[3] Coleridge and Wordsworth, who started for Germany together.

XVIII.

TO SOUTHEY.

_March_ 20, 1799,

I am hugely pleased with your "Spider," "your old freemason," as you
call him. The three first stanzas are delicious; they seem to me a
compound of Burns and. Old Quarles, those kind of home-strokes, where
more is felt than strikes the ear,--a terseness, a jocular pathos which
makes one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is novel and pleasing. I
could almost wonder Rob Burns in his lifetime never stumbled upon it.
The fourth stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth
falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fashioned phrase
or feeling.

"Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams,"

savor neither of Burns nor Quarles; they seem more like shreds of many a
modern sentimental sonnet. The last stanza hath nothing striking in it,
if I except the two concluding lines, which are Burns all over. I wish,
if you concur with me, these things could be looked to. I am sure this
is a kind of writing which comes tenfold better recommended to the
heart, comes there more like a neighbor or familiar, than thousands of
Hamnels and Zillahs and Madelons. I beg you will send me the
"Holly-tree," if it at all resemble this, for it must please me. I have
never seen it. I love this sort of poems, that open a new intercourse
with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein
may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophized a
fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less successfully,
hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass,--therein only following at
unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I
know of no other examples of breaking down the partition between us and
our "poor earth-born companions." It is sometimes revolting to be put in
a track of feeling by other people, not one's own immediate thoughts,
else I would persuade you, if I could (I am in earnest), to commence a
series of these animal poems, which might have a tendency to rescue some
poor creatures from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts come across
me: for instance, to a rat, to a toad, to a cockchafer, to a
mole,--people bake moles alive by a slow oven-fire to cure consumption.
Rats are, indeed, the most despised and contemptible parts of God's
earth, I killed a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel
a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toa