alderman ever longed after a haunch of buck
venison more than I for a spiritual taste of that "White Doe" you
promise. I am sure it is superlative, or will be when _dressed_, i. e.,
printed. All things read raw to me in MS.; to compare _magna parvis_, I
cannot endure my own writings in that state. The only one which I think
would not very much win upon me in print is "Peter Bell;" but I am not
certain. You ask me about your preface. I like both that and the
supplement, without an exception. The account of what you mean by
imagination is very valuable to me. It will help me to like some things
in poetry better, which is a little humiliating in me to confess. I
thought I could not be instructed in that science (I mean the critical),
as I once heard old obscene, beastly Peter Pindar, in a dispute on
Milton, say he thought that if he had reason to value himself upon one
thing more than another, it was in knowing what good verse was. Who
looked over your proof-sheets and left _ordebo_ in that line of Virgil?

My brother's picture of Milton is very finely painted,--that is, it
might have been done by a hand next to Vandyke's. It is the genuine
Milton, and an object of quiet gaze for the half-hour at a time. Yet
though I am confident there is no better one of him, the face does not
quite answer to Milton. There is a tinge of _petit_ (or _petite_, how do
you spell it?) querulousness about it; yet, hang it! now I remember
better, there is not,--it is calm, melancholy, and poetical. _One_ of
the copies of the poems you sent has precisely the same pleasant
blending of a sheet of second volume with a sheet of first, I think it
was page 245; but I sent it and had it rectified, It gave me, in the
first impetus of cutting the leaves, just such a cold squelch as going
down a plausible turning and suddenly reading "No thoroughfare."
Robinson's is entire; I wish you would write more criticism about
Spencer, etc. I think I could say something about him myself; but, Lord
bless me! these "merchants and their spicy drugs," which are so
harmonious to sing of, they lime-twig up my poor soul and body till I
shall forget I ever thought myself a bit of a genius! I can't even put a
few thoughts on paper for a newspaper, I engross when I should pen a
paragraph. Confusion blast all mercantile transactions, all traffic,
exchange of commodities, intercourse between nations, all the consequent
civilization, and wealth, and amity, and link of society, a