" "I was really astonished,"
he said, "(1) at the schoolboy, wretched, allegoric machinery; (2) at
the transmogrification of the fanatic virago into a modern novel-pawing
proselyte of the "Age of Reason,"--a Tom Paine in petticoats; (3) at the
utter want of all rhythm in the verse, the monotony and dead plumb-down
of the pauses, and the absence of all bone, muscle, and sinew in the
single lines."
"On mightiest deeds to brood
Of shadowy vastness, such as made my heart
Throb fast; anon I paused, and in a state
Of half expectance listened to the wind."
"They wondered at me, who had known me once
A cheerful, careless damsel."
"The eye,
That of the circling throng and of the visible world,
Unseeing, saw the shapes of holy phantasy."
I see nothing in your description of the Maid equal to these. There is a
fine originality certainly in those lines,--
"For she had lived in this bad world
As in a place of tombs,
And touched not the pollutions of the dead;"
but your "fierce vivacity" is a faint copy of the "fierce and terrible
benevolence" of Southey; added to this, that it will look like rivalship
in you, and extort a comparison with Southey,--I think to your
disadvantage. And the lines, considered in themselves as an addition to
what you had before written (strains of a far higher mood), are but such
as Madame Fancy loves in some of her more familiar moods,--at such times
as she has met Noll Goldsmith, and walked and talked with him, calling
him "old acquaintance.
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