ABSTRACT
I have read your [Thanksgiving] Ode with delight, – and acknowledge its gift from the Author, with a truly proud pleasure. Professedly contemplative and abstracted, it conveys all the active interests & picturesque
exhibitions of the great events which it celebrates, before the mind of the reader, by the energy, majesty, brightness, and rapidity of its imagery, language, & strain of feeling. Living as we do in the very time of these deeds, it seems as if their sublimity sets at nought particular description, and invites to that general exaltation of spirit, that indulgence of moral joy, philosophical triumph, & devout thankfulness, which meet, and breathe intensely purely in your Ode, and stamp it one of the few primordial productions, all the elements of which are genuine and great. It is the hymn of a high & well-tuned Soul, the poetic harmonies of which have been called into play by the ardour of patriotic affection. Excuse me, I beg, my Dear Sir, for being thus unreserved, although addressing Yourself; my expressions are the dictates of my understanding & the overflowings of my heart. I owe you gratitude for your kindness, – and I have for many years paid to your genius the tribute of deep & earnest admiration. I cannot but be of opinion that the other Poets who have taken Waterloo for their theme have totally failed: a Gentleman wrote rather favourably of Mr Southey’s [Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo] in the Champion but I confess it appears to me poor. I have not felt myself strong enough to enter thoroughly as yet into the business of my Journal: – one or two of the first articles I have put together, but in general I have been obliged to friends. I would not willingly have seen any one but myself take your ode for a subject in the Champion, & this has been the cause of delaying the honor it must have in paying homage to so fine a Poem. I confess I should have been jealous of any one’s stepping in before me here, and I hope you will accept with indulgence the feeble attempt you will soon see. Your Letter on Burns seems perfectly called for & just: it is eloquent, & convincing. But I have not been able to gather from it, your exact opinion on a point of great importance, as it strikes me, viz – how the strength of faculty which forms what is called talent should be permitted to affect the judgment which, for the sake of society, ought to be passed on the moral conduct of individuals so distinguished. I am particularly led to the consideration of this question, as well by your Printed Letter, as by some doctrines recently broached by my antagonists in the Examr. one of whom is Mr Hazlitt – a powerful writer, – but an inconclusive & dangerous one. My doubts do not apply to the case of Burns at all – on it you are quite clear & irrefutable: but how far are we to extend that allowance which is claimed for the strong impulses, & irritable feelings that usually form part of the constitution of powerful intellects? If it be recognized as an established position, that genius is naturally allied to irregularity, the decorous dullness of common minds will not unfairly
