If I could convey to you any tolerably distinct notion of the
state of my spirits of late, and the train or the sort of my ideas
consequent on that state, you would feel instantly that my
non-performance of the promise is matter of 'regret' with me indeed, but
not of 'compunction'. It was my full intention to have prepared
immediately a second volume of poems for the press; but, though the
poems are all either written or composed, excepting only the conclusion
of one poem (equal to four days' common work) and a few corrections, and
though I had the most pressing motives for sending them off, yet after
many attempts I was obliged to give up the very hope--the attempts acted
so perniciously on my disorder.
Wordsworth, too, wished, and in a very particular manner expressed the
wish, that I should write to him at large on a poetic subject, which he
has at present 'sub malleo ardentem et ignitum'. I made the attempt, but
I could not command my recollections. It seemed a dream that I had ever
'thought' on poetry, or had ever written it, so remote were my trains of
ideas from composition or criticism on composition. These two instances
will, in some manner, explain my non-performance; but, indeed, I have
been very ill, and that I have done anything in any way is a subject of
wonder to myself, and of no causeless self-complacency.
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