I know my capacities better than you do.
Accept my kindest love, and believe me yours, as ever.
C. L.
[1] Mary Lamb had fallen ill again.
XV.
TO ROBERT SOUTHEY
(No month, 1798.)
Dear Southey,--I thank you heartily for the eclogue [1]; it pleases me
mightily, being so full of picture-work and circumstances. I find no
fault in it, unless perhaps that Joanna's ruin is a catastrophe too
trite; and this is not the first or second time you have clothed your
indignation, in verse, in a tale of ruined innocence. The old lady,
spinning in the sun, I hope would not disdain to claim some kindred with
old Margaret. I could almost wish you to vary some circumstances in the
conclusion. A gentleman seducer has so often been described in prose and
verse: what if you had accomplished Joanna's ruin by the clumsy arts and
rustic gifts of some country fellow? I am thinking, I believe, of
the song,--
"An old woman clothed in gray,
Whose daughter was charming and young,
And she was deluded away
By Roger's false, flattering tongue."
A Roger-Lothario would be a novel character; I think you might paint him
very well. You may think this a very silly suggestion, and so indeed it
is; but, in good truth, nothing else but the first words of that foolish
ballad put me upon scribbling my "Rosamund." [2] But I thank you heartily
for the poem.
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