[Postscript added on first page:] I have desired Messrs. Longman to put aside for you a copy of the new edition of my poems, compressed into four vols.  It contains nothing but what has before seen the light, but several poems which were not in the last.  Pray direct your Dublin publisher to apply for it.

[128] Memoirs, ii. 260, with important additions from the original.  G.

81. ‘Remains of Lucretia Davidson:’  Public Events:  Miss Jewsbury, &c.

LETTER TO MRS. HEMANS.

Rydal Mount, Nov. 22 [1832].

DEAR MRS. HEMANS,

I will not render this sheet more valueless than at best it will prove, by tedious apologies for not answering your very kind and welcome letter long and long ago.  I received it in London, when my mind was in a most uneasy state, and when my eyes were useless both for writing and reading, so that an immediate reply was out of my power; and, since, I have been doubtful where to address you.  Accept this, and something better, as my excuse, that I have very often thought of you with kindness and good wishes for your welfare, and that of your fine boys, who must recommend themselves to all that come in their way.  Let me thank you in Dora’s name for your present of The Remains of Lucretia Davidson, a very extraordinary young creature, of whom I had before read some account in Mr. Southey’s review of this volume.  Surely many things, not often bestowed, must concur to make genius an enviable gift.  This truth is painfully forced upon one’s attention in reading the effusions and story of this enthusiast, hurried to her grave so early.  You have, I understand, been a good deal in Dublin.  The place I hope has less of the fever of intellectual, or rather literary, ambition than Edinburgh, and is less disquieted by factions and cabals of persons.  As to those of parties they must be odious and dreadful enough; but since they have more to do with religion, the adherents of the different creeds perhaps mingle little together, and so the mischief to social intercourse, though great, will be somewhat less.

I am not sure but that Miss Jewsbury has judged well in her determination of going to India.  Europe is at present a melancholy spectacle, and these two Islands are likely to reap the fruit of their own folly and madness, in becoming, for the present generation, the two most unquiet and miserable spots upon the earth.  May you, my dear friend, find the advantage of the poetic spirit in raising you, in thought at least, above the contentious clouds!  Never before did I feel such reason to be grateful for what little inspiration heaven has graciously bestowed upon my humble intellect.  What you kindly wrote upon the interest you took during your travels in my verses, could not but be grateful to me, because your own show that in a rare degree you understand and sympathise with me.  We are all well, God be thanked.