“Your poem has not found its way to me. It is either delayed or mislaid at Longman’s. Oh that you would write in English! I can never think of your predilection for Latin verse but as a great loss to English literature.
“The times make less impression upon me than upon men
who live more in the political world. The present, perhaps, appears to you, at
a distance, worse than it is. The future will be what we may choose to make it.
There is an infernal spirit abroad, and crushed it must be. Crushed it will be,
beyond all doubt; but the question is, whether it will be cut short in its
course, or suffered to spend itself like a fever. In the latter case, we shall
go on through a bloodier revolution than that of France, to an iron military
government,—the only possible termination of Jacobinism. It is a misery to see
in what manner the press is employed to poison the minds of the people, and
eradicate every thing that is virtuous, everything that is honourable,
everything upon which the order, peace, and happiness of society are founded.
The recent laws have stopped the twopenny supply
| Ætat. 46. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 21 |
“Do you remember Elmsley at Oxford,—the fattest under-graduate in your time and mine? He is at Naples, superintending the unrolling the Herculaneum manuscripts, by Davy’s process, at the expense of the Prince Regent,—I should say, of George IV. The intention is, that Elmsley shall ascertain, as soon as a beginning is made of one of the rolls, whether it shall be proceeded with, or laid aside, in hope of finding something better, till the whole have been inspected.
“A fashion of poetry has been imported which has had a great run, and is in a fair way of being worn out. It is of Italian growth,—an adaptation of the manner of Pulci, Berni, and Ariosto in his sportive mood. Frere began it. What he produced was too good in itself and too inoffensive to become popular; for it attacked nothing and nobody; and it had the fault of his Italian models, that the transition from what is serious to what is burlesque was capricious. Lord Byron immediately followed; first with his Beppo, which implied the profligacy of the writer, and, lastly, with his Don Juan, which is a foul blot on the literature of his country, an act of high treason on English poetry. The manner has had a host of imitators. The use of Hudibrastic rhymes (the only thing in which it differs from the Italian) makes it very easy.
“My poems hang on hand. I want no monitor to tell me it
is time to leave off. I shall force myself
| 22 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 46. |
“God bless you!
