorism, is the feminine of Genius. . . .
. . . Please to answer me directly. I constantly think of you: and, as I
have often sincerely told you, with a kind of love which I feel towards
but two or three friends. Are you coming to England? How goes on
Grimsby! Doesn't the state of Europe sicken you? Above all, let me have
any poems you print: you are now the only man I expect verse from; such
gloomy grand stuff as you write. Thackeray, to be sure, can write good
ballads, half serious. His Pendennis is very stupid, I think: Dickens'
Copperfield on the whole, very good. He always lights one up somehow.
There is a new volume of posthumous poems by Ebenezer Elliott: with fine
things in it. I don't find myself growing old about Poetry; on the
contrary. I wish I could take twenty years off Alfred's shoulders, and
set him up in his youthful glory: . . . He is the same magnanimous,
kindly, delightful fellow as ever; uttering by far the finest prose
sayings of any one.
_To John Allen_.
BOULGE: _March_ 9/50.