but your “fierce vivacity” is a faint copy of the “fierce and terrible benevolence” of Southey; added to this, that it will look like rivalship in you, and extort a comparison with Southey,—­I think to your disadvantage.  And the lines, considered in themselves as an addition to what you had before written (strains of a far higher mood), are but such as Madame Fancy loves in some of her more familiar moods,—­at such times as she has met Noll Goldsmith, and walked and talked with him, calling him “old acquaintance.”  Southey certainly has no pretensions to vie with you in the sublime of poetry; but he tells a plain tale better than you.  I will enumerate some woful blemishes, some of ’em sad deviations from that simplicity which was your aim.  “Hailed who might be near” (the “canvas-coverture moving,” by the by, is laughable); “a woman and six children” (by the way, why not nine children?  It would have been just half as pathetic again); “statues of sleep they seemed;” “frost-mangled wretch;” “green putridity;” “hailed him immortal” (rather ludicrous again); “voiced a sad and simple tale” (abominable!); “unprovendered;” “such his tale;” “Ah, suffering to the height of what was sufffered” (a most insufferable line); “amazements of affright;” “The hot, sore brain attributes its own hues of ghastliness and torture” (what shocking confusion of ideas!).

In these delineations of common and natural feelings, in the familiar walks of poetry, you seem to resemble Montauban dancing with Roubigne’s tenants [1], “much of his native loftiness remained in the execution.”

I was reading your “Religious Musings” the other day, and sincerely I think it the noblest poem in the language next after the “Paradise Lost;” and even that was not made the vehicle of such grand truths.  “There is one mind,” etc., down to “Almighty’s throne,” are without a rival in the whole compass of my poetical reading.

  “Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze
  Views all creation.”

I wish I could have written those lines.  I rejoice that I am able to relish them.  The loftier walks of Pindus are your proper region.  There you have no compeer in modern times.  Leave the lowlands, unenvied, in possession of such men as Cowper and Southey.  Thus am I pouring balsam into the wounds I may have been inflicting on my poor friend’s vanity.

In your notice of Southey’s new volume you omit to mention the most pleasing of all, the “Miniature.”

  “There were
  Who formed high hopes and flattering ones of thee,
  Young Robert!”

  “Spirit of Spenser! was the wanderer wrong?”

Fairfax I have been in quest of a long time.  Johnson, in his “Life of Waller,” gives a most delicious specimen of him, and adds, in the true manner of that delicate critic, as well as amiable man, “It may be presumed that this old version will not be much read after the elegant translation of my friend Mr. Hoole.”  I endeavored—­I wished to gain some idea of Tasso from this Mr. Hoole, the great boast and ornament of the India House, but soon desisted.  I found him more vapid than smallest small beer “sun-vinegared.”  Your “Dream,” down to that exquisite line,—­