why, to say truth, George Wynnos and I are both of opinion that nothing but evergreens will grow there; but I trust I shall convert a present deformity into a very pretty hobby-horsical sort of thing. It will not bear looking at for years, and that is a pity; but it will so far resemble the person from whom it takes name, that it is planted, as she has written, for the benefit as well of posterity as of the passing generation. Time and I, says the Spaniard, against any two; and fully confiding in the proverb, I have just undertaken another task. You may know, I have purchased a large lump of wild land, lying adjoining to this little property, which greatly more than doubles my domain. The land is said to be reasonably bought, and I am almost certain I can turn it to advantage by a little judicious expenditure; for this place is already allowed to be worth twice what it cost me; and our people here think so little of planting, and do it so carelessly, that they stare with astonishment at the alteration which well-planted woods make on the face of a country. There is, besides, a very great temptation, from the land running to within a quarter of a mile of a very sweet wild sheet of water, of which (that is, one side of it) I have every chance to become proprietor; this is a poetical circumstance not to be lost sight of, and accordingly I keep it full in my view. I do most devoutly hope Lord Byron will succeed in his proposal of bringing out one of your dramas; that he is your sincere admirer is only synonymous with his being a man of genius; and he has, I am convinced, both the power and the inclination to serve the public, by availing himself of the treasures you have laid before them. Yet I hope for some yet untasted spring,” and heartily wish you would take Lord Byron into your counsels, and adjust, from your yet unpublished materials, some drama for the public. In such a case, I would, in your place, conceal my name till the issue of the adventure. It is a sickening thing to think how many angry and evil passions the mere name of admitted excellence brings into full activity. I wish you would consider this hint, and I am sure the result would be great gratification to the public, and to yourself that sort of satisfaction which arises from receiving proofs of having attained the mark at which you aimed. Of this last, indeed, you cannot doubt, if you consult only the voices of the intelligent and the accomplished; but the object of the dramatist is professedly to delight the public at large, and therefore I think you should make the experiment fairly. Little Sophia is much obliged by your kind and continued recollection; she is an excellent good child, sufficiently sensible, very affectionate, not without perception of character; but the gods have not made her poetical, and I hope she will never attempt to act a part which nature has not called her to. I am myself a poet, writing to a poetess, and therefore cannot be suspected of a wish to degrade a talent to which, in whatever degree I may have possessed it, I am indebted for much happiness but this depends only on the rare coincidence of some talent falling in with a novelty in style and diction and conduct of story, which suited the popular taste: and were my children to be better poets than I, they would not be such in general estimation, simply because the second cannot be the first, and the first (I mean in point of date) is everything, while others are nothing even with more intrinsic merit. I am therefore particularly anxious to store the heads of my young damsels with something better than the tags of rhyme; and I hope Sophia is old enough (young though she be) to view her little incidents of celebrity, such as they are, in the right point of view. Mrs. Scott and she are at present in Edinburgh; the rest of the children are with me in this place; my eldest boy is already a bold horseman and a fine shot, though only about fourteen years old. I assure you I was prouder of the first black-cock he killed, than of anything whatever since I first killed one myself, and that is twenty years ago. This is all stupid gossip ; but, as Master Corporal Nym says, "things must be as they may: you cannot expect grapes from thorns, or much amusement from a brain bewildered with thorn hedges at Kaeside, for such is the sonorous title of my new possession, in virtue of which I subscribe myself ABBOTSFORD AND KAESIDE. 63. LETTER FROM DR. ARNOLD TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE. Fox How, December 20th, 1837. We have been here since Saturday afternoon, and I think it has rained almost ever since; at this moment Wansfell and Kirkstone and Fairfield are dimly looming through a medium which consists, I suppose, as much of water as of air; the Rotha is racing at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour, and the meadows are becoming rather lake-like. Notwithstanding, I believe that every one of us, old and young, would rather be here than anywhere else in the world. I thank you very heartily for your letter, and, in this precious leisure time of the holidays, I can answer it at once and without hurry. Your judgment as to the Legends determines me at once to recast that whole first chapter. I wish, however, if it is not giving you too much trouble, that you would get the manuscript, and read also the chapter about the banishment of the Tarquins and the battle by the Lake Regillus. I think that you would not find it open to the same objections; at least Wordsworth read it through with a reference merely to the language, and he approved of it; and I think that it is easier and more natural than the first chapter. But I have not shrunk, and I trust I shall not shrink, from any labour of alteration, in order to make the work as complete as I can; it will, after all, fall infinitely short of that model which I fancy keenly, but vainly strive to carry out into execution. With regard to the first chapter, you have convinced me that it is faulty, because it is not what I meant it to be. But as to the principle, I am still of opinion, that the Legends cannot be omitted without great injury, and that they must not be told in my natural style of narrative. The reason of this appears to me to be, the impossi bility of any man's telling such stories in a civilized age in his own proper person, with that sincerity of belief, nay even with that gravity, which is requisite to give them their proper charm. If I thought that they contained really an historical skeleton, disguised under fabulous additions, it would of course be easy to give the historical outline as history in my own natural language, and to omit, or to notice with a grave remark as to their fabulousness, the peculiar marvels of the stories. This was done by Goldsmith, Rollin, etc. But I wish to give, not the supposed facts of the stories, but the stories themselves, in the oldest traceable form; I regard them as poetry, in which the form is quite as essential as the substance of the story. It is a similar question, and fraught with similar difficulties, to that which regards the translation of Homer and Herodotus. If I were to translate Herodotus, it were absurd to do it in my common English, because he and I do not belong to analogous periods of Greek and English literature; I should try to translate him in the style of the old translation of Comines rather than of Froissart-in the English of that period of our national cultivation which corresponds to the period of Greek cultivation at which he wrote. I might and probably should do this ill : still I should try to mend the execution without altering my plan; and so I should do with these Roman stories. For instance, the dramatic form appears to me quite essential; I mean the making the actors express their thoughts in the first person, instead of saying what they thought or felt as narrative. This, no doubt, is the style of the Bible: but it is not peculiar to it; you have it in Herodotus just the same, because it is characteristic of a particular state of cultivation, which all people pass through at a certain stage in their progress. If I could do it well, I would give all the Legends at once in verse, in the style and measure of Chapman's "Homer"; and that would be the best and liveliest way of giving them, and liable to no possible charge of parodying the Bible. The next best way is that which I have tried and failed in executing; but I will try again, and if it is not too much trouble, I will ask you to look at the new attempt. I feel sure—and I really have thought a great deal upon this point-that to give the story of the white sow, of the wolf sucking the twins, of Romulus being carried up to heaven, etc., in my own language, would be either flat and absurd, or else would contain so palpable an irony as to destroy the whole effect which one would wish to create by telling the stories at all. For the other and greater matter of the University, I think it is very probable that I shall have to leave it; but I cannot believe that it is otherwise than a solemn duty to stand by it as long as I can hope to turn it to good. Undoubtedly we must not do evil that good may come; but we may and must bear much that is painful, and associate with those whom we disapprove of, in order to do good. What is the evil of belonging to the University à priori? There is no avowed principle in its foundation which I think wrong; the comprehension of all Christians, you know, I think most right; if more be meant, I think it most wrong; but this is the very point which I am trying to bring to issue; and, though my fears of the issue outweigh my hopes, yet while there is any hope I ought not to give up the battle. LIST OF SUBJECTS SUITABLE FOR ESSAYS. Indoor Amusements. Outdoor Amusements. London. A Library. Difference between Knowledge and Wisdom. "Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."—Gray. Love of one's Country. Why Advice is generally Ineffectual. |