Mary sends love from home.
DC.,—I do confess that I have not sent
your books as I ought to be [have] done; but you know how the human freewill is
tethered, and that we perform promises to ourselves no better than to our
friends. A watch is come for you. Do you want it soon, or shall I wait till
some one travels your way? You, like me, I suppose, reckon the lapse of time
from the waste thereof, as boys let a cock run to waste: too idle to stop it,
and rather amused with seeing it dribble. Your poems have begun printing; Longman sent to me to arrange them, the old
and the new together. It seems you have left it to him. So I classed them, as
nearly as I could, according to dates. First, after the Dedication, (which must
march first) and which I have transplanted from before the Preface (which stood
like a dead wall of prose between) to be the first poem—then comes “The Pixies,” and
the things most juvenile—then on “To Chatterton,” &c.—on, lastly,
to the “Ode on the
Departing Year,” and “Musings,”—which finish.
Longman wanted the Ode first; but the arrangement I
have made is precisely that marked out in the dedication, following the order
of time. I told Longman I was sure that you would omit a
good portion of the first edition. I instanced in several sonnets, &c.—but
that was not his plan, and, as you have done nothing in it, all I could do was
to arrange ’em on the supposition that all were to be retained. A few I
positively rejected; such as that of “The Thimble,” and that of
“Flicker and
Flicker’s wife,” and that not in the manner of Spenser, which you
yourself had stigmatised—and the “Man of Ross,”—I doubt whether I
should this last. It is not too late to save it. The first proof is only just
come. I have been forced to call that Cupid’s Elixir “Kisses.” It stands
in your first volume as an Effusion, so that, instead of prefixing The Kiss to that of
“One Kiss, dear Maid,” &c., I have ventured
| 1803 | CHARLES LLOYD, SENIOR | 271 |
Rob Lloyd has written me a masterly letter, containing a character of his father;—see, how different from Charles he views the old man! Literatim, “My father smokes, repeats Homer in Greek, and Virgil, and is learning, when from business, with all the vigour of a young man Italian. He is really a wonderful man. He mixes public and private business, the intricacies of discording life with his religion and devotion. No one more rationally enjoys the romantic scenes of nature, and the chit-chat and little vagaries of his children; and, though surrounded with an ocean of affairs, the very neatness of his most obscure cupboard in the house passes not unnoticed. I never knew any one view with such clearness, nor so well satisfied with things as they are, and make such allowance for things which must appear perfect Syriac to him.” By the last he means the Lloydisms of the younger branches. His portrait of Charles (exact as far as he has had opportunities of noting him) is most exquisite. “Charles is become steady as a church, and as straightforward as a Roman road. It would distract him to mention anything that was not as plain as sense; he seems to have run the whole scenery of life, and now rests as the formal precisian of non-existence.” Here is genius I think, and ’tis seldom a young man, a Lloyd, looks at a father (so differing) with such good nature while he is alive. Write—
I am in post-haste,
Love, &c., to Sara, P., and H.
