ABSTRACT
I told you of the pleasure which my first greedy devouring of the Excursion had given me – the second increased my admiration but deadened my hopes with respect to the impression likely to be made by it on others. I read the first Book aloud to Mr. Clarkson who listened with earnest attention & deep feeling. He said there were parts which he must read to himself & think about. He means to give the whole work a very attentive perusal & doubt not he will give William a strict account of his feelings respecting it. It is melancholy to think that the scale of it will depend much upon the character given of it in Reviews & on this account I very much wish that Coleridge would review it for the Edinburgh – I hear of two of their body (neither of them Jeffray) who carried the book to Malthus’s home – one of them read many of the finest passages with great feeling & expressed the highest admiration – the other followed reading in a dry sarcastic tone passages which he thought to be & attempted to make appear ridiculous. I have been spending a fortnight at Parridon & Mr. Smith came down from London & said he had heard a discussion of the Poem but I could not learn by whom – the opinion given was that it was very fine but un peu pesant.1 I give you the very words. Something was said about reading it aloud in the family but it went off – I was asked to leave it and I did. Mr. Smith [William Smith (1756-1835), MP for Norwich] said that he wished to see it but I know Mr. Smith’s ideas about Poetry so well that I do not expect much admiration from him. Yet he has a tast for the tender & pathetic & will I am sure admire the story of Margaret – The interest excited by Ld. Birons Poems shews that the thirst for ‘outrageous stimulation’ is by no means allayed & though there is matter enough in the single story of the Solitary to form the subject of an epic poem it is told so simply that as the Man was not actually one of the poor Louis’ executioners & did not actually preach Atheism & occasion a few dozen suicides or become so inveterate a misanthrope as to detirmine upon doing all the evil he could I am
