“. . . . . To-day I received the first volume of Roderick in Dutch verse, translated by the wife of Bilderdijk, who is one of the most distinguished men of letters in that country. The translation appears to be very well done, as far as I am able to judge; that is, I can see in the trying passages she has fully understood the original; and her command of her own language is warranted by her husband’s approbation, who is a severe critic as well as a skilful poet himself. He must be near eighty years of age, for he tells me he has been now three score years known as an author. His letter to me is in Latin. The book comes in a red morocco livery; it is dedicated to me in an ode, and a very beautiful one, describing the delight she had taken in the poem, and the consolation she had derived from it, when parts of it came home to her own feelings in a time of severe affliction.
| Ætat. 50. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 173 |
“She calls me the Crown Poet. I mean to send her a set of the Illustrations as soon as I know how to transmit them. The packet came to me through a merchant at Amsterdam, who inclosed it in a Dutch-English letter of his own, and an essay upon the character of my Cid; which he had read in some literary society, and printed afterwards. They give me praise enough in Holland: I would gladly commute some of it for herrings and Rhenish wine. . . . .
“Do let me hear from you.
