1844-54. LINES TO THE STETHOSCOPE. 353 



Having occasion to send to Lord Jeffrey, with whom a warm 

 friendship was springing up, a volume for perusal, a copy of the 

 ' Stethoscope' accompanied it, which was acknowledged by him 

 thus : " I have not yet had time to read much except the poem 

 with which I was much gratified, and (if you will allow me to 

 say so) also a little surprised. From the nature of your pur- 

 suits, I certainly was not prepared to find this among your gifts. 

 But it is one of which you have reason to be proud, the speci- 

 men you have sent me being full of beauty and deep feeling, as 

 well as having a great command both of versification and poeti- 

 cal diction. It is, perhaps, rather too much expanded; but 

 your two pictures (especially the first, of the consumptive girl) 

 are very touchingly and gracefully executed, though I can 

 scarcely forgive you for giving us only the tragic and fatal 

 vaticinations of your stethoscope, and not cheering us before 

 concluding with some of its happy deliverances and revivals. 

 Indeed, I think I should be justified in imposing such a supple- 

 ment as a task for your last days at Dirleton." 



To the suggestion made in the close of this letter, George 

 could only reply, that as the joyful side of the picture had not 

 fallen to his lot, he could not portray it. The other, alas ! was 

 but the welling forth of thoughts which, by expression, relieved 

 the scorched heart, on which they had been imprinted as with 

 letters of fire. " I have not been describing imaginary scenes," 

 he says, " I have written some of the lines with tears in my 

 eyes." 



The beauty of many of his poems has been freely acknow- 

 ledged, but exception made to their frequent irregularities of 

 metre. A quotation from a letter to Dr. Cairns, who had al- 

 luded to this blemish, gives his own idea of the matter. 

 " When you come to Edinburgh, be sure to bring that Latin 

 hymn-book with you. I won't give you a translation of any 

 one of those grand hymns, because I can't. It is above and 

 beyond me, I could not, apart from everything else, reproduce 

 their exquisite rhythm and metres, without which they would 

 become alien paraphrases. I to descend from heaven to earth 

 do not use irregular metres, because I despise regular ones ; 

 neither do I think the former preferable. I use them because 



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