want
confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will
invent a journey heavenward as well as any body. We
hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if
we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its
breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and
unobtrusive; a thing which enters into one's soul, and
does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with
its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! How
would they lose their beauty, were they to throng into
the highway, crying out "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote
upon me, I am a primrose!" Modern poets differ from the
Elizabethans in this; each of the moderns, like an
Elector of Hanover, governs his petty state, and knows
how many straws are swept daily from the causeways in
all his dominions, and has a continual itching that all
the housewives should have their coppers well scoured.
The ancients were emperors of vast provinces; they had
only heard of the remote ones, and scarcely cared to
visit them. I will cut all this. I will have no more of
Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of
the tribe of Manassah, when we can wander with Esau?
Why should we kick against the pricks when we can walk
on roses? Why should we be owls when we can be eagles?
Why be teazed with "nice-eyed wagtails," when we have
in sight "the cherub Contemplation?" Why, with
Wordsworth's "Matthew with a bough of wilding in his
hand," when we can have Jacques "under an oak," &c.?
The secret of the "bough of wilding" will run through
your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke
to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he
happens in an evening walk to imagine the figure of the
old man, he must stamp it down in black and white, and
it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny
Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to
say we need not be teazed with grandeur and merit when
we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us
have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its
sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book
of "Childe Harold," and the whole of any body's life
and opinions.

In return for your dish of filberts, I have gathered a
few catkins.[2] I hope they'll look pretty.

"No, those days are go