subordinate to thought and feeling; the one was meant to embody the most poetical parts of Islam, the other designed as a dramatic representation of human character. By the blessing of God, you will see my Hippogryff touch at Hindostan, fly back to Scandinavia, and then carry me among the fire-worshipers of Istakhar: you will see him take a peep at the Jews, a flight to Japan, and an excursion among the saints and martyrs of Catholicism. Only let me live long enough and earn leisure enough, and I will do for each of these mythologies what I have done for the Mohammedan. But still such things are more easily produced than Madoc': a common magician can make snow-people, but flesh and blood must be the work of a Demiurgos. Wordsworth agrees with you in recommending lyrical measure for the odes; on the other hand, Wynn deprecates it. I do not allow so much to his opinion as to yours; but my own is doubtful at present, and laziness may squat herself down in his scale.

"You might notice the attack upon the woman as ill managed and worse written than any other part of the poem; you might blame the want of all similies; you might raise a smile at the uglyography of the names and yet defend their euphony.

"You have said something about your 'Tale

of Wonder,' which, if I thought anybody else would say it, would give me real concern that my 'Old Woman' is the best ballad of the two, I never should affect to doubt; but were there any legitimate ground for comparison, I never should have wished to place them together. My wish was, to show how very differently the same subject may be treated; how the same plant varies under different circumstances of climate and culture. Mine is the ballad of a balladmaker, believing the whole superstition, and thereby making even the grotesque terrible; yours that of a poet, decorating a known fable, laughing behind a masque of fear. Mine has no invention, not an atom, yet wants none,-it is the legend in verse; yours a story of your own, and the thought of the bottomless grave of novel and excellent value. I will far rather forgo the pleasure it really would give me to see it on good paper and in fair types, than suffer you to suspect me of something whereof I should be most deeply ashamed, were I capable of the feeling imputed.

"The faults I find are precisely what you justly attribute to the 'Minstrel's Lay.' 'Slow be your noiseless way,' I would write, And slowly take your way.' I love the natural flow of language always, particularly in story-telling; so I would have, For squat upon the pall,'

There sits a fiend,' &c.: the syntax is easier and sooner comprehended, and two epithets of no value weeded out. The stanza beginning

'Although thy cross have scared me sore'

I would omit, and I would not make the devil sleepy. Last but one, better thus?

'But none but heathen souls shall

In your damn'd den confine.'

you

I would call it the 'Irish Witch,' or anything but that undistinguishing name of Matthew Lewis's.

I regret the failure of the 'Anthology,' because it opened your stores. Has King Arthur put the 'Metrical Tales' into your hands? they are fairly entitled to a place in the volume. The new Joan of Arc' is so infamously misprinted, that I shall desire Longman to put all my London printing for the future into Richard Taylor's hands. God bless you!

"ROBERT SOUTHEY."

Robert Southey to William Taylor. (No. 49.)

"Your reviewal is gone back to King Arthur: there was nothing which I could feel any wish to interline. Something, however, Wordsworth thought might be added, as instances of that impassioned character of sound, and emphatic position of words, which cannot be displayed in its

full beauty without the help of metre. The instances he marked are these:

'Uplifts the snake his head retorted; high

He lifts it over Madoc.'-p. 251.

'On he came

Straight to the sound, and curl'd around the Priest

His mighty folds innocuous, overtopping

His human height.'-p. 237.

Their tapers gleam'd

Upon his visage, as he wore his helm

Open.'-p. 161.

'Cyveiliac stood before them,-in his pride

Stood up the poet-prince of Mathrafal.

His hands were on the harp, his eyes were closed,

His head, as if in reverence to receive

The inspiration, bent. Anon he raised

His glowing countenance and brighter eye,

And swept with passionate hand the ringing harp.' "If you can inweave these instances in such a way as may seem best, it will be the sort of praise that is useful. I know the versification to be elaborate, and am very much deceived if it does not generally vary itself well to suit the subject.

"In April I shall probably go to London: is there any likelihood of meeting you there? If not, I will certainly make Norwich on my way, either going or returning; and this is a pledged promise. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, you know what is the only alternative.

"I have set Burnett to work, and really believe upon something which he can do,-to

exhibit specimens of English prose in chronological arrangement, which Longman will doubtless print for him at my recommendation. You need not be told how utterly ignorant he is of the subject, but enough can be done for him with little trouble to teach him in the course of the task. So I have kept him here for this purpose, and he is now hard at work, extracting from such authors as can be mustered among Coleridge's books and mine. Lamb will help him in London. Perhaps you will lend him a little assistance, tell him what to select from your favourite authors, as you would mark extracts in a reviewal, and throw out in a letter such sayings as he may graft into a brief biographical notice. I can give him specimens of about twenty writers, some of them scarce ones, direct him to many others, and make out a tolerably complete list of the whole. Having got the book printed, we can review it for him and get him a name with the booksellers and with the world. He is exceedingly well pleased with the project, and with the prospect of acquiring some knowledge during the execution; but the old yawniness comes on at times, and he is casting about if he can't get some of the extracts copied for him for nothing.' Hobbes, Harrington, Sidney, Locke, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, can you set him copying from these,