"
The Post did not sleep a moment. I received almost instantaneously a
long letter of four sweating pages from my Reluctant Letter-Writer, the
purport of which was that he was sorry his second volume had not given
me more pleasure (Devil a hint did I give that it had _not pleased me_),
and "was compelled to wish that my range of sensibility was more
extended, being obliged to believe that I should receive large influxes
of happiness and happy thoughts" (I suppose from the L. B.),--with a
deal of stuff about a certain Union of Tenderness and Imagination,
which, in the sense he used Imagination, was not the characteristic of
Shakspeare, but which Milton possessed in a degree far exceeding other
Poets; which union, as the highest species of poetry, and chiefly
deserving that name, "he was most proud to aspire to;" then illustrating
the said union by two quotations from his own second volume (which I had
been so unfortunate as to miss.) First specimen; A father addresses
his son:--
"When thou
First camest into the World, as it befalls
To new-born infants, thou didst sleep away
Two days; _and blessings from thy father's tongue
Then fell upon thee_."
The lines were thus undermarked, and then followed, "This passage, as
combining in an extraordinary degree that union of tenderness and
imagination which I am speaking of, I consider as one of the best I
ever wrote.
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