"all things are that seem" is one of those conceits which the Poet
delights to admit into his creed--a creed, by the way, more marvellous
and mystic than ever Athanasius dream'd of. Page 315, I need only
_mention_ those lines ending with "She saw a serpent gnawing at her
heart"!!! They are good imitative lines "he toild and toild, of toil to
reap no end, but endless toil and never ending woe." 347 page, Cruelty
is such as Hogarth might have painted her. Page 361, all the passage
about Love (where he seems to confound conjugal love with Creating and
Preserving love) is very confused and sickens me with a load of useless
personifications. Else that 9th Book is the finest in the volume, an
exquisite combination of the ludicrous and the terrible,--I have never
read either, even in translation, but such as I conceive to be the
manner of Dante and Ariosto. The 10th book is the most languid. On the
whole, considering the celerity wherewith the poem was finish'd, I was
astonish'd at the infrequency of weak lines. I had expected to find it
verbose. Joan, I think, does too little in Battle--Dunois, perhaps, the
same--Conrade too much. The anecdotes interspersed among the battles
refresh the mind very agreeably, and I am delighted with the very many
passages of simple pathos abounding throughout the poem--passages which
the author of "Crazy Kate" might have written. Has not Master Southey
spoke very slightingly in his preface and disparagingly of Cowper's
Homer?--what makes him reluctant to give Cowper his fame? And does not
Southey use too often the expletives "did" and "does"? They have a good
effect at times, but are too inconsiderable, or rather become blemishes,
when they mark a style. On the whole, I expect Southey one day to rival
Milton. I already deem him equal to Cowper, and superior to all living
Poets besides. What says Coleridge? The "Monody on Henderson" is
_immensely good_; the rest of that little volume is _readable and above
mediocrity_. I proceed to a more pleasant task,--pleasant because the
poems are yours, pleasant because you impose the task on me, and