LITEKART AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 325 



" Your sketch of the Professor has given us pleasure at Elleray. 

 It has occurred to me that you may possibly allude, in the part 

 which is to follow, to the circumstance of my having lost a great 

 part of my original patrimony, as an antithesis to the word ' rich.' 

 Were you to do so, I know it would be with your natural delicacy, 

 and in a way flattering to my character. But the man to whom I 

 owed that favor died about a fortnight ago, , and any allu- 

 sion to it might seem to have been prompted by myself, and would 

 excite angry and painful feelings. On that account I trouble you 

 with this perhaps needless hint, that it would be better to pass it 

 over sub silentio. Otherwise, I should have liked some allusion to 

 it, as the loss, grievous to many minds, never hurt essentially the 

 peace of mine, nor embittered my happiness. 



" If you think the Isle of Palms and the City of the Plague 

 original poems (in design), and unborrowed and unsuggested, I 

 hope you will say so. The Plague has been often touched on and 

 alluded to, but never, that I know of, was made the subject of a poem, 

 old Withers (the City Remembrancer) excepted, and some drivel- 

 ling of Taylor the Water-Poet. Defoe's fictitious prose narrative I 

 had never read, except an extract or two in Britton's Beauties of 

 England. If you think me a good private character, do say so ; 

 and if in my house there be one who sheds a quiet light, perhaps a 

 beautiful niche may be given to that clear luminary. Base brutes 

 have libelled my personal character. Coming from you, the truth 

 told, without reference to their malignity, will make me and others 

 more happy than any kind expression you may use regarding my 

 genius or talents. In the Lights and Shadoics, Margaret Lynd- 

 say, The Foresters, and many articles in Blackwood (such as Selby's 

 'Ornithology'*), I have wished to speak of humble life, and the 

 elementary feelings of the human soul in isolation, under the light 

 of a veil of poetry. Have I done so? Pathos, a sense of the 

 beautiful, and humor, I think I possess. Do I ? In the City of 

 the Plague there ought to be something of the sublime. Is there ? 

 That you think too well of me, is most probably the case. So do 

 not fear to speak whatever you think less flattering, for the opinion 

 of such a man, being formed in kindness and affection, will gratify 

 me far beyond the most boundless panegyric from anybody else. I 

 feel that I am totally free from all jealousy, spite, envy, and un- 



* November, 1826. 



