Ashiestiel-by-Selkirk, April 8, 1805. DEAR JEFFREY, -I found such a variety of things to put to rights about my farm that I could only overtake "Fleetwood" on Sunday. I now send him, and hope he may relieve your mind and fingers from the task of purveying for the Baillie's Devils. I also send the work on which the necessary references are marked. I wish Mrs. Jeffrey and you could look this way for a few days; the country is delightful though the leaves are but beginning to peep. Will you write and let me know what the clergy are about, and whether the printing the letter has produced a great sensation? Mrs. Scott joins in best compliments to Mrs. Jeffrey, and I am, always yours truly, WALTER SCOTT. The following letter is another of Scott's that has escaped publication. In Lockhart's "Life of Scott" there is an account of a poetical tailor called Andrew Stewart, who was in the end of 1808 sentenced to death for burglary. Through the influence of Scott and Mr. Manuers, the Edinburgh bookseller, his sentence was commuted to one of transportation for life. His letters to Scott from prison are given, but not this one, which is apparently in answer to the first of them. It is impossible to say how it came into Jeffrey's hands. Castle Street, Monday. SIR, I return the poems, and have made the communication you requested, though with little or no hope of having much weight. That of the jury may, I hope, be of more service to you and your fellow-sufferers. If Lord Justice Clerk should honor me with any immediate answer, which I do not however expect, I will instantly send it to you. You do well and wisely to consider the worst as certain, forming such reflections on your past life and preparations for a change as may either enable you to meet death with firmness, or to redeem past errour by becoming a useful member of society should the Royal Mercy be extended to you. I am, your friend and well-wisher, from Sir Humphry Davy for the sup port of the Edinburgh Review. At this time he was opposing the influence of Count Rumford in the Royal Institution. His toue in addressing the great editor is not so humble as that of a good many other correspondents. April 10, 1810. MY DEAR SIR, -I take the liberty of sending with this letter a sketch of a plan for unrumfordizing the Royal Institution; our bill is passing through Parliament without opposition, and if a few words could be said in our favor in the Edinburgh Review, it would give us life and strength. My brother is writing an article which he intends to submit to you-a criticism on the Report of the Institute on the progress of physical sciences in the year 1809. The remarks at the end of the review of the second vol. Arcueil" are of a very unphilosophical kind. I hope my next paper may not pass through the same hands. 66 You were so good as to compliment me for magnanimity. Now, really, I have never been offended by any criticism in the Edinburgh Review; but I think your chemical articles have not been in the same style of composition or feeling as the literary or philosophical ones. Where your hand is to be found, there ought to be only the hands of masters. An Experimenter ought not to be judged by the same rule as a poet. Fact is expected from one, pleasure from the other. If an Experimenter gives facts to the world they ought to be contented; but it is idle to attack him for not making every week or every year some capital discovery. It is a crime to write middling poetry, but it is no crime to bring forward a fact of small importance; for all Laws, all generalizations in Science, depend upon an ac cumulation of facts. I am, dear sir, with much esteem, your H. DAVY. obliged Moore seems to have been a constant correspondent of Jeffrey's. At the time when the following letter was written he was chiefly known as a poet, ́ and had only recently begun to write for the Edinburgh Review. The famous Though this last note may seem irrel-romance of the Caliph Vathek' evant, yet it is interesting as an in- written by William Beckford in 1784. stance of Scott's kindness of heart. It originally appeared in French, as the author had lived mostly in France, but was soon translated. A little later than the events alluded to in the last letter, there is a request "" was London, May 23, 1816. MY DEAR JEFFREY,- Some friends of yours have just told me that I ought to write something for the review, and one of them proposed "Vathek" (the original French) to me. Now, though all your kind praises have been ineffectual in warming me into any degree of confidence in my own powers as a reviewer, yet, if you wish it, and have employed no one better for the purpose, I will undertake “Vathek," and shall set about it as soon as I receive your mandate, directed to me to Mayfield, for which place I shall be off the day after to-morrow, heartily weary of the month's battle I have had here, though returning full of such strange knowledge, such monstrous recollections of men, women, and things, as would astonish the innocent Mayfieldians but to hint at. How I should like to have a day's talk with you about Lord Byron, about Glenarvon, about all the extraordinary topics that are agitated usque ad nauseam in this town! But you and I, I fear, though not parallels (would we were !), are destined never to meet. centuation of the Italian, which, like the wind, "bloweth where it listeth." I have still to write to you on the subject I mentioned, and shall perhaps have to beg your patience for rather a long letter. Another assault has just appeared against me in a pamphlet, in which the writer says that I am a very respectable man in private, but exceedingly ridiculous in all other respects. The other said I had some talent,. but was a great rascal. I believe I shall put a little stop to these things shortly by letting the writers see that I do not mean to notice them any more—a resolution I should have always kept but for particular circumstances in the present instance. Excuse my taking up your time with this chattering, and believe me, my dear sir, Your obliged and faithful servant, As might be expected, there is a good deal about Keats in Jeffrey's correspondence, especially in and about. the year 1820. John Hamilton ReyInolds, to whom Keats has dedicated so many poems, was at that time engaged, in conjunction with Barry Cornwall and others, in writing a series of criticisms on the drama. I hope you mean to praise "Rimini." would do it for spite. Rogers is quite well, and has made me very happy by telling me how kindly you spoke of me at Paris. Ever faithfully yours, The book of Proctor's referred to is Little Britain, July 13, 1820. “Rimini " suggests Leigh Hunt."Dramatic Scenes, and other Poems." He naturally wrote constantly to Jeffrey; but many of his letters have already been published, and others are too private for reproduction. There is a letter in Leigh Hunt's Life and Correspondence," written shortly before the one quoted here, on very much the same subjects, and alluding to his article on Fairfax's "Tasso." MY DEAR SIR, since the receipt of your letter, and have informed him on the question of the division of the articles, so that we now understand that he is to take the tragic and I the comic drama. If you are better pleased with this arrangement, I cannot wish it otherwise. The Fancy article you shall receive in time certainly by the 12th. 13 Lisson Grove North, Dec. 15, 1817. MY DEAR SIR, -I trouble you with this Mr. Keats is young - twenty-two, I in haste, merely to say that, if you approve should think. He was educated for a surof the article on Fairfax and it is not yet geon, but has been foolish enough to abanprinted, I would thank you, instead of don his profession and trust to his books suffering the word "roughened" to stand and a very trifling income left by his father. in the passage where I speak of the trans- He is an orphan. His health is now in the lation's beauties, to let it be "If he has worst state, for, as his medical man tells deteriorated the music of Tasso a little," me, he is in a decided consumption, of etc.; for the fact is, as you most likely which malady his mother and brother died. know, that Fairfax, if anything, has rather He is advised-nay, ordered-to go to monotonized than otherwise the versifica- Italy, but in such a state it is a hopeless tion of his author, though in nothing like doom. Owing to Leigh Hunt's fatal pathe degree of the modern versifiers. It is tronage, Keats's name and fate have been variety itself compared with theirs, and is joined with his in the Quarterly and in only monotonous compared with the ac- Blackwood's Magazine. By his friends 1 ideas, but I never could arrange mine. They were always in confusion, and always will be, I am afraid. I will try to make something of them, however. Keats is gone to Italy. I did not see him before he left London, nor has he, I believe, yet written to England. Before your review of his book I had said that I would rather employ his poems as a test (to ascertain any person's liking for poetry) than, perhaps, the writings of any man living. I am pleased to see this opinion confirmed by you. There are one or two things in the review which had struck me, and which I shall now set down as incontrovertible. Keats was, I believe, better when I am ever, dear sir, your very faithful his friend who accompanied him wrote and obliged servant, J. H. REYNOLDS. A little later in the same year Proctor himself writes on very much the same subjects, though he pays a higher tribute to Keats's poetical powers. 25 Store Street, Bedford Square, Nov. 13, 1820. MY DEAR SIR, I received your very kind letter only this morning, and I hasten to reply to it, sending you at the same time nearly all that I have scribbled about Tragedy and so forth. Pray endeavor to like it as well as you can; but I know and feel how kindly you are disposed towards me. What I have done has cost me a little trouble, but I shall go on now like wildfire. I generally write very fast (too fast), and when once certain that you do not dislike what I have done I shall go on well. have read over and over (and thought, too, on) our great old-fashioned dramatists, and have merely to pick up from my recollection what is already in my head, though I cannot at once turn to it. I have heard and read about the arrangement of one's I from the Downs. We have been illuminating here, and we shall now have addresses and petitions, I suppose, out of number. I think I ought to write an ode. But to whom? Thank you for all the kind things you say of me. "Almost dost thou persuade me" to be a Whig. Your kindness is more convincing than another's logic. I shall at least recollect it longer (and have it more by heart) than the most ingenious of arguments. My dear sir, pray think me what I truly am, Your obliged friend and servant, B. W. PROCTOR. These scattered leaves from a great critic's correspondence perhaps contain little that was not known by every one before; but it is just because the names and subjects are so familiar that it has been possible to gather some fragments from a miscellaneous collection, and produce them as they are with no orderly arrangement. VI. TREASURE ISLANDS IN THE POLAR SEA, Chambers' Journal, 311 315 For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. THE IDEAL POPULAR LEADER. HE is one who counts no public toil so hard As idly glittering pleasures; one controlled By no mob's haste, nor swayed by gods of gold; Prizing, not courting, all just men's regard; With none but manhood's ancient order starred Nor crowned with titles less august and old Than human greatness; large-brained, limpid-souled; Whom dreams can hurry not, nor doubts retard; Born, nurtured of the people; living still The people's life; and though their noblest flower, In nought removed above them, save alone In loftier virtue, wisdom, courage, power, The ampler vision, the serener will, And the fixed mind, to no light dallyings prone. Spectator. WILLIAM Watson. TO ONE LONG DEAD. TWENTY years ago!-twenty years ago! I was but a nine years' child-and how much could I know? You crossed my path, and I saw your face - and called it to mind no more; And I never heeded when first I heard you were dead on a far-off shore. And now from the printed page stand out, in letters of fire aglow, The thoughts you had, and the words you wrote-twenty years ago! Twenty years ago !-twenty years ago! The words I read came hot from a heart rent by the earthquake-throe. The narrow spite and the stupid scorn; and the wounds from a friendly hand, And the loneliness that seeks in vain for a heart to understand And the bitter doubts, and the questions wild, that I thought no heart could know, Oh, friend! oh, friend! the slow tears come, to think of all your pain! Dear, suffering heart, God comfort you! and give you peace again! Over there, in the undimmed light, at last you love and know Who hungered and thirsted for righteous ness, twenty years ago. All is past that you suffered then -twenty years ago! But oh! that you could hear me speak, and tell you it hurts me so ! O loving God! the pity of it, that hearts should wander so long! How can it be, when they yearn to thee, and thou art true and strong? Yet surely 'tis well at the last-for they say that all roads lead to Rome; And the winding path that he travelled by was the one that brought him home. A. WERNER. Speaker. GREECE. ARGO's helmed chieftains, sailing for the Fleece, Grey clustered isles, that Delos' sway enthrals, Great peoples, grouped for gleaming festivals, From Taenarus to storm-lashed Chersonese, Stern shocks of war, and sculptured spoils of peace. Athene's fane, Mycenae's mystic walls, Glory and pathos infinite-recalls One sweet word only, and that word is Greece. thou, whom earth's ignoble cares enfold, Hope not to feel her charm! she will not hear, You had known them, and fought them But chill thee with averted gaze and cold; through, twenty years ago! You, whom I thought so lightly of, twenty years ago, Nor may he seek her smile, who deems not dear Her poets' chant, whose tuneful hearttones clear Met and faced with an aching heart the Peal from the Periclean Age of Gold. riddle of this world's woe; C. A. KELLY. |