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S's, and was well pleased, and shall love them all my life for the manner in which they rejoiced at the hopeful news respecting your friend. . . .

I came home with Dr. A., who gave me a copy of his friend's Sermons. I have laid them under my pillowyou know my inveterate complaint! . . . The cathedral is to have a barrel-organ consecrated to divine Harmony. Our friend has prescribed the tunes-neither Hurdigurdies nor Paris pipes are to be admitted as accompaniments. Conceive the effect of Mr. — 's sermons, his fair-haired clerk, and a barrel-organ all conspiring to wing the thoughts from earth, and lap them in Elysium. May I expect a few lines from you to-morrow? The thought of this, will, if less lulling, be at least more pleasing than the homilies which I have put instead of bride-cake at the head of my bed ..

.

Poor L that he must bring her to me her own lips" an account of See then what awaits me. notary hanging on her lips (the worst species of a hanging death), and scribble-scribble, scribbling an "account of the Spanish expedition."-This is worse than the barrel organ. Adieu, my now four-years' friend,

his daughter has come home, and he says

that "I may take down from what she has seen in Spain. Behold your poor friend and

T. C.

Next morning he pronounces the book of homilies to be as good as a hop-pillow in his wakeful malady; and, finding himself much refreshed, indulges his playful humour in the new character of "Thomas of Sydenham."

MY DEAR FRIEND,

SYDENHAM, February 13, 1809.

I verily believe that this secluded place will separate my brain and ideas so completely, that the

ET. 31.]

ANTIQUARIAN AND CLASSICAL RESEARCH.

169

divorced ideas will all fly to the source from whence they came, and the brain remain like some dry specimen of mineralogy, some honey-comb looking petrification in a chemist's collection-worm-eaten by the "maggots" that have infested it! I sit down to write this with my heart full of friendship, and my head full of nothing. When I am with you, I am like a flint from which fire can be struck; your presence supplies me with conversation; but, away from you in this sepulchral Sydenham, I feel my head a non-conductor. For God's sake come back, and electrify the caput mortuum!

If I should write you about that which I am reading, it would seem to you worse than a letter written from the dead to the living. Asserius, in his life of Alfred, is contradicted by the testimony of William of Malmesbury, as to the time when hewn stones were first used in constructing edifices in England; but the doubts of John of Huntingdon have rather leant to the side of Asserius, in the antiquity of the art of polishing stones; so that the matter rests with Thomas of Sydenham,* who, in writing on the same subject, leaves it just in the same state as he found it, as we learn by an ancient MS. of his letters to the celebrated Fannia Maia of the same place-supposed to be the Maia of the ancients -although of that there are also some doubts, as Mercurius the son of Maia is a personage of classical antiquity, and could not possibly be the Maia of Sydenham, alluded to so often in the writings of the divine bard.-Such are the disputes into which a poor student of antiquities is obliged to dip.

Of real life let me see what I have heard for the last fortnight-first :-A snake-my friend Telford received a

The name by which he hopes to be known to posterity in Maia, he affects to have discovered the true etymon of Mayow.

drawing of it—has been found thrown on the Orkney Isles, a sea-snake with a mane like a horse, four feet thick, and fifty-five feet long-this is seriously true. Malcolm Laing the historian saw it, and sent a drawing of it to my friend... Again: One day in November last, before the melancholy event of his son's decease, the class of Dugald Stewart was opened for the first time in the session, and attended as usual by an immense concourse of students. Lord Bn, (the Mendez-Pinto of Scotland,) said, "I must really take notice of Stewart, and go to the opening of his class." He went, the congregation was great. Before Dugald entered, the Earl mounted a high place in the hall, and looking round, put his hand to his lips, smiled graciously, and bowed to the audience. They shouted in an ecstacy of merriment; he bowed three times, they shouted as oft, and clapt their hands, till Dugald entered, and then he pointed to him, again smiling, as much as to say, "Leave off your homage to me; Mr. Stewart has now a right, and my leave, to your attentions." This was as good as smoothing down the gooseberries.Lastly I have heard that space and time are nothing—I really think them something; for, to scribble all day, and have only the outside of your house to look at in my walks, is a very sorry employment; in winter, so sad, you cannot annihilate time. I beg of you, my dear Maia, to let your house in town as fast as possible, and come down to the "Deserted Village," just to see the last ideas take their departure from my adustified brain. Perhaps by writing me you may prevent the immediate process of its petrification.

T. C.

CHAPTER VII.

PUBLICATION OF GERTRUDE.

THE last stanzas of Gertrude of Wyoming were now in type. The proof sheets having been forwarded to Mr. Alison, were shown to one or two judicious friends in Edinburgh, and then returned to the author. It does not appear, however, from anything in my possession, that the poem underwent any material change during this process. The manuscript had been revised with great care at Sydenham; and, when sent to press, was pronounced by very competent judges to be in all respects worthy of the author. This opinion was re-echoed by its admirers in Edinburgh; and, among the commentaries thus elicited, while printing, was the following extract from a letter, addressed to Campbell himself, which is well entitled to precedence.

EDINBURGH, March 1st, 1809.

I have seen your Gertrude. The sheets were sent to Alison, and he allowed me, though very hastily, to peruse them. There is great beauty, and great tenderness, and fancy in the work-and I am sure it will be very popular. The latter part is exquisitely pathetic, and the whole touched with those soft and skyish tints of purity and truth, which fall like enchantment on all minds that

can make anything of such matters. Many of your descriptions come nearer the tone of "The Castle of Indolence," than any succeeding poetry, and the pathos is much more graceful and delicate. . But there are faults too

for which you must be scolded. In the first place, it is too short-not merely for the delight of the reader-but, in some degree, for the development of the story, and for giving full effect to the fine scenes that are delineated. It looks almost as if you had cut out large portions of it, and filled up the gaps very imperfectly.

There is little or nothing said, I think, of the early love, and of the childish plays of your pair, and nothing certainly of their parting, and the effects of separation on each-though you had a fine subject in his European tour, seeing every thing with the eyes of a lover-a free man, and a man of the woods. . It ends rather abruptly -not but that there is great spirit in the description— but a spirit not quite suitable to the soft and soothing tenor of the poem, The most dangerous faults, however, are your faults of diction. There is still a good deal of obscurity in many passages-and in others a strained and unnatural expression-an appearance of labour and hardness; you have hammered the metal in some places till it has lost all its ductility.

These are not great faults, but they are blemishes; and as dunces will find them out-noodles will see them when they are pointed to. I wish you had had courage to correct, or rather to avoid them-for with you they are faults of over-finishing, and not of negligence. I have another fault to charge you with in private-for which I am more angry with you than for all the rest. Your timidity, or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves; but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth, till half their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from them. Believe me, my dear C., the world will never know how truly you are a great and original poet, till you venture to

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