And in an account of a fanatic or of a prophet the description of
her _emotions_ is expected to be most highly finished. By the way, I
spoke far too disparagingly of your lines, and, I am ashamed to say.
purposely, I should like you to specify or particularize; the story of
the "Tottering Eld," of "his eventful years all come and gone," is too
general; why not make him a soldier, or some character, however, in
which he has been witness to frequency of "cruel wrong and strange
distress"? I think I should, When I laughed at the "miserable man
crawling from beneath the coverture," I wonder I did not perceive it was
a laugh of horror,--such as I have laughed at Dante's picture of the
famished Ugolino. Without falsehood, I perceive an hundred, beauties in
your narrative. Yet I wonder you do not perceive something
out-of-the-way, something unsimple and artificial, in the expression,
"voiced a sad tale." I hate made-dishes at the muses' banquet, I believe
I was wrong in most of my other objections. But surely "hailed him
immortal" adds nothing to the terror of the man's death, which it was
your business to heighten, not diminish by a phrase which takes away all
terror from it, I like that line, "They closed their eyes in sleep, nor
knew 'twas death," Indeed, there is scarce a line I do not like,
"_Turbid_ ecstasy" is surely not so good as what you had
written,--"troublous.
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