the Settlement yet? The letters must surely have miscarried. I am in
expectation every day. Peachey wrote me a few days ago, saying some more
acquaintances of his were preparing to set out for Birkbeck; therefore, I
shall take the opportunity of sending you what I can muster in a sheet or
two. I am still at Wentworth Place--indeed, I have kept indoors lately,
resolved if possible to rid myself of my sore throat; consequently I have
not been to see your Mother since my return from Chichester; but my
absence from her has been a great weight upon me. I say since my return
from Chichester--I believe I told you I was going thither. I was nearly a
fortnight at Mr. John Snook's and a few days at old Mr. Dilke's. Nothing
worth speaking of happened at either place. I took down some thin paper
and wrote on it a little poem called St. Agnes's Eve, which you shall have
as it is when I have finished the blank part of the rest for you. I went
out twice at Chichester to dowager Card parties. I see very little now,
and very few persons, being almost tired of men and things. Brown and
Dilke are very kind and considerate towards me. The Miss R.'s have been
stopping next door lately, but are very dull. Miss Brawne and I have every
now and then a chat and a tiff. Brown and Dilke are walking round their
garden, hands in pockets, making observations. The literary world I know
nothing about. There is a poem from Rogers dead born; and another satire
is expected from Byron, called "Don Giovanni." Yesterday I went to town
for the first time for these three weeks. I met people from all parts and
of all sets--Mr. Towers, one of the Holts, Mr. Dominie Williams, Mr.
Woodhouse, Mrs. Hazlitt and son, Mrs. Webb, and Mrs. Septimus Brown. Mr.
Woodhouse was looking up at a book window in Newgate Street, and, being
short-sighted, twisted his muscles into so queer a stage that I stood by
in doubt whether it was him or his brother, if he has one, and turning
round, saw Mrs. Hazlitt, with that little Nero, her son. Woodhouse, on his
features subsiding, proved to be Woodhouse, and not his brother. I have
had a little business with Mr. Abbey from time to time; he has behaved to
me with a little Brusquerie: this hurt me a little, especially when I knew
him to be the only man in England who dared to say a thing to me I did not
approve of without its being resented, or at least noticed--so I wrote him
about it, and have made an alteration in my favour--I expect from this to
see more of Fanny, who has been quite shut out from me. I see Cobbett has
been attacking the Settlement, but I cannot tell what to believe, and
shall be all out at elbows till I hear from you. I am invited to Miss
Millar's birthday dance on the 19th--I am nearly sure I shall not be able
to go. A dance would injure my throat very much. I see very little of
Reynolds. Hunt, I hear, is going on very badly--I mean in money matters.
I shall not be surprised to hear of the worst. Haydon too, in consequence
of his eyes, is out at elbows. I live as prudently as it is possible for
me to do. I have not seen Haslam lately. I have not seen Richards for this
half year, Rice for three months, or Charles Cowden Clarke for God knows
when.
When I last called in Henrietta Street[88] Miss Millar was very unwell,
and Miss Waldegrave as staid and self-possessed as usual. Henry was well.
There are two new tragedies--one by the apostate Maw, and one by Miss Jane
Porter. Next week I am going to stop at Taylor's for a few days, when I
will see them both and tell you what they are. Mr. and Mrs. Bentley are
well, and all the young carrots. I said nothing of consequence passed at
Snook's--no more than this--that I like the family very much. Mr. and Mrs.
Snook were very kind We used to have a little religion and politics
together almost every evening,--and sometimes about you. He proposed
writing out for me his experience in farming, for me to send to you. If I
should have an opportunity of talking to him about it, I will get all I
can at all events; but you may say in your answer to this what value you
place upon such information. I have not seen Mr. Lewis lately, for I have
shrank from going up the hill. Mr. Lewis went a few mornings ago to town
with Mrs. Brawne. They talked about me, and I heard that Mr. L. said a
thing I am not at all contented with. Says he, "O, he is quite the little
poet." Now this is abominable--You might as well say Buonaparte is quite
the little soldier. You see what it is to be under six foot and not a
lord. There is a long fuzz to-day in the Examiner about a young man who
delighted a young woman with a valentine--I think it must be Ollier's.
Brown and I are thinking of passing the summer at Brussels--If we do, we
shall go about the first of May. We--_i.e._ Brown and I--sit opposite one
another all day authorizing (_N.B._, an "s" instead of a "z" would give a
different meaning). He is at present writing a story of an old woman who
lived in a forest, and to whom the Devil or one of his aides-de-feu came
one night very late and in disguise. The old dame sets before him pudding
after pudding--mess after mess--which he devours, and moreover casts his
eyes up at a side of Bacon hanging over his head, and at the same time
asks if her Cat is a Rabbit. On going he leaves her three pips of Eve's
Apple, and somehow she, having lived a virgin all her life, begins to
repent of it, and wished herself beautiful enough to make all the world
and even the other world fall in love with her. So it happens, she sets
out from her smoky cottage in magnificent apparel.--The first City she
enters, every one falls in love with her, from the Prince to the
Blacksmith. A young gentleman on his way to the Church to be married
leaves his unfortunate Bride and follows this nonsuch--A whole regiment of
soldiers are smitten at once and follow her--A whole convent of Monks in
Corpus Christi procession join the soldiers.--The mayor and corporation
follow the same road--Old and young, deaf and dumb,--all but the
blind,--are smitten, and form an immense concourse of people, who----what
Brown will do with them I know not. The devil himself falls in love with
her, flies away with her to a desert place, in consequence of which she
lays an infinite number of eggs--the eggs being hatched from time to time,
fill the world with many nuisances, such as John Knox, George Fox, Johanna
Southcote, and Gifford.
There have been within a fortnight eight failures of the highest
consequence in London. Brown went a few evenings since to Davenport's, and
on his coming in he talked about bad news in the city with such a face I
began to think of a national bankruptcy. I did not feel much surprised and
was rather disappointed. Carlisle, a bookseller on the Hone principle, has
been issuing pamphlets from his shop in Fleet Street called the Deist. He
was conveyed to Newgate last Thursday; he intends making his own defence.
I was surprised to hear from Taylor the amount of money of the
bookseller's last sale. What think you of L25,000? He sold 4000 copies of
Lord Byron. I am sitting opposite the Shakspeare I brought from the Isle
of Wight--and I never look at him but the silk tassels on it give me as
much pleasure as the face of the poet itself.[89]
In my next packet, as this is one by the way, I shall send you the Pot of
Basil, St. Agnes Eve, and if I should have finished it, a little thing
called the Eve of St. Mark. You see what fine Mother Radcliff names I
have--it is not my fault--I do not search for them. I have not gone on
with Hyperion--for to tell the truth I have not been in great cue for
writing lately--I must wait for the spring to rouse me up a little. The
only time I went out from Bedhampton was to see a chapel
consecrated--Brown, I, and John Snook the boy, went in a chaise behind a
leaden horse. Brown drove, but the horse did not mind him. This chapel is
built by a Mr. Way, a great Jew converter, who in that line has spent one
hundred thousand pounds. He maintains a great number of poor Jews--_Of
course his communion plate was stolen_. He spoke to the clerk about
it--The clerk said he was very sorry, adding, "_I dare shay, your honour,
it's among ush_."
The chapel is built in Mr. Way's park. The consecration was not amusing.
There were numbers of carriages--and his house crammed with clergy--They
sanctified the Chapel, and it being a wet day, consecrated the
burial-ground through the vestry window. I begin to hate parsons; they did
not make me love them that day when I saw them in their proper colours. A
parson is a Lamb in a drawing-room, and a Lion in a vestry. The notions of
Society will not permit a parson to give way to his temper in any
shape--So he festers in himself--his features get a peculiar, diabolical,
self-sufficient, iron stupid expression. He is continually acting--his
mind is against every man, and every man's mind is against him--He is a
hypocrite to the Believer and a coward to the unbeliever--He must be
either a knave or an idiot--and there is no man so much to be pitied as an
idiot parson. The soldier who is cheated into an Esprit du Corps by a red
coat, a band, and colours, for the purpose of nothing, is not half so
pitiable as the parson who is led by the nose by the Bench of Bishops and
is smothered in absurdities--a poor necessary subaltern of the Church.
Friday, Feb{y.} 18.
The day before yesterday I went to Romney Street--your Mother was not at
home--but I have just written her that I shall see her on Wednesday. I
call'd on Mr. Lewis this morning--he is very well--and tells me not to be
uneasy about Letters, the chances being so arbitrary. He is going on as
usual among his favourite democrat papers. We had a chat as usual about
Cobbett and the Westminster electors. Dilke has lately been very much
harrassed about the manner of educating his son--he at length decided for
a public school--and then he did not know what school--he at last has
decided for Westminster; and as Charley is to be a day boy, Dilke will
remove to Westminster. We lead very quiet lives here--Dilke is at present
in Greek histories and antiquities, and talks of nothing but the electors
of Westminster and the retreat of the ten-thousand. I never drink now
above three glasses of wine--and never any spirits and water. Though by
the bye, the other day Woodhouse took me to his coffee house and ordered a
Bottle of Claret--now I like Claret, whenever I can have Claret I must
drink it,--'tis the only palate affair that I am at all sensual in. Would
it not be a good speck to send you some vine roots--could it be done? I'll
enquire--If you could make some wine like Claret to drink on summer
evenings in an arbour! For really 'tis so fine--it fills one's mouth with
a gushing freshness--then goes down cool and feverless--then you do not
feel it quarrelling with your liver--no, it is rather a Peacemaker, and
lies as quiet as it did in the grape; then it is as fragrant as the Queen
Bee, and the more ethereal Part of it mounts into the brain, not
assaulting the cerebral apartments like a bully in a bad-house looking for
his trull and hurrying from door to door bouncing against the wainstcoat,
but rather walks like Aladdin about his own enchanted palace so gently
that you do not feel his step. Other wines of a heavy and spirituous
nature transform a Man to a Silenus: this makes him a Hermes--and gives a
Woman the soul and immortality of Ariadne, for whom Bacchus always kept a
good cellar of claret--and even of that he could never persuade her to
take above two cups. I said this same claret is the only palate-passion I
have--I forgot game--I must plead guilty to the breast of a Partridge, the
back of a hare, the backbone of a grouse, the wing and side of a Pheasant
and a Woodcock _passim_. Talking of game (I wish I could make it), the
Lady whom I met at Hastings and of whom I said something in my last I
think has lately made me many presents of game, and enabled me to make as
many. She made me take home a Pheasant the other day, which I gave to Mrs.
Dilke; on which to-morrow Rice, Reynolds and the Wentworthians will dine
next door. The next I intend for your Mother. These moderate sheets of
paper are much more pleasant to write upon than those large thin sheets
which I hope you by this time have received--though that can't be, now I
think of it. I have not said in any Letter yet a word about my affairs--in
a word I am in no despair about them--my poem has not at all succeeded; in
the course of a year or so I think I shall try the public again--in a
selfish point of view I should suffer my pride and my contempt of public
opinion to hold me silent--but for yours and Fanny's sake I will pluck up
a spirit and try again. I have no doubt of success in a course of years if
I persevere--but it must be patience, for the Reviews have enervated and
made indolent men's minds--few think for themselves. These Reviews too are
getting more and more powerful, especially the Quarterly--they are like a
superstition which the more it prostrates the Crowd and the longer it
continues the more powerful it becomes just in proportion to their
increasing weakness. I was in hopes that when people saw, as they must do
now, all the trickery and iniquity of these Plagues they would scout them,
but no, they are like the spectators at the Westminster cock-pit--they
like the battle and do not care who wins or who loses. Brown is going on
this morning with the story of his old woman and the Devil--He makes but
slow progress--The fact is it is a Libel on the Devil, and as that person
is Brown's Muse, look ye, if he libels his own Muse how can he expect to
write? Either Brown or his Muse must turn tail. Yesterday was Charley
Dilke's birthday. Brown and I were invited to tea. During the evening
nothing passed worth notice but a little conversation between Mrs. Dilke
and Mrs. Brawne. The subject was the Watchman. It was ten o'clock, and
Mrs. Brawne, who lived during the summer in Brown's house and now lives in
the Road, recognised her old Watchman's voice, and said that he came as
far as her now. "Indeed," said Mrs. D., "does he turn the Corner?" There
have been some Letters passed between me and Haslam but I have not seen
him lately. The day before yesterday--which I made a day of Business--I
called upon him--he was out as usual. Brown has been walking up and down
the room a-breeding--now at this moment he is being delivered of a
couplet, and I daresay will be as well as can be expected. Gracious--he
has twins!
I have a long story to tell you about Bailey--I will say first the
circumstances as plainly and as well as I can remember, and then I will
make my comment. You know that Bailey was very much cut up about a little
Jilt in the country somewhere. I thought he was in a dying state about it
when at Oxford with him: little supposing, as I have since heard, that he
was at that very time making impatient Love to Marian Reynolds--and guess
my astonishment at hearing after this that he had been trying at Miss
Martin. So Matters have been--So Matters stood--when he got ordained and
went to a Curacy near Carlisle, where the family of the Gleigs reside.
There his susceptible heart was conquered by Miss Gleig--and thereby all
his connections in town have been annulled--both male and female. I do not
now remember clearly the facts--These however I know--He showed his
correspondence with Marian to Gleig, returned all her Letters and asked
for his own--he also wrote very abrupt Letters to Mrs. Reynolds. I do not
know any more of the Martin affair than I have written above. No doubt his
conduct has been very bad. The great thing to be considered is--whether it
is want of delicacy and principle or want of knowledge and polite
experience. And again weakness--yes, that is it; and the want of a
Wife--yes, that is it; and then Marian made great Bones of him although
her Mother and sister have teased her very much about it. Her conduct has
been very upright throughout the whole affair--She liked Bailey as a
Brother but not as a Husband--especially as he used to woo her with the
Bible and Jeremy Taylor under his arm--they walked in no grove but Jeremy
Taylor's. Marian's obstinacy is some excuse, but his so quickly taking to
Miss Gleig can have no excuse--except that of a Ploughman who wants a
wife. The thing which sways me more against him than anything else is
Rice's conduct on the occasion; Rice would not make an immature resolve:
he was ardent in his friendship for Bailey, he examined the whole for and
against minutely; and he has abandoned Bailey entirely. All this I am not
supposed by the Reynoldses to have any hint of. It will be a good lesson
to the Mother and Daughters--nothing would serve but Bailey. If you
mentioned the word Tea-pot some one of them came out with an a propros
about Bailey--noble fellow--fine fellow! was always in their mouths--This
may teach them that the man who ridicules romance is the most romantic of
Men--that he who abuses women and slights them loves them the most--that
he who talks of roasting a Man alive would not do it when it came to the
push--and above all, that they are very shallow people who take everything
literally. A Man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few
eyes can see the Mystery of his life--a life like the scriptures,
figurative--which such people can no more make out than they can the
Hebrew Bible. Lord Byron cuts a figure but he is not figurative--Shakspeare
led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it--
March 12, Friday.
I went to town yesterday chiefly for the purpose of seeing some young Men
who were to take some Letters for us to you--through the medium of
Peachey. I was surprised and disappointed at hearing they had changed
their minds, and did not purpose going so far as Birkbeck's. I was much
disappointed, for I had counted upon seeing some persons who were to see
you--and upon your seeing some who had seen me. I have not only lost this
opportunity, but the sail of the Post-Packet to New York or Philadelphia,
by which last your Brothers have sent some Letters. The weather in town
yesterday was so stifling that I could not remain there though I wanted
much to see Kean in Hotspur. I have by me at present Hazlitt's Letter to
Gifford--perhaps you would like an extract or two from the high-seasoned
parts. It begins thus:
"Sir, you have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one
you do not like; and it will be the object of this Letter to cure you
of it. You say what you please of others; it is time you were told
what you are. In doing this give me leave to borrow the familiarity
of your style:--for the fidelity of the picture I shall be
answerable. You are a little person but a considerable cat's paw; and
so far worthy of notice. Your clandestine connection with persons
high in office constantly influences your opinions and alone gives
importance to them. You are the government critic, a character nicely
differing from that of a government spy--the invisible link which
connects literature with the Police."
Again:
"Your employers, Mr. Gifford, do not pay their hirelings for
nothing--for condescending to notice weak and wicked sophistry; for
pointing out to contempt what excites no admiration; for cautiously
selecting a few specimens of bad taste and bad grammar where nothing
else is to be found. They want your invisible pertness, your
mercenary malice, your impenetrable dulness, your bare-faced
impudence, your pragmatical self-sufficiency, your hypocritical zeal,
your pious frauds to stand in the gap of their Prejudices and
pretensions to fly-blow and taint public opinion, to defeat
independent efforts, to apply not the touch of the scorpion but the
touch of the Torpedo to youthful hopes, to crawl and leave the slimy
track of sophistry and lies over every work that does not dedicate
its sweet leaves to some Luminary of the treasury bench, or is not
fostered in the hotbed of corruption. This is your office; 'this is
what is look'd for at your hands, and this you do not baulk'--to
sacrifice what little honesty and prostitute what little intellect
you possess to any dirty job you are commission'd to execute. 'They
keep you as an ape does an apple in the corner of his jaw, first
mouth'd to be at last swallow'd.' You are by appointment literary
toadeater to greatness and taster to the court. You have a natural
aversion to whatever differs from your own pretensions, and an
acquired one for what gives offence to your superiors. Your vanity
panders to your interest, and your malice truckles only to your love
of Power. If your instructive or premeditated abuse of your enviable
trust were found wanting in a single instance; if you were to make a
single slip in getting up your select committee of enquiry and green
bag report of the state of Letters, your occupation would be gone.
You would never after obtain a squeeze of the hand from acquaintance,
or a smile from a Punk of Quality. The great and powerful whom you
call wise and good do not like to have the privacy of their self-love
startled by the obtrusive and unmanageable claims of Literature and
Philosophy, except through the intervention of people like you, whom,
if they have common penetration, they soon find out to be without any
superiority of intellect; or if they do not, whom they can despise
for their meanness of soul. You 'have the office opposite to Saint
Peter.' You keep a corner in the public mind for foul prejudice and
corrupt power to knot and gender in; you volunteer your services to
people of quality to ease scruples of mind and qualms of conscience;
you lay the flattering unction of venal prose and laurell'd verse to
their souls. You persuade them that there is neither purity of
morals, nor depth of understanding except in themselves and their
hangers-on; and would prevent the unhallow'd names of Liberty and
humanity from ever being whispered in ears polite! You, sir, do you
not all this? I cry you mercy then: I took you for the Editor of the
Quarterly Review."
This is the sort of feu de joie he keeps up. There is another extract or
two--one especially which I will copy to-morrow--for the candles are burnt
down and I am using the wax taper--which has a long snuff on it--the fire
is at its last click--I am sitting with my back to it with one foot rather
askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated from the
carpet--I am writing this on the Maid's Tragedy, which I have read since
tea with great pleasure--Besides this volume of Beaumont and Fletcher,
there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of Tom
Moore's, called Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress--nothing in it. These are
trifles--but I require nothing so much of you but that you will give one a
like description of yourselves, however it may be when you are writing to
me. Could I see the same thing done of any great Man long since dead it
would be a great delight: as to know in what position Shakspeare sat when
he began "To be or not to be"--such things become interesting from
distance of time or place. I hope you are both now in that sweet sleep
which no two beings deserve more than you do--I must fancy so--and please
myself in the fancy of speaking a prayer and a blessing over you and your
lives--God bless you--I whisper good-night in your ears, and you will
dream of me.
March 13, Saturday.
I have written to Fanny this morning and received a note from Haslam. I
was to have dined with him to-morrow: he gives me a bad account of his
Father, who has not been in Town for five weeks, and is not well enough
for company. Haslam is well--and from the prosperous state of some love
affair he does not mind the double tides he has to work. I have been a
Walk past west end--and was going to call at Mr. Monkhouse's--but I did
not, not being in the humour. I know not why Poetry and I have been so
distant lately; I must make some advances soon or she will cut me
entirely. Hazlitt has this fine Passage in his Letter: Gifford in his
Review of Hazlitt's characters of Shakspeare's plays attacks the
Coriolanus critique. He says that Hazlitt has slandered Shakspeare in
saying that he had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question.
Hazlitt thus defends himself,