He
will, I hope, write immediately to Biggs and Cottle. At all events,
those poems must not as yet be delivered up to them, because that
beautiful poem, "The Brothers", which I read to you in Paul Street, I
neglected to deliver to you, and that must begin the volume. I trust,
however, that I have invoked the sleeping bard with a spell so potent,
that he will awake and deliver up that sword of Argantyr, which is to
rive the enchanter "Gaudyverse" from his crown to his foot.
What did you think of that case I translated for you from the German?
That I was a well-meaning sutor who had ultra-crepidated[1] with more
zeal than wisdom!! I give myself credit for that word "ultra-
crepidated," it started up in my brain like a creation. I write to
Tobin by this post. Godwin is gone Irelandward, on a visit to Curran,
says the "Morning Post"; to Grattan, writes C. Lamb.
We drank tea the night before I left Grasmere, on the island in that
lovely lake; our kettle swung over the fire, hanging from the branch of
a fir-tree, and I lay and saw the woods, and mountains, and lake all
trembling, and as it were idealized through the suble smoke, which rose
up from the clear, red embers of the fir-apples which we had collected:
afterwards we made a glorious bonfire on the margin, by some elder
bushes, whose twigs heaved and sobbed in the uprushing column of smoke,
and the image of the bonfire, and of us that danced round it, ruddy,
laughing faces in the twilight; the image of this in a lake, smooth as
that sea, to whose waves the Son of God had said, "Peace!" May God, and
all his sons, love you as I do.
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