seen.  They have great merit.  He has seen the old Welsh bards on Snowdon—­he has seen the Beautifullest, the strongest, and the Ugliest Man, left alone from the Massacre of the Britons by the Romans, and has painted them from memory (I have seen his paintings), and asserts them to be as good as the figures of Raphael and Angelo, but not better, as they had precisely the same retro-visions and prophetic visions with themself [himself].  The painters in oil (which he will have it that neither of them practised) he affirms to have been the ruin of art, and affirms that all the while he was engaged in his Water paintings, Titian was disturbing him, Titian the III Genius of Oil Painting.  His Pictures—­one in particular, the Canterbury Pilgrims (far above Stothard’s)—­have great merit, but hard, dry, yet with grace.  He has written a Catalogue of them with a most spirited criticism on Chaucer, but mystical and full of Vision.  His poems have been sold hitherto only in Manuscript.  I never read them; but a friend at my desire procured the “Sweep Song.”  There is one to a tiger, which I have heard recited, beginning—­

“Tiger, Tiger, burning bright,
Thro’ the desarts of the night,”

which is glorious, but, alas!  I have not the book; for the man is flown, whither I know not—­to Hades or a Mad House.  But I must look on him as one of the most extraordinary persons of the age.  Montgomery’s book I have not much hope from.  The Society, with the affected name, has been labouring at it for these 20 years, and made few converts.  I think it was injudicious to mix stories avowedly colour’d by fiction with the sad true statements from the parliamentary records, etc., but I wish the little Negroes all the good that can come from it.  I batter’d my brains (not butter’d them—­but it is a bad a) for a few verses for them, but I could make nothing of it.  You have been luckier.  But Blake’s are the flower of the set, you will, I am sure, agree, tho’ some of Montgomery’s at the end are pretty; but the Dream awkwardly paraphras’d from B.

With the exception of an Epilogue for a Private Theatrical, I have written nothing now for near 6 months.  It is in vain to spur me on.  I must wait.  I cannot write without a genial impulse, and I have none.  ’Tis barren all and dearth.  No matter; life is something without scribbling.  I have got rid of my bad spirits, and hold up pretty well this rain-damn’d May.

So we have lost another Poet.  I never much relished his Lordship’s mind, and shall be sorry if the Greeks have cause to miss him.  He was to me offensive, and I never can make out his great power, which his admirers talk of.  Why, a line of Wordsworth’s is a lever to lift the immortal spirit!  Byron can only move the Spleen.  He was at best a Satyrist,—­in any other way he was mean enough.  I dare say I do him injustice; but I cannot love him, nor squeeze a tear to his memory.  He did not like the world, and he has left it, as Alderman Curtis advised the Radicals, “If they don’t like their country, damn ’em, let ’em leave it,” they possessing no rood of ground in England, and he 10,000 acres.  Byron was better than many Curtises.