Poor old Whag! his mother died of a dish of clotted cream, which my mother sent her as a present.
I rejoice that your poems are all sold. In the ballad of "Mary the Maid of the Inn," you have properly enough made the diction colloquial, but "_engages_ the eye," applied to a gibbet, strikes me as _slipshoppish_ from the unfortunate meaning of the word "engaging." Your praise of my Dedication[161] gave me great pleasure. From the ninth to the fourteenth the five lines are flat and prosish, and the versification ever and anon has too much of the rhyme couplet cadence, and the metaphor[162] on the diverse sorts of friendship is _hunted down_, but the poem is dear to me, and in point of taste I place it next to "Low was our pretty Cot," which I think the best of my poems.
I am as much a Pangloss as ever, only less contemptuous than I used to be, when I argue how unwise it is to feel contempt for anything.
I had been on a visit to Wordsworth's at Racedown, near Crewkerne, and I brought him and his sister back with me, and here I have _settled them_. By a combination of curious circumstances a gentleman's seat, with a park and woods, elegantly and completely furnished, with nine lodging rooms, three parlours, and a hall, in the most beautiful and romantic situation by the seaside, four miles from Stowey,--this we have got for Wordsworth at the _rent of twenty-three pounds a year, taxes included_! The park and woods are _his_ for all purposes _he_ wants them, and the large gardens are altogether and entirely his. Wordsworth is a very great man, the only man to whom _at all times_ and _in all modes of excellence_ I feel myself inferior, the only one, I mean, whom _I have yet met with_, for the London _literati_ appear to me to be very much like little potatoes, that is, _no great things_, a compost of nullity and dullity.
Charles Lamb has been with me for a week.[163] He left me Friday morning. The second day after Wordsworth came to me, dear Sara accidentally emptied a skillet of boiling milk on my foot, which confined me during the whole time of C. Lamb's stay and still prevents me from all _walks_ longer than a furlong. While Wordsworth, his sister, and Charles Lamb were out one evening, sitting in the arbour of T. Poole's garden[164] which communicates with mine I wrote these lines, with which I am pleased. (I heard from C. Lamb of Favell and Le Grice.[165] Poor Allen! I knew nothing of it.[166] As to Rough,[167] he is a _wonderful fellow_; and when I returned from the army, _cut_ me for a month, till he saw that other people _were as much_ attached as before.)