saw a serpent gnawing at her heart!” They are good imitative lines:  “he toiled and toiled, of toil to reap no end, but endless toil and never-ending woe.”  Page 347:  Cruelty is such as Hogarth might have painted her.  Page 361:  all the passage about Love (where he seems to confound conjugal love with creating and preserving love) is very confused, and sickens me with a load of useless personifications; else that ninth book is the finest in the volume,—­an exquisite combination of the ludicrous and the terrible.  I have never read either, even in translation, but such I conceive to be the manner of Dante or Ariosto.  The tenth book is the most languid.

On the whole, considering the celerity wherewith the poem was finished, I was astonished at the unfrequency of weak lines, I had expected to find it verbose.  Joan, I think, does too little in battle, Dunois perhaps the same; Conrade too much.  The anecdotes interspersed among the battles refresh the mind very agreeably, and I am delighted with the very many passages of simple pathos abounding throughout the poem,—­passages which the author of “Crazy Kate” might have written.  Has not Master Southey spoke very slightingly in his preface and disparagingly of Cowper’s Homer?  What makes him reluctant to give Cowper his fame?  And does not Southey use too often the expletives “did” and “does”?  They have a good effect at times, but are too inconsiderable, or rather become blemishes when they mark a style.  On the whole, I expect Southey one day to rival Milton; I already deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to all living poets besides.  What says Coleridge?  The “Monody on Henderson” is immensely good; the rest of that little volume is readable and above mediocrity? [2] I proceed to a more pleasant task,—­pleasant because the poems are yours; pleasant because you impose the task on me; and pleasant, let me add, because it will confer a whimsical importance on me to sit in judgment upon your rhymes.  First, though, let me thank you again and again, in my own and my sister’s name, for your invitations.  Nothing could give us more pleasure than to come; but (were there no other reasons) while my brother’s leg is so bad, it is out of the question.  Poor fellow! he is very feverish and light-headed; but Cruikshanks has pronounced the symptoms favourable, and gives us every hope that there will be no need of amputation.  God send not!  We are necessarily confined with him all the afternoon and evening till very late, so that I am stealing a few minutes to write to you.

Thank you for your frequent letters; you are the only correspondent and, I might add, the only friend I have in the world.  I go nowhere, and have no acquaintance.  Slow of speech and reserved of manners, no one seeks or cares for my society, and I am left alone.  Austin calls only occasionally, as though it were a duty rather, and seldom stays ten minutes.  Then judge how thankful I am for your letters!  Do not, however, burden yourself with the correspondence.  I trouble you again so soon only in obedience to your injunctions.  Complaints apart, proceed we to our task.  I am called away to tea,—­thence must wait upon my brother; so must delay till to-morrow.  Farewell!—­Wednesday.