but Simonides, that flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants, and at the same time the most natural and tender of lyric poets.[1]
What pleasure would it have given me if the wings of imagination could have divided the space which divides us, and I could have been of your party. I have seen nothing so beautiful as Virginia Water in its kind. And my thoughts for ever cling to Windsor Forest, and the copses of Marlow, like the clouds which hang upon the woods of the mountains, low trailing, and though they pass away, leave their best dew when they themselves have faded. You tell me that you have finished Nightmare Abbey. I hope that you have given the enemy no quarter. Remember, it is a sacred war. We have found an excellent quotation in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. I will transcribe it, as I do not think you have these plays at Marlow.
"Matthew. Oh, it's your only fine humour, sir. Your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir. I am melancholy myself divers times, sir; and then do I no more but take pen and paper presently, and overflow you half a score or a dozen of sonnets at a sitting.
"Ed. Knowell. Sure he utters them by the gross.
"Stephen. Truly, sir; and I love such things out of measure.
"Ed. Knowell. I' faith, better than in measure, I'll undertake.
- ↑ The prominent part taken by Wordsworth in the Westmoreland election appears to have been the act that so excited Shelley's wrath. The curious pamphlet printed at Kendal a few weeks before the date of this letter, Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmorland, is now available for any one who likes to con over the case against Wordsworth from Shelley's point of view,—having been at length reprinted in the first volume of Wordsworth's Prose Works (London: Edward Moxon, Son, and Co., 1876. 3 vols.).
