and her boys she flung, all in disdain of me." One more passage strikes
my eye from B. and F.'s "Palamon and Arcite." One of 'em complains in
prison: "This is all our world; we shall know nothing here but one
another, hear nothing but the clock that tells us our woes; the vine
shall grow, but we shall never see it," etc. Is not the last
circumstance exquisite? I mean not to lay myself open by saying they
exceed Milton, and perhaps Collins in sublimity. But don't you conceive
all poets after Shakspeare yield to 'em in variety of genius? Massinger
treads close on their heels; but you are most probably as well
acquainted with his writings as your humble servant. My quotations, in
that case, will only serve to expose my barrenness of matter. Southey in
simplicity and tenderness is excelled decidedly only, I think, by
Beaumont and F. in his "Maid's Tragedy," and some parts of "Philaster"
in particular, and elsewhere occasionally; and perhaps by Cowper in his
"Crazy Kate," and in parts of his translation, such as the speeches of
Hecuba and Andromache. I long to know your opinion of that translation.
The Odyssey especially is surely very Homeric. What nobler than the
appearance of Phoebus at the beginning of the Iliad,--the lines ending
with "Dread sounding, bounding on the silver bow!"

I beg you will give me your opinion of the translation; it afforded me
high pleasure. As curious a specimen of translation as ever fell into my
hands, is a young man's in our office, of a French novel. What in the
original was literally "amiable delusions of the fancy," he proposed, to
render "the fair frauds of the imagination." I had much trouble in
licking the book into any meaning at all. Yet did the knave clear fifty
or sixty pounds by subscription and selling the copyright. The book
itself not a week's work! To-day's portion of my journalizing epistle
has been very dull and poverty-stricken. I will here end.