| dc.description.transcription | Tanyralt Feb. 7. 1812
My dear Friend
I have been teazed [sic] to death for the last fortnight. Had you known the variety of the discomfitures I have undergone, you would attribute my silence to any thing but unkindness or neglect. I allude to the embankment affairs in which I thoughtlessly engaged, for when I come home to Harriet I am the happiest of the happy.—I forget whether I have expressed to you the pleasure which you know I must feel at your visit in March. I hope it will be early in the month, & that you will arrange matters so in London that it may be protracted to the utmost possible length.—We simple people live here in a cottage extensive & tasty enough for the villa of an Italian prince. The rent as you may conceive is large, but it is an object with us that they allow it to remain unpaid until I am of age.—What said Harriet of America?—You must take your place in the mail as far as Capel Curig & inform me of the time you mean to be there & I will meet you. I do not think that you have ever visited this part of North Wales. The scenery is more strikingly grand in the way from Capel Curig to our house than ever I beheld. The road passes at the foot of Snowdon; all around you see lofty mountain peaks lifting their summits far above the clouds, wildly wooded vallies below, & dark tarns reflecting every tint & shape of the scenery above them. The roads are tremendously rough, I shall bring a horse for you, as you will then be better able to see the country than when jumbled in a chaise –
[p. 2] Mab has gone on but slowly although she is nearly finished. They have teazed me out of all poetry. With some restrictions I have taken your advice, tho I have not been able to bring myself to rhyme. The didactic is in blank heroic verse, & the descriptive in blank lyrical measure. If authority is of any weight in support of this singularity, Miltons Samson Agonistes, the Greek Choruses, & (you will laugh) Southeys Thalaba may be adduced.—I have seen your last letter to Harriet. She will answer it by next post. I need not say that your letters delight me. but all your principles do not. The species of Pride which you love to encourage appears to me incapable of bearing the test of Reason. Now do not tell me that Reason is a cold & insensible arbiter. Reason is only an assemblage of our better feelings, passion considered under a peculiar mode of its operation.—This chivalric pride although of excellent use in an age of vandalism & brutality is unworthy of the nineteenth century. A more elevated spirit has begun to diffuse itself which without deducting from the warmth of love or the constancy of friendship reconciles all private feelings to public utility, & scarce suffers true Passion & true Reason to continue at war. Pride mistakes a desire of being esteemed to that of being really estimable.—I scarce think that the mock humility of Christian hypocrisy is more degrading & blind. I remember when over our Oxford fire we used to discuss various subjects. Fancy me present with you in spirit & own “how vain is human pride.”
Perhaps you will say that my republicanism is proud. [p. 3] it certainly is far removed from pothouse democracy, & knows with what smile to hear the servile applauses of an inconstant mob.—but tho its cheek could feel without a blush the hand of insult strike, its soul would shrink neither from the scaffold nor the stake, nor from those deeds & habits which are obnoxious to slaves in Power. My republicanism it is true would bear with an aristocracy of chivalry, & refinement, before an aristocracy of commerce & vulgarity, not however from pride but because the one I consider as approaching most nearly to what man ought to be.—So much for Pride.
Since I wrote the above I have finished the rough sketch of my Poem.—As I have not abated an iota of the infidelity or cosmopolicy of it, sufficient will remain, exclusi[ve of] innumerable faults invisible to partial eyes to make [it] very unpopular. Like all egotists I shall console mys[elf] with what I may call if I please the suffrages of the chosen few who can think & feel, or those friends whose personal partialities may blind them to all defects.—I mean to subjoin copious philosophical notes.
Harriet has a bold scheme of writing you a Latin letter. If you have an Ovids Metamorphoses she will thank you to bring it.—I do not teach her grammatically, but by the less laborious method of teaching her the English of Latin words, intending afterwards to give her a general of grammar.—She unites with me in all kindest wishes
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