Thank you for your little volume.

I received it yesterday evening. It was with pleasure that I saw it advertised, & with more pleasure that I saw it turn up among the contents of a heavy parcel. Have I perused it with pleasure? both with as much pleasure & as much pain as you have wished to excite. And whether most to find fault with you for chusing such deeply tragic subjects, or to praise you for the manner in which you have treated them I know not.

William & Jean

would to my judgement, have been made two poems with advantage. – The picture which is, like all your pictures, true, & finely coloured by itself; – but it is too chearful, too happy, for the tale which follows

– Your tragedy is always in the right tone, having with it the true & only balm. Yet it is too painful. I feel it to be so, & in this respect I may judge of others by myself. We are less able to bear these emotions as we advance in years. Youth courts them, because youth has happiness as well as health & spirits in excess. But at my time of life, tranquillity is the treasure of <the> mind, – & if it must be broken, more willingly would I have it done by comedy or farce that makes the sides ache, than by any thing which xxx excites a heartache for imaginary distress, – especially with such possible & actual scenes as that of your Editha,

– perhaps the more painful to me because I have a daughter of that name.

Give me I intreat you, a picture in summer & sunshine, – a tale that in its progress & termination shall answer to the wishes of the reader. Make the creatures of your imagination as happy as you would make them if they were real beings whose fortunes depended upon your will. Your poem will then be read again & again with delight. You will please more readers, & please them more. It is a road to popular favour which has not been tried in this country, & it is a sure one. Goethe & Voss have found it so in Germany. And I speak sincerely when I say that express my belief that you can produce as fine a poem as the Herman & Dorothea, or the Luise.

I must not forget to mention the Sea of Life,

– which is throughout in a fine tone both of feeling & versification. At P. 95 you should have written ‘ignes fatui’, – but marsh-fires would xxx <be> better, if the word marshes did not occur in the next line.

I shall send you my Book of the Church

as soon as it is published – you will go with it in feeling, & find in it, I think, something that will interest you. But do not wait for it to let me hear from you, for it will not be ready in less than three or four months. – I am fastened to my desk by many employments, but well both in myself, & in my family (God be thanked) – & no ways disturbed by such enemies as Lord Byron.