I do not know that I entirely agree with you in your stricture upon my
sonnet "To Innocence," To men whose hearts are not quite deadened by
their commerce with the world, innocence (no longer familiar) becomes an
awful idea. So I felt when I wrote it. Your other censures (qualified
and sweetened, though, with praises somewhat extravagant) I perfectly
coincide with: yet I choose to retain the word "lunar,"--indulge a
"lunatic" in his loyalty to his mistress the moon! I have just been
reading a most pathetic copy of verses on Sophia Pringle, who was hanged
and burned for coining. One of the strokes of pathos (which are very
many, all somewhat obscure) is, "She lifted up her guilty forger to
heaven." A note explains, by "forger," her right hand, with which she
forged or coined the base metal. For "pathos" read "bathos." You have
put me out of conceit with my blank verse by your "Religious Musings." I
think it will come to nothing. I do not like 'em enough to send 'em. I
have just been reading a book, which I may be too partial to, as it was
the delight of my childhood; but I will recommend it to you,--it is
Izaak Walton's "Complete Angler." All the scientific part you may omit
in reading. The dialogue is very simple, full of pastoral beauties, and
will charm you. Many pretty old verses are interspersed. This letter,
which would be a week's work reading only, I do not wish you to answer
in less than a month. I shall be richly content with a letter from you
some day early in July; though, if you get anyhow _settled_ before then,
pray let me know it immediately; 't would give me much satisfaction.
Concerning the Unitarian chapel, the salary is the only scruple that the
most rigid moralist would admit as valid. Concerning the tutorage, is
not the salary low, and absence from your family unavoidable? London is
the only fostering soil for genius. Nothing more occurs just now; so I
will leave you, in mercy, one small white spot empty below, to repose
your eyes upon, fatigued as they must be with the wilderness of words