to receive visions
emblematical of equality,--which, what the devil Joan had to do with, I
don't know, or indeed with the French and American revolutions; though
that needs no pardon, it is executed so nobly. After all, if you
perceive no disproportion, all argument is vain; I do not so much object
to parts. Again, when you talk of building your fame on these lines in
preference to the "Religious Musings," I cannot help conceiving of you
and of the author of that as two different persons, and I think you a
very vain man.

I have been re-reading your letter. Much of it I _could_ dispute; but
with the latter part of it, in which you compare the two Joans with
respect to their predispositions for fanaticism, I _toto corde_
coincide; only I think that Southey's strength rather lies in the
description of the emotions of the Maid under the weight of inspiration.
These (I see no mighty difference between _her_ describing them or _you_
describing them),--these if you only equal, the previous admirers of his
poem, as is natural, will prefer his; if you surpass, prejudice will
scarcely allow it, and I scarce think you will surpass, though your
specimen at the conclusion (I am in earnest) I think very nigh equals
them. And in an account of a fanatic or of a prophet the description of
her _emotions_ is expected to be most highly finished. By the way, I
spoke far too disparagingly of your lines, and, I am ashamed to say.
purposely, I should like you to specify or particularize; the story of
the "Tottering Eld," of "his eventful years all come and gone," is too
general; why not make him a soldier, or some character, however, in
which he has been witness to frequency of "cruel wrong and strange
distress"? I think I should, When I laughed at the "miserable man
crawling from beneath the coverture," I wonder I did not perceive it was
a laugh of horror,--such as I have laughed at Dante's picture of the
famished Ugolino. Without falsehood, I perceive an hundred, beauties in
your narrative. Yet I wonder you do not perceive something
out-of-the-way, something unsimple and artificial, in the expression,
"voiced a sad tale." I hate made-dishes at the muses' banquet, I believe
I was wrong in most of my other objections. But surely "hailed him
immortal" adds nothing to the terror of the man's death, which it was
your business to heighten, not diminish by a phrase which takes away all
terror from it, I like that line, "They closed their eyes in s