| Transcript or Index | February 16th 1815
Dear Sir,
I have finished the Excursion and left it in much better humour than I was at the beginning; though I am still at a loss to comprehend many parts of it, and the meaning and object of the whole; & could like very well to turn out nearly half of it, in defiance of Mr Robinson and all Mr Wordsworth’s most ardent admirers. I wish you would read it, and read Roderick and Charlemagne. I like to get a book a little before my friends, but it must only a little, or I lose all the pleasure of talking about it while fresh in my mind. I promised you both the clouds, so here they follow, and you shall give me your judgement on them. I thought Wordsworth’s had been shewn to you on the Evening when you and Miss Flaxman wore the subject threadbare with your wit!
Me thinks if ye would know
How visitations of calamity
Affect the pious soul, tis shewn thee there!
Look yonder at that cloud which thro’ the sky
Sailing alone, doth cross in her career
The rolling moon! I watch’d it as it came
And deem’d the deep opaque would blot her beams;
But melting like a wreath of snow, it hangs
In folds of waving silver round, and clothes
The orb with richer beauty than her own
Then passing leaves her in her light serene.
Roderick.
There transports with staid looks of pure good will
And with soft smile his consort would reprove.
She far behind him in the vale of years
Yet keeping her first mildness, was advanced
Far nearer in the habit of her soul
To that still haven whither all are bound.
-Him might we liken to the setting sun
As I have seen it on some gusty day
Struggling and bold, and shining from the west
With an inconstant and unmellowed light.
She was a soft attendant cloud, that hung
As if with wish to veil the restless orb
From which it did itself imbibe a ray
Of pleasing lustre.
Excursion.
Much of the beauty of Southey’s passage I think lies in context and the purpose to which Florinda wishes to apply her remark, as she is gazing at the moon and sees the object really pass before her. Certainly there are many passages of high poetry in the Excursion and many pathetic domestic stories very pleasingly told, but why they are thus grouped together one does not well perceive. They would be beautiful as Episodes, but the poem wants some connecting subject and they are generally “emeralds set in lead”.
Thank you for Estrella: but my good Sir, I pray you what need of apologies about not having made a more elegant transcript, and so forth, it was surely as good as necessary, and I think the poem altogether looks very respectable, and though I can see fifty holes to pick in it, which I dare to say you have seen too, I flatter myself they are not quite large enough to be discovered by the ear. As to the binding of the Lunatics, that was only a fancy of mine, and for the transcribing it in that form, it was literally because I thought it might be read in parts and that otherwise my elegant characters would scarcely be legible.
I heard a Lecture from Mr Babbage on Astronomy this morning and like him very much. He gave the History of its progress from the Chaldeans and Egyptians down to Copernicus, and his subject as you will see fell in whimsically with the subject of the first part of the Essay I laid aside to attend him. So far I like him better than any Astronomical Lecturer I have heard. To be sure Pond was much superior in his early courses to those he afterwards delivered. Did I tell you Campbell begins on the first of March. I will take care of a card for you, and shall hope to meet you at the Lecture. The whim for writing to you has seized me, so behold the Essay must sleep unfinish’d but you will probably receive it with this, and perhaps a fresh charge from the battery –
Eleanor Anne Porden.
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