poetic principles--principles commonly deserted by poets who, like
Wordsworth, have published their aesthetic system. Your pieces are
few; and Dr. Johnson would have called you, like Fielding, "a barren
rascal." But how can a writer's verses be numerous if with him, as
with you, "poetry is not a pursuit but a passion . . . which cannot
at will be excited with an eye to the paltry compensations or the
more paltry commendations of mankind!" Of you it may be said, more
truly than Shelley said it of himself, that "to ask you for anything
human, is like asking at a gin-shop for a leg of mutton."

Humanity must always be, to the majority of men, the true stuff of
poetry; and only a minority will thank you for that rare music which
(like the strains of the fiddler in the story) is touched on a
single string, and on an instrument fashioned from the spoils of the
grave. You chose, or you were destined


To vary from the kindly race of men;


and the consequences, which wasted your life, pursue your
reputation.

For your stories has been reserved a boundless popularity, and that
highest success--the success of a perfectly sympathetic translation.
By this time, of course, you have made the acquaintance of your
translator, M. Charles Baudelaire, who so strenuously shared your
views about Mr. Emerson and the Transcendentalists, and who so
energetically resisted all those ideas of "progress" which "came
from Hell or Boston." On this point, however, the world continues