ABSTRACT
In my re-perusals of the Poem it seemed always to strike on my feeling as well as judgement, that if there were any serious defect, it consisted in a disproportion of the Accidents to the spiritual Incidents, and closely connected with this, if it be not indeed the same, – that Emily is indeed talked of, and once appears; but neither speaks nor acts in all the first ¾ths of the Poem: and as the outward Interest of the Poem is in favor of the old man’s religious feelings, and the filial Heroism of his band of Sons, it seemed to require something in order to place the two Protestant Malcontents of the Family in a light, that made them beautiful, as well as virtuous – In short, to express it far more strongly than I mean or think in order, in the present anguish of my spirits, to be able to express it [at] all,
that ¾ths of the Work is every thing rather than Emily; then, the last almost a separate (& doubtless most exquisite Poem) wholly of Emily. – The whole of the Rout and the delivering up of the Family by Francis I never ceased to find not only comparatively very heavy, but to me quite obscure, as to Francis’s motives. And on the few, to whom within my acquaintance the Poem has been read either by yourself or me (I have, I believe, read it only at the Beaumonts’) it produced the same effect. – Now I had conceived two little Incidents, the introduction of which joined to a little abridgement, and lyrical precipitation of the last Half of the third, I had thought, would have removed this defect – so seeming to me – and bring to a finer Balance the Business with the Action of the Tale. But after my receipt of your Letter concerning Lamb’s censures I felt my courage fail – and that what I deemed a harmonizing would disgust you, as a materialization of the Plan, & appear to you like insensibility to the power of the history in the mind . . .
