The Letters of 
 Thomas Lovell Beddoes 
 
Of this Edition 600 copies have 
 been printed for England 
 
The Letters of 
 Thomas .Lovell Beddoes 
 
 EDITED WITH NOTES 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE 
 
 HON. M .A. OF TRINITY COL- 
 LEGE. CAMBRIDGE 
 
 LONDON : Elkin Mathews 6* John Lane 
 
 NEW YORK : Macmillan <5j Co. 
 
 mdcccxciv 
 
Jt 
 
 BALLANTYNE PRESS 
 
 LONDON &f EDINBURGH 
 
^Prefatory 
 
 By publishing the correspondence contained 
 in this volume, I conclude the performance 
 of a duty laid upon me by the late Mr. 
 Robert Browning. 
 
 It is not necessary that I should here 
 repeat in detail the circumstances of the 
 transference of these papers to Mr. Browning 
 by the will of ZMr. Thomas Forbes Kelsall in 
 1872. //// information on this point will be 
 found given minutely in the preface to my 
 edition of the Poetical Worlds of Beddoes 
 (J. WL. <Dent W Co., 1890. 2 vols.). It 
 suffices to say that it was the wish of Kelsall, 
 at whose absolute disposal all the tMSS. of 
 Beddoes were placed by the poets death-bed 
 
"Prefatory 
 
 memorandum, that these letters should be pub- 
 lished, at a proper interval after the death of 
 {Miss Zoe King, an event which tooJ^ place 
 twelve years ago. Large use was made of the 
 correspondence by Kelsall himself, when he 
 compiled the memoir of Beddoes which was 
 prefixed to the Poems of 1851, but this is the 
 first time that the letters are textually pub- 
 lished, while the volume of 1851 has never 
 been reprinted, and has now become rare. *A 
 few of these letters, those addressed to B. W. 
 Procter, were published by my friend {Mr. 
 Coventry Tatmore in his anonymous memoir of 
 that writer* ^Another was given to myself 
 by the late {Mrs. Trocter. I have to thank 
 {Mr. Robert Barrett Browning for the 
 kindness with which he confirmed his father's 
 wish that I should publish these papers, the 
 originals of the remainder of which are now 
 in his possession. 
 
 Few collections of letters exist in which the 
 discussion of literary topics holds so prominent 
 a place as it does in these of Beddoes. If any 
 excuse were needed for bringing them before 
 
Trefatory 
 
 the public ', it would be more than supplied by 
 {Mr. Swinburne, who, as long ago as 1875, 
 remarked of the author of Death's Jest Book 
 that his " noble instinct for poetry " was better 
 shown in his letters than even in his practice 
 as a verse-writer, and added that Beddoes* 
 " brilliant correspondence on poetical questions 
 gives to me a higher view of his fine and 
 vigorous intelligence than any other section of 
 his literary remains" 
 
 It is the letters which were thus distin- 
 guished which are here presented to the 
 
 public. 
 
 E. G. 
 
 D m 
 
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES was born 
 
 in Rodney Tlace, Clifton, on the 2Oth of 
 July, loj. He was educated at the Bath 
 Grammar School and at the Charterhouse, 
 proceeding to 'Pembroke College, Oxford, in 
 
 1820. He published The Improvisatore in 
 
 1821, and The Brides' Tragedy in 1822. 
 He died at Basel on the 26th of January, 
 1849. H* s tra g e fy f Death's Jest Book 
 was published in 1850, and his Poems in 
 
LETTERS OF 
 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES 
 
 LETTER I 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 2 Devereux &. 
 
 A Sunday in Feby [1824] 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, Being on the edge of a 
 journey deep into the country for a fort- 
 night, and altogether desperate of receiv- 
 ing any official answer from Mr. J. Hunt, 1 
 I write to inform you how the Shelley 8 
 affair goes on. On Mr. Waller's receiving 
 your answer he brought it here and we in 
 full assembly with your paper proxy de- 
 clared for 250 copies. I was installed 
 secretary and wrote on the spot to J. 
 Hunt informing him that we offered to 
 
'The Letters of 
 
 become responsible for so many, and add- 
 ing that it was out of our power to do any 
 more. This was nearly, if not quite, a 
 month ago. I have received no answer ; 
 but Mr. Hunt has written to Procter 3 
 about it, saying that he had already men- 
 tioned 500 copies to Mrs. Shelley ; that 
 250 copies will not pay for printing & 
 advertisements ; and that we ought to give 
 her a chance of getting something, or per- 
 haps she would not like to publish &c &c. 
 Very true, very likely, very plausible, Mr. 
 John Hunt. For the twinkling of this 
 very distant chance we three poor honest 
 admirers of Shelley's poetry are certainly 
 to pay: if all, a few, as many more who 
 have professed the same would do as much 
 in proportion to their power, nothing 
 would be better than to print 500 or 750 
 copies (if it pleases the Gods of waste- 
 paper,) for Mr. J. Hunt to sell at two- 
 pence a pound three or four years hence. 
 Besides if they want to double our number 
 what hinders them. Here is our offer to 
 pay all the foundation expenses of the 
 printing, and the whple of the advertis- 
 
Thomas Love/I "Beddoes 3 
 
 ing ; now if so much is to be made of the 
 latter 250, if they are so marvellously 
 alchemical, can no other person venture 
 the comparative trifle they are to cost. 
 But " if it is a trifle then,"says my opponent, 
 "why cannot you, the 'honest admirer* 
 spare this trifle ? " Because I know it 
 will be thrown away ; I have gone quite 
 far enough, 1 never intended to go further 
 any more than to retreat ; all that I can 
 afford is offered. Take it, Mr. J. Hunt or 
 reject it, as you please ; if it were in a 
 matter of less import, if it were for any 
 other sublunary purpose I wd have with- 
 drawn it long ago, feeling that we have 
 not been treated in the way, which our 
 disinterestedness deserved ; to a certain 
 extent in this case I will submit to be 
 " made a convenience of." 
 
 What they intend to do is beyond my 
 knowledge or conjecture ; very probably 
 the publisher or printer is only trying to 
 double his job, & when the attempt fails 
 will proceed contentedly as he may. Are 
 not Simpkin & Marshall now selling the 
 remainder of Ollier's 250 copies of his 
 
The Letters of 
 
 best 4 poems at a reduction of 70 per cent ? 
 "Til -go no further." 
 
 Have you seen the " Westminster " ? 
 Procter has cut it ; they did certainly 
 not behave very well to him ; and he 
 holds to the " Edinburgh " a falling house. 
 This new review deserves support, the 
 internal support of talent I mean, & then 
 the other will follow of course, for it's 
 principle. It dissects the "Edinburgh" well 
 enough, and alludes to a celebrated cousin 
 of yours in one article as " a stripling who 
 can write a readable article for a maga- 
 zine " &c Who wrote not Paul but 
 Jesus ? Not Smith but Austen ; Mr. 
 Knight's Austen is Mr Hunt's Gamaliel. 
 
 There was a new intolerable opera the 
 other night at Covent-garden, with Miss 
 Tree in a nice new pair of white silk 
 pantaloons. Cha 8 . Kemble is to come 
 out in Falstaff and they have under cover 
 a new tragedy (Shiel or Walkers 5 or some 
 of those immortals we conjecture;) and, 
 credite posteri, a new comedy with songs. 
 
 Spenser you do him injustice ; I was 
 and am villainously ignorant of him ; but 
 
Thomas Lovell *Beddoes 5 
 
 I have bought him in folio and intend to 
 read him piece-meal. Beginning, as all 
 rational folks do, at the end, I stumbled on 
 " Britain's Ida"; 8 which is extremely like 
 Keats with a mixture of the Shakspearian 
 play on words. I picked up Daniel too, 
 who is certainly an unconquerable Alp 
 of weariness, his tragedies would have de- 
 lighted Voltaire : they are a good deal 
 worse than " Cato." 
 
 I have finished the first act of a play ; 
 oh ! so stupid. Procter has the brass to tell 
 me he likes that fool the last man. 7 I shall 
 go on with neither ; there are now three 
 first acts in my drawer when I have got 
 two more I shall stitch them together, and 
 stick the sign of a fellow tweedling a mask 
 in his fingers, with " good entertainment 
 for man and ass " understood as the gram- 
 marians (not the Chrestomathic ones,) say. 
 You'll think this letter comes from old 
 Bernard the Quaker 8 it's so like a wounded 
 snake, but it proceeds from the proper 
 paw of 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES. 
 
The Letters of 
 
 The Ring. Thank you; the old 
 woman's taken in tho', it is not a dia- 
 mond but dear me how I keep you from 
 your clients ! 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 THOMAS KELSALL Esq re 
 Houndwell Lane 
 
 Southampton 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 
 
 LETTER II 
 
 To BRYAN WALLER PROCTER 
 
 Brittoly March ^ rrf , 1824 
 
 DEAR PROCTER, I have just been read- 
 ing your epistle to our Ajax Flagellifer, 
 the bloody John Lacy : 9 on one point, 
 where he is most vulnerable, you have 
 omitted to place your sting. I mean his 
 palpable ignorance of the Elizabethans 
 and many other dramatic writers of this 
 and preceding times, with whom he 
 ought to have formed at least a nodding 
 acquaintance before he offered himself as 
 physician to Melpomene. 
 
 About Shakespeare you don't say enough. 
 He was an incarnation of nature ; and you 
 might just as well attempt to remodel the 
 seasons, and the laws of life and death, as 
 to alter " one jot or tittle " of his eternal 
 
8 The Letters of 
 
 thoughts. " A star " you call him. If he 
 was a star, all the other stage scribblers 
 can hardly be considered a constellation of 
 brass buttons. 
 
 I say he was an universe, and all 
 material existence with its excellences and 
 defects was reflected in shadowy thought 
 upon the crystal waters of his imagination, 
 ever glorified as they were by the sleepless 
 sun of his golden intellect. And this 
 imaginary universe had its seasons and 
 changes, its harmonies and its discords, as 
 well as the dirty reality. On the snow- 
 maned necks of its winter hurricanes rode 
 madness, despair, and " empty death, 
 with the winds whistling through the 
 white grating of his sides"; its summer of 
 poetry glistening through the drops of pity ; 
 and its solemn and melancholy autumn 
 breathing deep melody among the "sere 
 and yellow leaves " of thunder-stricken life, 
 etc., etc. (See Charles Phillip's speeches 
 and X.Y.Z. for the completing furbelow of 
 this paragraph.) 
 
 By the third scene of the fourth act of 
 " Macbeth," I conclude that you mean 
 
Thomas Lovell *Beddoes 9 
 
 the dialogue between Malcolm and 
 MacdufF, which is only part of the 
 scene, for the latter part, from the en- 
 trance of Rosse, is of course necessary to 
 create an interest in the destined avenger 
 of Duncan, as well as to set the last edge 
 to our hatred of the usurper. The 
 Doctor's speech is merely a compliment 
 to the "right divine " of people in turreted 
 night-caps to cure sores a little more expe- 
 ditiously than Dr. Solomons, and is, too, a 
 little bit of smooth chat, to show by 
 MacdufTs manner that he has not yet 
 heard of his wife's murder. 
 
 I hope Guzman has grown since I saw 
 him, and has improved in voice. I shall 
 be in London in about a week, and hope 
 to find you in your Franciscan eyrie, sing- 
 ing among the red-brick boughs, and lay- 
 ing tragedy eggs for Covent Garden 
 Market. 
 
 So you " think this last author will do 
 something extraordinary ; " so do I too. 
 I should not at all wonder if he was to be 
 plucked after his degree ; which would be 
 quite delightful and new. 
 
io The Letters of 
 
 When does Fitzgerald publish his 
 tragedy ? 
 
 This March wind has blown all my sense 
 away, and so farewell. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES. 
 
'Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 1 1 
 
 LETTER III 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 [Postmark "Mr 29, 1824 "] 
 6 Devereux Court 
 
 Monday 5 o clock 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, I have just arrived out of 
 a six weeks sojourn at Bristol, and among 
 the letters which " flake after flake had 
 gathered " here I find yours to my absolute 
 confusion. The very night before I went 
 down I wrote you a long rigmaroling letter 
 insisting upon the necessity of 250 
 copies and no more being printed. In 
 your name & Waller's I had written to 
 John Hunt giving him precisely the same 
 information to which he returned an 
 answer, wh was no answer, thro* Procter. 
 The letter containing all this and other 
 matter I signed and sealed, but did not 
 
1 2 The Letters of 
 
 deliver, for I now discover that it is in my 
 desk safely locked up & sleeping as soundly, 
 as it's elder brother by the same pen does 
 on Rivington's shelves. I will send it to 
 you in envelope the first time I see a 
 member of palavarment. What monstrous 
 stuff that deformed Transformed is 
 " Rome the seven-hilly " &c 
 
 Do you think of coming to town ? On 
 the 6 th of May I shall be wanting at Ox- 
 ford for an examination for which I am 
 absolutely unfit & the intervening time 
 must be occupied in the very hardest 
 reading. The loss of a day under such 
 circumstances wd be a serious one but if 
 I thought I could retrieve it at Southamp- 
 ton I shd be tempted to go there. If you 
 saw a small cheap lodging in your neigh- 
 bourhood, the nearer the better, and wrote 
 by return of post I do not know what I 
 might say. The truth is, that being a 
 little shy & and not a little proud perhaps, 
 I have held back & never made the first 
 step towards discovering my residence or 
 existence to any of my family friends in 
 
Thomas Lovell T&eddoes 13 
 
 consequence I have lived in a deserted 
 state which I could hardly bear much 
 longer without sinking into that despond- 
 ency on the brink of which I have sate 
 so long. Your cheerful presence at times 
 (could we not mess together occasionally) 
 wd set me up a good deal : but perhaps 
 you had better not draw my heavy com- 
 pany on your head. I shall be obliged to 
 read about 12 hours a day without inter- 
 mission. I would not take the trouble of 
 going down unless I was sure of seeing you 
 a good deal ; and that may be impossible. 
 
 You have caused me to write this : it 
 means little, and you had better get 
 out of the scrape as soon as you can 
 one pleasant circumstance happened to 
 me at Bristol. I met an intelligent 
 man who had lived at Hampstead, seen 
 Keats, and was well read in his & the 
 poems of Shelley. On my mentioning the 
 former by accident to him, he com- 
 plimented me on my similarity of counte- 
 nance ; he did not think much of K's 
 genius & therefore did not say it insin - 
 
14 The Letters of 
 
 cerely or sycophantically: the same was 
 said by Procter and Taylor before. 
 The Postman wait[s] 
 
 Goodnight 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 " T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 
 3 Houndwcll Lane 
 Southampton " 
 
Thomas Lovell ^Beddoes 15 
 
 LETTER IV 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Thursday. Dev* Court 
 
 I Jpril [1824] 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, I am sorry to find that 
 my guardian will not let me go out of 
 town, as he thinks my presence is necessary 
 to the arrangement of affairs ; and will be 
 so for some weeks. I must be at Oxford 
 on the 2 nd of May, so that I fear I shall 
 not be able to find an odd day for South- 
 ampton. From what I recollect of the 
 enclosed letter sent exactly as I found it in 
 my desk, there is an account of my literary 
 proceedings, to which nothing has been 
 added since the writing, nor will there for 
 some time to come. I have not seen 
 Procter yet but believe he is in town. When 
 do you think of appearing here ? You can 
 easily manage, if your visit occurs in May, 
 
1 6 The Letters of 
 
 to return thro* Oxford where I shall be, 
 quite at liberty after the first week, and at 
 which time you will see everything to the 
 very best advantage ; much better than if 
 you had gone there at Xmas. What sort 
 of a letter did A. Brooke write ? I am 
 obliged to you for patching up my manners 
 to Harrison. I saw Shelley's cousin (Mr. 
 Shelley Harris, the greatest fool within the 
 walls of my acquaintance) the other night 
 at Oxford repeating the whole of the 
 " Deformed " in raptures 
 
 God forgive him ! 
 Yours ever T. L. BEDDOES. 
 
 Addressed 
 
 " London, April the frst 1824 
 THOMAS KELSALL Esq r 
 
 Houndwell Lane 
 
 Southampton " 
 " Free 
 
 DENIS GILBERT " 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 17 
 
 LETTER V 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 JO Francis Street 
 
 Toff" Court 'Road 
 [Postmark April 12 1824] 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, Here are Beddoes & I 
 sitting together, wondering what the devil 
 you can have to do at Southampton during 
 this rainy weather, that can prevent your 
 writing a full statement of your country 
 grievances to us, your betters, in London. 
 You neither toil nor spin. You neither 
 drink wine nor kiss the women. You do 
 not read law ; you do not respect religion. 
 Friendship is a shadow with you, & Love 
 is not even a dream. 
 
 The truth is, Mr. Thomas Kelsall, 
 that you are fond of your bed, of your 
 breakfast, of reckoning up the faults of 
 the virtuous (of us 'the few') & do 
 
 B 
 
1 8 The Letters of 
 
 not attend to the duties of your station, 
 which are to commit your soul to paper 
 (either in verse or prose) & send it (i.e. 
 your soul) regularly by the Sunday's post, 
 as an example (in one shape or another) 
 whereby we are to avoid the evil or recreate 
 ourselves with good. Do you go to church 
 at Southampton ? Answer, upon your 
 oath. And, if so, is it to establish your 
 character amongst the tea drinking dowagers 
 there ? or to entrap the heedless into a 
 belief that you are a lawyer ? Out on such 
 doings ! Do / go to church ? Yet I have 
 50 times the reason that you have, for I 
 am really an orthodox man, whereas you 
 are little better than one of the ignorant. 
 I stay away, to write to my friends ; a duty 
 which it seems you neglect. 
 
 You can say nothing in return, to this, 
 under four long sides of letter paper. I 
 feel it, & you will feel it too & so I 
 counsel you to begin. 
 
 Beddoes poor Beddoes ! It would hurt 
 your feelings sadly, were you to see him. 
 
 He is but I must break it to you gently. 
 
 You remember how gay he was (innocently 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 19 
 
 gay) with a jibe always on his tongue, a 
 mischievous eye, & locks curling like the 
 hyacinth. Well what do you think has 
 happened ? He has lost " his eye " I 
 think I hear you say No not his eye. 
 His mischievous propensities, then ? No, 
 they are in full blossom. His innocent 
 gaiety No, again. He is as gay as usual, 
 & I suppose as innocent. Why then what 
 is the matter ? Is he dead ? or buried ? 
 No he has got " What ? " (you interrupt 
 me again) a wife ? no, no. " A child ? " 
 no, no, no, no, I say. Why, then what, in 
 the name of Sattan ? Why, a wig. It 
 is a truth, melancholy, monstrous and 
 scarcely to be believed did not I (who am 
 more veracious than truth itself) affirm it. 
 "Those hanging locks" like mine or the 
 "young Apollo's " are clipt as close (closer 
 than) Sampson's. Write to me soon & at 
 length 
 
 Yours very sincerely 
 
 B. W. PROCTER 
 
20 'The Letters of 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, Comfort yourself with 
 the assurance that Shelley is proceeding, 
 and in due course of time and the South- 
 ampton coach will rise in full glory on 
 Houndwell Lane. I can hardly write 
 English, having bathed myself in Herodotus 
 & Sophocles for the lat fortnight ; there- 
 fore I can only warn you against Procter's 
 news ; he is in an iniquitously hoaxing fit, 
 and has resolved to take in the " country- 
 man " with some strange story of my having 
 a perriwig of snakes, or a lion's mane the 
 truth is that I have not had my head cut 
 off as he seems to insinuate, nor am I any 
 more like Bottom than usual. Rejoice ! 
 Baldwyn is publishing a new series of old 
 Plays but I forget you prefer the fragrant 
 pages of Lord Coke. 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
Thomas Lovell Heddoes 2 1 
 
 [The foregoing letter is written on the 
 same sheet as that written by B. W. Procter 
 and addressed to 
 
 THOMAS FORBES KZLSALL Esq re 
 Houndwell Lane 
 Southampton] 
 
22 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER VI 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 6 'Devereux Court 
 
 Saturday 
 [Postmark Ap : 17. 1824^ 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, I would have written 
 before, as your letter seemed to require 
 some sort of speedy reply, but as I was 
 going to Mrs. Shelley's in the evening, and 
 it was probable that some intelligence 
 agreeable to you might be there acquired ; I 
 postponed my epistolary operations. Of 
 my visit take the result in short ; the 
 printing press moving slower than a broad- 
 wheeled waggon, only 5 proofs or 7, I 
 forget which, yet received by Mrs. S. but 
 she has just written a remonstrance to 
 Hunt, and requires 5 per week. The 
 portrait 10 not arrived 500 copies are to be 
 printed for 250 of which only we stand 
 
Thomas Love II TZeddoes 23 
 
 responsible if for any, for not having 
 received any direct answer to my com- 
 munication from Hunt, I do not know 
 whether our offer is accepted or not : and 
 this is all I know or am likely to hear of 
 the matter Mr. Hogg n & Godwin la were 
 there ; the former looks and speaks like an 
 intelligent goodnatured man, perhaps you 
 know him ; Political Justice invited me to 
 call on him, which I intend to do, and 
 hear what is to be heard there. Procter 
 has been writing a catalogue raisonnie or 
 the English Poets to accompany Baldwyn's 
 portraits it is just printed. 
 
 Darley is a tallish, slender, pale, lighteye- 
 browed, gentle-looking, baldpate, in a brown 
 sourtout with a duodecimo under his arm 
 stammering to a most provoking degree, so 
 much so as to be almost inconversible he 
 is supposed to be writing a comedy & 
 tragedy, or perhaps both in one. Mrs. 
 Shelley has written lately in the London 
 a paper on ghosts in the March N & 
 "The Bride of Modern Italy" in the 
 present : she has done some dramatic 
 scenes, which P. lauds, as being very simi- 
 
24 The Letters of 
 
 lar to Shelley's secondary style. Peacock 
 has married a Welsh turtle, 13 and is em- 
 ployed at present in devising inextinguish- 
 able lanterns : which he puffs at with a 
 pair of bellows. Taylor has lately refused 
 a paper of Procter's & one of Reynolds's, 14 
 & kept back Barley's reply to Terentius 
 Secundus, for the purpose of introducing 
 that thrice-double demoniac the aeconomi- 
 cal opium-eater. 15 Exit London. 
 
 You are very unnecessarily and solicitor- 
 ously suspicious of N I Ancient B. Drama. 
 Turn to your Massinger Vol I. Preface 
 look at the list of Plays saved from the 
 backsides of Warburton's pies. It is out 
 of the Lansdown collection, undoubtedly 
 authentic, and contains some very fine 
 things. It is to be followed by other most 
 desirable reprints The Devil's Law Case 
 Marston's Insatiate Countess Comedies 
 of Middleton & other previous scarcities 
 Moreover it is an extremely pretty little 
 book, with a wood-cut of the Bull Theatre, 
 and superabundantly worth the last half- 
 crown in your purse you who have bought 
 Kirk White [word torn away]. There was 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 25 
 
 a poem of Hood's in the March New 
 Monthly which contained P's " Michael 
 Angelo" H's was called The Two Ducks 
 or swans I forget which & can say nothing 
 about it. There is a batch of gossip for 
 you. 
 
 Those three acts, which I cannot pos- 
 sibly show to any eye but that of Vulcan, 
 are absolutely worthless, and you may 
 imagine that I prize your good opinion too 
 well to forfeit it knowingly. You may 
 trust me that they are bad, if good I sh d say 
 so & send them, being convinced that 
 the affectation of modesty is the hardest 
 brass of impudence and self conceit. Be 
 satisfied that they are damnable. There is 
 a book of poems lately published ; the 
 author one Mr. Horace Gwynn, out of 
 which a tasty musical dirge on Sinus was 
 extracted in the Examiner, from this 
 specimen I am very much inclined to 
 augur well of the book. Procter is cooler 
 on the subject. You tell me that Southton 
 is not far from Oxford, I say Oxford is not 
 far from Southton & it is much fitter for 
 the fishingtown to come to the city & 
 
26 The Letters of 
 
 university than the contrary. Why do not 
 you, who have all this vacant time upon 
 you, and who could do it so much better 
 than I or most people living, write verse 
 yourself? If ever I sh d become connected 
 with a periodical, (but fear not, that is not 
 likely :) I sh d be sure call on you for 
 frequent originalities & continual criticisms. 
 For myself this In 3 weeks time I shall 
 set about a play, the plot of which is laid & 
 hatched if it is satisfactorily executed, w h 
 I do not expect, I shall go on ; if not, 
 " farewell the Muse " as your octave coz : 
 w* say 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 T. L. B. O tongue of women, 
 what a letter ! 
 
 Addressed 
 
 " THOMAS F. KELSALL Esq re 
 Houndwell Lane 
 Southampton " 
 
Thomas Love II Tteddoes 27 
 
 LETTER VII 
 
 To BRYAN WALLER PROCTER 
 
 Milan, June #'< [18*4] 
 
 DEAR PROCTER, If I do not dream, this 
 is the city of Sforza, and to-day I have 
 seen a picture of his wife by Leonardo da 
 Vinci. Paris, Lyons, Turin and Novara, 
 and beautiful Chambery in its bed of vines, 
 they have passed before me like the Drury 
 Lane Diorama, and I almost doubt whether 
 I have been sitting in the second tier or on 
 the top of the diligence. 
 
 Paris is far preferable to London as 
 a place of amusement, and the manner 
 of the lower orders is strikingly superior 
 to that of their island equals. I saw 
 the opera ; the ballet much better than 
 ours, but the music was French : the 
 house is not nearly so commodious or 
 elegant as Drury Lane, and the painting 
 
28 The Letters of 
 
 and mechanism of their scenery is not so 
 dexterous and brilliant. The Teatro della 
 Scala in this city I have not yet seen ; it is 
 considered only inferior to the San Carlo 
 at Naples. Savoy, from the French frontier 
 to Chambery, is the most beautiful country 
 I have yet seen ; nothing between the Alps 
 and Milan is equally rich, varied, and 
 delightful. Towards the Alps the vines 
 grow thinner, and give place at first to 
 corn, then to ragged herbage, and finally 
 mother earth hides her head under a cover- 
 lid of snow ; and with their country and 
 climate change the inhabitants. You have 
 the goitred and the cretins instead of the 
 Savoyard of gentle manners and frank 
 countenance. On the frontiers of fertile 
 Italy they brought us a salad of dandelions 
 at dinner. 
 
 June 9 th . Since I began this letter I 
 have been to the top of the cathedral, and 
 in the pit of the Teatro della Scala. The 
 former is the finest church externally which 
 I have seen ; but the interior of West- 
 minster's old Abbey is triumphant over the 
 marble simplicity of the Milanese's concave. 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 29 
 
 The roof is finished with pinnacles and 
 battlements of white marble of a workman- 
 ship as exquisite as if it were in ivory. 
 From the summit, all the rich country 
 from Alp to Apennine, river and hill and 
 wood, the cool lakes and the vineyards of 
 an ardent green, lay themselves at your feet. 
 
 Last night the clouds had unrolled from 
 the mountains, which were themselves as 
 visionary as clouds; the "roof of blue 
 Italian weather " was here and there decor- 
 ated by a tapestried vapour, silver or pale 
 gold, gathered up among the stars and 
 slowly toiling along the calm air. The 
 sun fell quietly behind the Alps, and the 
 moment he touched them, it appeared that 
 all the snows took fire and burned with a 
 candescent brilliancy. (I hope you like 
 the opening of my new novel, as contained 
 in the preceding paragraph.) 
 
 Now for Delia Scala. It is a vast theatre 
 six tiers of boxes, all hung with silk, dis- 
 posed like our window curtains, of a light 
 blue oryellowcolour, the pit, I should think, 
 almost twice as large as Covent Garden's. 
 The opera was "Tancredi." Madame 
 
30 The Letters of 
 
 Sesta the prima donna, old, but generally 
 preferred to Pasta ; the primo basso, a most 
 extraordinary singer, with tones more like 
 those of an organ than any human creature. 
 The scenery is not, in my opinion, equal 
 to the best at our theatres. One of the 
 drops was a sort of Flemish painting ; the 
 subject, a village carnival, very well 
 executed. Such a thing would be novel at 
 C. G. if it could be well, but it must be 
 very well, done. Now that silk is so 
 cheap, too, I think they might be a little 
 more lavish of draperies ; but we are not 
 managers yet. The ballet, / baccanati 
 aboliti^ incalculably superior to ours or the 
 French in the exquisite grace of the 
 grouping, the countless abundance of 
 dancers, and the splendour and truth of 
 costume and decoration. The house was 
 about one-third full, and the people all 
 talking ; so that there was a buzz out- 
 buzzing the'* Royal Exchange all the night 
 except during " Di tanti palpiti." 
 
 And what else have I seen ? A beautiful 
 and far-famed insect do not mistake, I 
 mean neither the Emperor, nor the King of 
 
Thomas Lovell Iteddoes 3 1 
 
 Sardinia, but a much finer specimen the 
 firefly. Their bright light is evanescent, 
 and alternates with the darkness, as if the 
 swift wheeling of the earth struck fire out 
 of the black atmosphere ; as if the winds 
 were being set upon this planetary grind- 
 stone, and gave out such momentary sparks 
 from their edges. Their silence is more 
 striking than their flashes, for sudden 
 phenomena are almost invariably attended 
 with some noise, but these little jewels 
 dart along the dark as softly as butterflies. 
 For their light, it is not nearly so beautiful 
 and poetical as our still companion of the 
 dew the glow-worm with his drop of 
 moonlight. If you see or write to Kelsall, 
 remember me to him ; and excuse my 
 neglect in not writing to him before I left 
 England by the plea of hurry, which is 
 true. To-night at twelve I leave Milan, 
 and shall be at Florence on Saturday long 
 before this letter tastes the atmosphere 
 (pardonnez, I mean the smoke) of London. 
 There and here, 
 Yours truly, 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES. 
 
32 fbe Letters of 
 
 If you see Mrs. Shelley, ask her to 
 remember me, and tell her that I am as 
 anxious to change countries with her as she 
 can be. If I could be of any use in 
 bringing the portrait, etc., it would be a 
 proud task, but most likely I only flash 
 over Florence ; entering on the flood of the 
 stars, and departing with their ebb. 
 
Thomas Love II 'Beddoes 33 
 
 LETTER VIII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 6 Dtvereux C Temple Bar. 
 
 [Postmark *Au; 25 1824] 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, I should have written to 
 you some time ago if I had not hoped to 
 see you before this : some business will 
 detain me in town ten days or perhaps 
 a fortnight longer at the expiration of 
 which I hope to have a month or so for 
 Southampton. Tho* I depend very little 
 on my poetical faculty, it is my intention 
 to complete one more tragedy, on the com- 
 parative merits or demerits of which future 
 determinations will depend. 
 
 The disappearance of Shelley from the 
 world, seems, like the tropical setting of that 
 luminary (aside I hate that word) to which 
 his poetical genius can alone be compared 
 with reference to the companions of his 
 
 c 
 
34 The Letters of 
 
 day, to have been followed by instant 
 darkness and owl-season ; whether the 
 vociferous Darley is to be the comet, or 
 tender fullfaced L. E. L. the milk-and- 
 watery moon of our darkness, are questions 
 for the astrologers : if I were the literary 
 weather-guesser for 1825 I would safely 
 prognosticate fog, rain, blight in due 
 succession for it's dullard months But I 
 beg your pardon, this was all said forgetting 
 your relation to the eternal Gerard By 
 the way I was two days at Canterbury, and 
 did not see your correspondent Arthur 
 What an omission ! But I saw Savagius 
 at Florence. You have read his book 
 and think something of him by this 
 time. 
 
 And are you cricketting ? N. or M. 
 Who gave you that Ball ? &c How did 
 you like the Effigies Poeticae ? And the 
 Second Maiden ? 16 Verily that is worth the 
 whole heap of Horace Gwynn, L. E. L., 
 Midsummer day dreams, and Bernard- 
 bartonizings of this years press. The 
 arrogance and conceit of your cousin's 
 connections appears to me utterly insuffer- 
 
Thomas Lovell Heddoes 35 
 
 able and disgusting ; and the increase of 
 that pernicious Blackwood system parti- 
 cularly among these younger men, is the 
 very worst sign of their mind & public 
 imbecillity. I would greatly prefer the 
 return of the old dull prosing times, when 
 every author was " the ingenious " and his 
 miscellany "excellent " at the top of an 
 acrostic ; even Johnson's very unbearable 
 and absurd self was less mischievous. But 
 I won't despond, for I wish to cry at 
 Walker's next Trag. 5 
 
 I was very much pleased to hear of Mrs. 
 Shelley's arrangement with old Timothy, 17 
 and to see the very great alteration for the 
 better and the happier in her appearance 
 and manner. She is writing something. 
 Procter is idle of course no I beg his 
 pardon, he's been 10 miles out of town 
 this week. And now, being sleepy and 
 stupid, I wish you goodnight. 
 Yours ever 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
 P.S. Shelley's book This is a ghost 
 indeed, and one who will answer to our 
 
36 The Letters of 
 
 demand for hidden treasure. The Dirge 
 for the Year That Indian fragment 
 The boat on the Serchio and the Letter 
 with Music are to me the best of the 
 new things and perfectly worthy of the 
 mind which produced them. The trans- 
 lation of Mercury's hymn too ; though 
 questionable as to the fidelity of it's tone, 
 is delightfully easy 
 
 What would he not have done, if ten 
 years more, that will be wasted upon the 
 lives of unprofitable knaves and fools, had 
 been given to him. Was it that more of 
 the beautiful and good, than Nature could 
 spare to one, was incarnate in him, and 
 that it was necessary to resume it for dis- 
 tribution through the external and internal 
 worlds ? How many springs will blossom 
 with his thoughts how many fair and 
 glorious creations be born of his one ex- 
 tinction.. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 " THOMAS KELSALL Esq 
 Houndwell Lane 3 
 Southampton " 
 
Thomas Love II *Beddoes 37 
 
 LETTER IX 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 6 D\rvercux] Court 
 
 Monday 
 [Postmark Oct: 4, 1824] 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, A letter according to 
 your desire, which I foresee will be full of 
 emptiness in the first place to say that I 
 must stay in town till the beginning of next 
 month and how much longer depends upon 
 the operations of the Court of Chancery 
 and its' Lord if any letter should stray 
 into your Lodgings, be so good as to forward 
 it hither ; as for the other chattels, unless 
 they grow too large for your harbouring, 
 you will, I dare say, let them remain till I 
 can come for them. 
 
 I have seen Procter once, he was then at 
 the Prince of Wales's, but he has now left 
 that and Francis St.; for what bower, cave, 
 
38 The Letters of 
 
 or Attic I am ignorant. I gave him your 
 command to visit or write ; therefore I may 
 conclude that he has not done either No- 
 thing of any interest in town except a 
 \couple of live crocodiles in St. Martin's 
 Lane, and an excessive clever new comic 
 actress, who has twice appeared at the Hay- 
 market. Meantime, o base Southampton, 
 what have you done to Miss Tree ? Should 
 not your theatre in Mercy be burnt, and 
 Shalders & his gang be hung, like a necklace 
 of rats, upon one string ? You see that 
 poor Maturin 18 is ill ; not dangerously I 
 hope, for we can hardly spare so much talent 
 in our present poverty. By Blackwood's 
 advertisement I observe a letter to Procter, 
 an insult of course. The London con- 
 descends to a vast deal of scandal and idle 
 chat about the "noble bard." What say 
 you to these lines ? 
 
 tA comely knight , all armed 
 
 Thro 1 ivhosc bright ventail lifted up on high 
 
 His manly face 
 
 Looked forth) as Phoebus, face out of the East 
 Betwixt tivo shady mountains doth arise 
 
 Whose can they be ? 
 
Thomas Love II Heddoes 39 
 
 I have not done much in German, just 
 tasted the nouns but not touched the verbs 
 in fact it is a feast at which I strictly 
 obey the innkeepers law eat what you 
 can, but pocket none How do you like 
 O'Connor ? You'll not be surprised to 
 hear that I have begun and nearly finished 
 another, a new I 8t Act and am quite tired 
 of it. P[rocter] hopes that he'll be able to 
 finish an alteration of Lee's Duke of Guise 
 for C Kemble this season they talk of a 
 new comedy by Croly 19 further knoweth 
 not 
 
 Yours sincerely 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 read the 1 2 th Canto Book II of the Faerie 
 Queen. Canto 6 Book III. and a noble 
 stanza LIV. Canto XI. Book I. " So down 
 he fell " & c which ought to be added to 
 Coleridge's note on Deborah's Song 
 
 Addreutd to 
 
 " T. F. KILSALL Esq" 
 
 3 Houndwell Lane 
 
 Southampton." 
 
40 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER X 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 26 Mall 
 
 Clifton 
 
 Bristol 
 [Postmark Nov: 8. 1824} 
 
 WHAT the fifteen hundred devils can have 
 become of that fellow Beddoes ? Why 
 here he is on a wet sunday morning at 
 Clifton, a bad pen and nothing to say, 
 being prosperous auspices for the beginning 
 of a letter. Perhaps you thought that I 
 was delaying till I could epistolize in 
 German but in truth that tongue has 
 flooded my brain no higher than der die 
 das. 
 
 One morning at Procter's just after 
 breakfast came a letter from Southton 
 which touched my letterwriting conscience 
 to the quick : it recounted your jaundice, 
 but that I trust is, like Mathew's little pig, 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 41 
 
 all over and you arc reinstated on the 
 sofa in H Lane, where November darkens 
 & clients to come cast their shadows before. 
 Believe me I have begun two letters before, 
 written a page of each and torn them up 
 in despair of finishing. This however I 
 will end. 
 
 I have seen Procter, before I left 
 London, once or twice when his honey- 
 moon was reduced to a cheese-paring 
 though he is now only half of him- 
 self he is twice the man he was, and I 
 do not think that you will not be dis- 
 appointed with his tenderer moiety. He is 
 intending to give Covent Garden Lee's 
 altered play this season & altogether appears 
 very industriously inclined : this is as it 
 should be : he has open sea enough if he 
 will but take the tide. 
 
 I have been turning over old plays in 
 the Brit : Museum ; and verily think 
 that another volume of specimens might 
 be very well compiled when I go up 
 again, perhaps I shall do it for my pri- 
 vate use. I was very much disappointed 
 with the dulness that hid itself under the 
 
42 The Letters of 
 
 alluring title, which you must often have 
 admired ; to wit : See me and see me 
 not, or Hans Beerpots invisible comedy. 30 
 Marston's Sophonisba contains very good 
 things and there are some very smart and 
 quaintly worded speeches & characters in 
 some of Middleton's comedys ; the dullest 
 thing possible is the Birth of Merlin, 
 ascribed to W. Shakspeare : if Steam 
 engines shall ever write blank verse it will 
 be such as that : 
 
 Excuse me for a little bit of remonstrance. 
 I do not think you were born to be con- 
 fined to sheep's skins, you should spread a 
 sense of true criticism, if you are disinclined 
 to set an example in another way ; crush 
 Campbell, 21 throw Bowles 22 into the fire, 
 Bernard & such small beer into the pig's 
 trough. 
 
 Farewell, this is a stunted communica- 
 tion but I am dull & en verite hurried 
 Yours ever 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
 The four first acts of the fatal Dowry 2 * 
 have improved my opinion of Massinger ; 
 
Thomas Lovell Tteddoes 43 
 
 he is a very effective " stage-poet " after 
 all. I have not forgotten that I owe you 
 five shillings and a multitude of dinners 
 if you do not go to London to receive them, 
 I shall honestly do it at Southton before 
 long. 
 
 Addrtued to 
 
 " T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 
 3 Houndwcll Lane 
 Southampton " 
 
44 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XI 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Clifton Wee' 6 [1824] 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, I shall not fail you in 
 London, tho* the time is but ill defined by 
 Christmas', which in vulgar acceptation 
 may shadow forth some week or fortnight 
 from the 25 th Dec r inclusive. I take it 
 for granted that you are one of those com- 
 fortable mortals, who have fire places with 
 open arms & expect 8 arm-chairs to embrace 
 them at whatever town they visit ; other- 
 wise for quiet, attention, & economy I 
 could recommend 6 D. Court, where a bed 
 room, with or without sitting room, is to 
 be had by the night or week. (You see 
 when I have worn out my wings I shall 
 make a very passable and praiseworthy ad- 
 vertisement-writer.) 
 
 I shall be there however if not before, 
 
Thomas Love II 'Beddoes 45 
 
 immediately after the day after carols & 
 mincepies. Meantime lost to all German 
 and all humane learning, o'erhusked with 
 sweet dozing sloth, writing now and then 
 some such an unsightly scrawl as this, or 
 scratching a tuneless and abortive verse, I 
 ensconce myself in the hospitality of my 
 Clifton demi-uncle. He is a man worthy 
 of no slight mention, connected to me 
 slightly by marriage with my mother's sister. 
 Born in the town of Berne, bred in Ger- 
 many, a fugitive from his relations & theo- 
 logy, he left behind him a fair Swiss fortune 
 in hand, & Church dignity had he but 
 stepped in the shoes of Jack Calvin, & 
 submitted quietly his shoulders & belief 
 to the Geneva gown. This not being his 
 will, he shipped himself for England & 
 began his London existence as an engraver 
 & painter. This failed, and after making 
 literary proposals, which were coldly re- 
 ceived by the booksellers of that unGer- 
 manized time, he took to surgery & came 
 to Bristol, in the democratic dawn of 
 Southey, Coleridge & c . To the former he 
 was closely attached, corresponded & hexa- 
 
46 The Letters of 
 
 meterized with him made acquaintance 
 with Davy, the opium-eater, my father, & 
 all that was then & might, had not a fatal 
 democratic boldness & ecclesiastical anti- 
 pathy barred his ascent, have been one of 
 the most opulent & celebrated, as he is 
 confessedly one of the best, living surgeons. 
 But this is not all : to the dead he adds a 
 radical acquaintance with the living tongues 
 of Europe, an intimacy with the practice & 
 theory of the pictorial art, & an inexhaus- 
 tible fund of literary knowledge, German 
 & English being both his native tongues. 
 This is nothing higher than the truth, & 
 yet his name is quite unknown out of the 
 circle of his present & former professions. 
 
 O ghost of butcher-basket-born Kirke 
 White ! hast thou read the last London 
 & its proposal of geminating its monthly 
 birth anticipation of much lead. Yet 
 were I P[rocter] I would rather lend it a 
 shoulder than Colburn's. But I asked you 
 whether you had seen it, because it contains 
 a review of Barley's first English product 
 his Exstatic Errors which, from the ex- 
 tracts, I should say was more talented and 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 47 
 
 rich in indication of good than what he has 
 since done. How he will be hunted & 
 abused when he appears in propria, for the 
 rudeness & arrogance of John Lacy ! A new 
 tragic abortion of mine has absolutely ex- 
 tended its foetus to a quarter of the fourth 
 act : when finished if finished I think 
 it will satisfy you and myself of my poeti- 
 cal and dramatic impotence . . . The mys- 
 tery, you see, is torn from Ravenna ; which, 
 if it persists, in spite of the dramatic cal- 
 vinism of the pit, in being alive when it 
 ought to be damned, we'll see. And so 
 good night 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
 dddreutd to 
 " T. F. KZLSALL Esq 
 
 Houndwell Lane 3 
 Southampton " 
 
 ("The original of this letter given by me to Miss 
 King Nov r 1852 the dau r of his demi-uncle." En- 
 dorsement by t^elsall.) 
 
48 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 26 Mall. Clifton 
 [Postmark Jan n : 1825} 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, Day after day since 
 Xmas I have intended to write or go to 
 London & day after day I have deferred 
 both projects and now I will give you 
 the adventures and mishaps of this present 
 sunday. Remorse, and startling conscience, 
 in the form of an old sulky & a shying 
 horse, hurried me to the Regulator coach- 
 office on Saturday "Does the regulator 
 & its team conform to the Mosaic deca- 
 logue, Mr. Book-keeper ? " He broke 
 Priscian's head & thro' the aperture assured 
 me that it did not I was booked for the 
 inside call at 26 Mall for me " Yes sir 
 at 75- p. 5 AM." at 5 I rose like a ghost 
 from the tomb & betook me to coffee. No 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 49 
 
 wheels rolled through the streets but the 
 inaudible ones of that uncreated hour It 
 struck 6 a coach was called we hurried 
 to the office but the coach was gone here 
 followed a long Brutus & Cassius discourse 
 between a shilling-buttoned waist-coatteer 
 of a porter and myself which ended in 
 my extending mercy to the suppliant coach- 
 owners & agreeing to accept a place for 
 Monday 
 
 All well thus far. The Biped knock 
 of the post alighted on the door at 12 
 & two letters were placed upon my 
 german dictionary Your own which I at 
 first intended to reply to vivS voce had not 
 the second informed [me] of my brother's 
 arrival in England, his short leave of ab- 
 sence, & his intention to visit me here next 
 week. This twisted my strong purpose 
 like a thread, and disposed me to remain 
 here about 10 days further. On the 2i 8t 
 at latest I go to London. Be there & I 
 will join you, or if not pursue you to South- 
 ampton. 
 
 The fatal dowry 23 has been cobbled 
 sure, by some purblind ultracrepidarian. 
 
 D 
 
50 The Letters of 
 
 McReady's friend Walker very likely but 
 nevertheless I maintain 'tis a good play & 
 might have been rendered very effective 
 by docking it of the whole fifth Act which 
 is an excrescence re-creating Novall & 
 making Beaumelle a good deal more ghost- 
 gaping & moonlightish The cur : tailor 
 has taken out the most purple piece in the 
 whole weft the end of the 4th act & 
 shouldered himself into toleration thro' the 
 prejudices of the pit, when he should have 
 built his admiration on their necks. 
 
 Say what you will I am convinced the 
 man who is to awaken the drama must be 
 a bold trampling fellow no creeper into 
 worm-holes no reviser even however 
 good. These reanimations are vampire-cold 
 Such ghosts as Marloe Webster & c are 
 better dramatists, better poets, I dare say, 
 than any contemporary of ours but they 
 are ghosts the worm is in their pages & 
 we want to see something that our great- 
 grandsires did not know. With the greatest 
 reverence for all the antiquities of the 
 drama I still think, that we had better be- 
 get than revive attempt to give the 
 
Thomas Love II "Bed does 51 
 
 literature of this age an idiosyncrasy & 
 spirit of its own & only raise a ghost to 
 gaze on not to live with just now the 
 drama is a haunted ruin. 
 
 I am glad that you are awakening to a 
 sense of Darley he must have no little per- 
 severance to have gone thro so much of that 
 play it will perchance be the first star of a 
 new day. Remember me to Procter & re- 
 proach him for his idleness to the fullest 
 extent of vituperative civility if I could 
 find a reproof as heavy as the new London 
 Mag I'd hurl it on him I have written a 
 new plot & forgotten it. Will Keene (?) 
 anatomize Mr. T. Campbell ? even after 
 
 But, reaching home, terrific omen I there 
 The straw-laid street preluded his despair 
 The servants' look : the table that revealed 
 His letter sent to Charlotte last still sealed & c 
 
 THEODORIC 
 Stay in town if you can. 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 "T. F. KELSALL Esqro 
 
 67 Gt Portland St 
 Oxford St 
 
 London " 
 
52 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XIII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 14 Southampton Row 
 
 Friday MornZ 
 [Postmark 2J March 1825} 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, As Beddoes has offered 
 me the use of part of his frank, I am 
 desirous of taking advantage of it so far as 
 to enable me to acknowledge the receipt 
 of your letter which I hereby do ac- 
 cordingly. I will endeavour shortly to 
 answer it, but not to answer it shortly. I 
 shall be infinitely amusing & not inconsider- 
 ably dextrous, & so I give thee warning. 
 Touching myself and my pursuits, I have 
 been for some time on the sort of thing 
 you hint at, & have done, what I have done, 
 better than I was afraid I could. You 
 shall see something by the time you & 
 June come together to Southampton, both 
 
Thomas Love II Heddoes 53 
 
 of you in flower while I am in fruit. Tell 
 me or rather my wife (who makes this 
 enquiry, while she desires her best remem- 
 brances to you) when we may expect you 
 in London & whether it is to be for 2 
 months or for 3 ? My tragedy 81 goes on 
 slowly a poor dozen lines, or fragment of 
 speech now & then, but what has been 
 added is in my * best manner ' as they 
 take [?] of RafFaelle & such folks. 
 
 Of Beddoes I will give you no account. 
 Let him speak for himself, & say why he 
 has not done anything lately. I can give 
 no reason for it, unless it be that he idles 
 over Greek and German, & leavcfs] the 
 English Parnassus for the Transalpine & 
 transmarine places. I reserve my news for 
 a future sheet of paper. You shall have 
 everything down to the advertisements 
 What should you say if you were to see 
 me some green morning (or evening) step- 
 ping out of the Southampton * Intel- 
 ligence ' with a bundle of MS under one 
 arm & my portmantel under the other ? 
 You, who are a believer in ghosts, would 
 go home & secure your mutton chop with- 
 
54 The Letters of 
 
 out delay, of course; knowing what a chame- 
 lion from the other world would do if he 
 came suddenly upon the eatables of this. 
 But, be easy. I am long time projecting you 
 know, although I am so rapid in my exe- 
 cutions. You may therefore sleep quietly 
 on your straw for this fortnight to come, 
 if conscience & the warm weather will 
 permit it. 
 
 Have you read the * Odes & Addresses 
 to Great People *? 25 It is a joint produc- 
 tion by that united Beaumont & Fletcher 
 brotherhood Reynolds & Hood. What 
 a pity it is that Hood should have 
 given up serious poetry for the sake of 
 cracking the shells of jokes which have 
 not always a kernel ! But Adieu ! I 
 leave the rest of this virgin sheet for 
 Beddoes's eloquence to stir itself & you. 
 He says that he shall be lively beyond 
 measure & give you part of his reason in 
 rhyme 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 B. W. PROCTER 
 
Thomas Lovell Heddoes 5 5 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, After a long & 
 shameful period of silence I venture to 
 address you, having got Procter to break 
 the ice of this frank. I will leave out all 
 explanations, excuses & apologies painful 
 & unnecessary things & go straight to the 
 communication of such stuff as my brain 
 entertains this morning. In the first place, 
 lo ! I am expert in reading German, even 
 so far as now to be employing an hour a day 
 or so in the metrical translation of the 
 old obscure tedious Nibelungen-lied about 
 100 lines is all as yet finished of this work 
 a grain from the mountain of 9560 of 
 w h it is compact. 
 
 As usual I have begun a new tragedy 
 w h at present I think of completing. I 
 understand that Mr. Thomas Campbell 
 has in some newspaper in a paltry refuta- 
 tion of some paltry charge of plagiarism 
 regarding his paltry poem in the paltry 
 
56 The Letters of 
 
 Edinburgh touched the egg of my last 
 man the gentleman is completely addled, 
 & the steam of my teapot will never be 
 powerful enough to supply the place of in- 
 cubation ; nevertheless sometime or other 
 I will treat it, not in the style of Hopkins 
 & Campbell. 
 
 You have seen or heard of the Oxford 
 Magazine I am told that it is the progeny 
 of my college and one or two others it's 
 best & principal contributor in the Praed^ 
 line being one ingenious Mr White, a clever 
 youth who is my successor in the literary 
 chair at Pembroke. They have dunned 
 me for a contribution & tho' I anticipate 
 precocious dullness & an early death I 
 believe I shall be foolish enough to write 
 them some special bad rhymes sh d you 
 think of going on with German I can get 
 you a book or two very cheap e.g. 
 Schiller's Gedichte bound (if they are 
 not sold) the best edition 7/6. Bohte 
 selling it in it's unwedded sheets for 14" 
 I have two or three odd volumes of works 
 but complete as poems, w h I will save you 
 too if you speak. Learn it by all means 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 57 
 
 it's literature touches the heaven of the 
 Greek in many places & the language is 
 as easy as possible, to my notion more so 
 than French I have been seriously study- 
 ing it since New Year's day only & can 
 read Schiller with little difficulty Goethe 
 in his poems &c unvulgarised & cant- 
 stuffed writings easily Noehdens dict y the 
 best little one if you are discontented 
 with your own, is to be had cheaply J 
 know where 
 
 For many reasons at this moment it 
 is impossible to Southamptonise I must 
 soon go to Ireland. At Present the law 
 is on me you know what a beast it is, 
 & after my return from the Emerald 
 mother of potatoes I shall have to settle 
 my sisters, settle my affairs, sell & pay & 
 impoverish myself to the bone & then set 
 off for Germany ; but be sure I do not 
 leave England without seeing you, nor, 
 if I can but finish, without dropping into 
 the press some frail memorial of my ex- 
 istence 
 
 The state of literature now is pain- 
 ful & humiliating enough every one will 
 
58 <Tbe Letters of 
 
 write for ^15 a sheet who for love of 
 art, who for fame, who for the purpose 
 of continuing the noble stream of English 
 minds ? We ought too to look back with 
 late repentance & remorse on our in- 
 toxicated praise, now cooling, of Lord 
 Byron such a man to be so spoken of 
 when the world possessed Goethe, Schiller, 
 Shelley ! 
 
 Oh self satisfied England this comes of 
 Always looking at herself in the looking- 
 glass of the sea, I suppose. 
 
 Adio 
 
 T. L. B 
 
 6 Devereux C f 
 ^Addressed to 
 
 " Lo ndon March the twenty fifth 1825 
 THOMAS KELSALL Esq re 
 Houndwell Lane 
 Southampton " 
 
 Tret 
 
 DENIS GILBERT 
 
 Not quite so much as you deserve, my 
 dear Kelsall, not quite a quire of spoiled 
 paper accompanies this. I believe the 
 valuable autumn-hued envelope is the most 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 59 
 
 deserving of the collection read if you 
 can & the Lord have mercy on you & 
 pardon your wilfulness. I cannot find 
 your larking cloud song, I daresay it is in 
 my desk w h is apud te in Houndwell 
 lane but I wrote in the coach w h brought 
 me from Southampton to London 5 months 
 since a famous one beginning 
 
 Ho I Adam the carrion crow 
 The old crow of Cairo & c 
 
 w h is sung with much applause by one of 
 my dramatis personae in the unfinished 
 drama No. 3 in my possession. Procter 
 saw the enclosed sheets & pretended to 
 have read them but I thought he looked 
 as if he was talking loud only & did not 
 believe him. 
 
 I am clear of the Oxford, but have been 
 dunned for No. 2 & as I shall very likely be 
 there in a week or so I shall give 'em some 
 such stuff as Netley Abbey w h I turned up 
 in looking for the canine cloud because I 
 want to get a criticism w h I have just begun 
 on Montezuma a thing I like vastly, to be 
 printed & hope they'll be bribed by my 
 
60 The Letters of 
 
 rhyme to swallow my reason & there is 
 an excellent sonnet of mine to a terrier 
 whose biography & portrait I will append 
 pathetically. I have not sent you Schiller's 
 Gedichte : because there is an edition of 
 his whole work Taschen-buch size, that is 
 like your stupid Herman & Dorothea but 
 printed in a real and very good German 
 type w h is printing by subscription for 
 l. 1 6. o. 12 vols are out, there are to be 
 20 & you will receive them safely this 
 is what I recommend. 
 
 All that one hears of Schiller inclines 
 one to admire him much more than 
 his fat, leather-chopped, fish-eyed rival 
 with the mock star of Vonity on his 
 padded coat. I have read that fellow's 
 Tasso w h is a disgraceful apology for 
 the conduct of the Duke of Ferrara, & 
 represents poor Torquato, who was no great 
 wit I fear, as an absolute spoiled poetic 
 madman, a sort of Italian Tom Campbell 
 as touchy as tinder and as valuable. This 
 was bound in a volume with his Iphigenie 
 in Tauris, a poem faultlessly delightful, 
 unless it be a fault that instead of being an 
 
Thomas Lovell ISeddoes 61 
 
 imitation of Euripides it is a victory over 
 him. I never felt so much disgust or much 
 more admiration for any poet than for this 
 Goethe, as I read thro* it & I believe 
 every one who reads all his works must have 
 this double feeling of contempt of & delight 
 in him both nearly measureless but he 
 has no principle ; in thinking of Schiller 
 you have more to admire than the paper he 
 has written on. 
 
 The metrical translation I was rash 
 enough to speak about stands thus 
 
 Nibelungen-lied (German) 9965 lines. 
 Translated . . 120 
 
 you see why I don't send it. It is waiting 
 to be finished meantime I have abandoned 
 my last new act & begun the 3 rd of that w h 
 I was writing at South ton I believe I may 
 make an end of one or two in this way 
 
 Be so good as to read (if you can or do 
 intend it) with a pencil in your hand & 
 scratch all that is more particularly detest- 
 able & bad than ye rest. 
 
 Yours 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
62 The Letters of 
 
 I send you an easy little poem of 
 Wieland's it is complete in itself. The 
 best of rhyme is that it teaches pronuncia- 
 tion. 
 
 Avoid Noehden in this particular he tells 
 you to pronounce u & au oi ei or I is the 
 right thing but I suppose his friend Dr. 
 Stoddart (in partnership with whom he 
 perpetrated that vile translation of Don 
 Carlos you boast of behind your law-books) 
 is Worcestershire and says bile ile tile & c 
 as bad rhymers do instead of boil oil & even 
 to think of w h makes ones blood crawl as 
 if there were spiders in the veins Bohte 
 is publishing a catalogue with preface by 
 A. W. Schlegel & when you are German 
 in every pore, as you will want some, apply 
 for them to the man whose card I enclose 
 he has a small collection of second-hand 
 Germanities & will get them for you new 
 at a discount of 12 per cent (ready money 
 new English books the same.) 
 
 I have most completely mastered the art 
 of living in London & can hardly bring my- 
 self to leave it it is so cheap Antrobus & 
 Co. Teamen nearly opposite Northumber- 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 63 
 
 land St. Strand sell some of the best black 
 tea I ever tasted for 6 8 a pound put a piece 
 of lemon-peel into your pot & it gives the 
 flavour of green (a fee for that) All we 
 invalids take a piece of broiled bacon with 
 our breakfast each morn, try it (ditto) 
 
 T.L. B 
 
 I will do the last man before I die but 
 it is a subject I save up for a time when I 
 have more knowledge, a freer pencil, a 
 little menschen-lehre, a commandof harmony 
 & an accumulation of picturesque ideas, & 
 dramatic characters fit for the theme. 
 Meantime let Tom Campbell rule his roast 
 & mortify the ghost of Sternhold it is a 
 subject for Michael Angelo not for the 
 painter of Admiral Granby on the sign post. 
 Did I tell ye, I had a very dull interview 
 with that ^dealer in broken English, Dr. 
 Spurzheim, the ambassador from Golgotha ? 
 he is a strange breeches-full of mankind & 
 seems inclined to the asinine. 
 
 Procter is Oh I mustn't tell, if you don't 
 choose to buy Schillers Sammtliche Werke 
 w h I mention, I have an odd vol of Schiller's 
 
64 The Letters of 
 
 Gedichte much at your service. Bohte, 
 has the other but the Jew wants 7 s for it 
 they fit very well. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 
Thomas Lovell Tteddoes 65 
 
 LETTER XIV 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Pemh : Coll. 
 
 Oxford 
 [Postmark /# Ap 1825] 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, If you have no in- 
 clination to insert yourself in the Oxford 
 coach wh : passes by the top of Houndwell 
 St at 8 each morning, w h I think you could 
 do as easily as visit Fareham. I will thank 
 you if you will pick the lock of my trunk 
 put all the books & c into it & send it to me 
 here as soon as convenient. I hope you have 
 been very dull and tired with the MSS I 
 sent you, headache and hypochondria were 
 what you deserved for snapping the thread 
 w h suspended such a weight of lead above 
 your unhappy and now suffering brainpan. 
 
 I left Procter writing, more for the 
 Edinburgh, New Monthly, & retrospective, 
 
66 The Letters of 
 
 I fear, than for the drama ; he is locked up 
 every morning from 10 till -| p. I by his 
 wife with \ a quire of foolscap & a quill 
 Why did you not, when last in town, pay 
 your respects to Mrs. Shelley at Kentish 
 town ? I saw the other day, very well, 
 & enjoying the Italian April, Mr. White, 
 who, I find, is in very low repute here just 
 at present, [he] has been writing an obliging 
 continuation of Don Juan to moralize the 
 noble Spaniard. Knight is going to re- 
 suscitate his magazine, excluding original 
 poetry entirely, what will cousin Moul- 
 trie 27 say ? Mr. Praed has lately become a 
 private tutor at Eton ; this has chagrined all 
 his poetical friends exceedingly. 
 
 Pray do not attribute any of the Oxford 
 Magazine to me ; but come up here as 
 soon as you can & bring my things with 
 you, all turned into the trunk if possible 
 have no mercy on the lock ; it is a vile one. 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 " T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 
 3 Houndwell Lane 
 Southampton 
 
Thomas Love II 'Beddoes 67 
 
 LETTER XV 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Temb Coll 
 
 Oxford Wednesday 
 [Postmark 8 Ju : 1825} 
 
 YET once more O thou Kelsall yet once 
 more I bestow on you a chance of investi- 
 gating Alfred's university. On Wednesday 
 next is the commemoration, a high and 
 solemn act of academic mummery at w h 
 Chantrey M is to receive a degree of LLD 
 I therefore recommend you to take a place 
 on the roof of the Southton on Monday 
 morn 8 you will get here by dinner time 
 Tuesday will be consumed in seeing leo- 
 nine wonders, Wednesday you shall go to 
 the theatre, & (if so inclined) hear the 
 spouting of prize verses & & in the eve* 
 a concert on Thursday then you may 
 rush back to your sheepskins in the Lane 
 
68 The Letters of 
 
 Besides here is another attraction w h I had 
 well nigh forgotten, the new N of the 
 Oxford Quarterly is to be produced on the 
 occasion, in w h there will be a translation 
 of a very curious high German piece of 
 Schiller's called the"PhilosophischeBriefe" 
 executed by your obedient servant 
 
 Oxford is the most indolent place 
 on earth I have fairly done nothing in 
 the world but read a play or two of 
 Schiller, ^Eschylus, & Euripides you I 
 suppose read German now as fast as 
 English There is a cheap copy of 
 Schiller's Drama to be had in Tottenham 
 Court Road about i. w h I shall be 
 happy to get on commission as I go to town 
 next week. 
 
 I do not intend to finish that 2 nd Brother 
 you saw but am thinking of a very Gothic- 
 styled tragedy for w h I have a jewel of a 
 name 
 
 DEATH'S JESTBOOK of course no one will 
 ever read it Mr. Milman (our poetry 
 professor) has made me quite unfashionable 
 here by denouncing me, as one of a " vil- 
 lainous schooL" I wish him another son 
 
Thomas Love II 'Beddoes 69 
 
 Oxford idleness the heat of the day, & 
 the clock w b is just striking the hour for 
 my lecture on Comparative anatomy break 
 me off Let me see you on Monday or 
 Tuesday the former day I recommend as 
 it will give you an opportunity of seeing 
 the last boat race this season 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 T. L. BEDDOBS 
 
 " T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 
 3 Houndwell Lane 
 
 Southampton " 
 
yo The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XVI 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Hamburg 
 Tuesday. 19. July 1825 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, und mein lieber 
 herr Thomas, If you will take the sails 
 of the Harwich packet, walk across the 
 German Ocean, trot up the Elbe, & turn 
 into the Roman Emperor at Hamburg be 
 so good as to enquire for mein Herr 
 T. L. B. No 12 up two pair of stairs, & 
 you will find him sitting on a horse-hair 
 sofa, looking over the Elbe with his 
 meerschaum at his side full of Grave & 
 abundantly prosaic. 
 
 Tomorrow, according to the prophecies of 
 the diligence he will set out for Hanower 
 (we Germans (here a puff.) always spell it 
 with 2 v's )& by the end of this week mein 
 Herr Thomas will probably be a Dr of the 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 7 1 
 
 university of Gottingen. What his inten- 
 tions further may be I cannot say precisely 
 as you & I between ourselves recollect that 
 he is not altogether endued with the polar 
 virtue of perseverance, & that the needle 
 with w h he embroiders his cloth of life 
 has not been rubbed with the magnet of 
 steady determination. I rather think how- 
 ever that he will return to England with a 
 rather quaint and unintelligible tragedy, 
 which will set all critical pens nib upwards, 
 a la fretful porcupine. 
 
 When he embarked from Harwich & ob- 
 served that his only companions were two 
 Oxford men, professors of genteel larking, 
 without the depth, vivacity or heartiness w h 
 is necessary to render such people tolerable, 
 he instantly drew his shell over him, & 
 remained impenetrably proud & silent every 
 wave of the way, dropping now and then a 
 little venom into the mixture of conversa- 
 tion to make it effervesce. 
 
 Hamburg, where he now is, poor young 
 man, is a new brick built town a fit place 
 to embellish the ugly genius of the broad 
 flat sided muddy Elbe The very churches 
 
72 The Letters of 
 
 of brick & emetical unto the eye The 
 people honest and civil, & God fill their 
 purse for it, no custom house no passport 
 required but then the women are of a 
 coarse quality there are no pictures no 
 sculpture & if one meets more upright & 
 manly forms in life, than in Italy, yet you 
 seek in vain paintings superior to signs or 
 sculpture beyond a tobacco-stopper. 
 
 Herr Procter, the Boet as George the 
 Second says, will tell you what a confusion 
 was caused by your hoaxing letter to a B.A 
 of Pemb. Coll. Oxon what a scrawl it 
 ilicited from his drowsy quill & how under- 
 lined was the reply. Now leb wohl for 
 the post leaves us soon. 
 
 Fahrend oder reitend 
 
 sein 
 Der Genius von T. L. B 
 
 [Addretud to] 
 
 " T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 
 3 Houndwell Lane 
 Southampton 
 England 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 73 
 
 LETTER XVII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 29 [/ 
 
 DEAR KELSALL, If you ever received a 
 shabby small letter from Hamburg you 
 know that I am a Gottingen student ; it is 
 likely that I shall remain so for some time. 
 This university is a handsome likeness of 
 the caricature given of it in all works of the 
 day which exhibit Germany to the delight 
 of you people in that island, but if there is 
 more harm, I believe there is also more 
 good in it than in our own. 
 
 Blumcnbach 29 who is my best friend 
 among the professors, is I fancy of the 
 first rank as mineralogist, phisologian, 
 geologist, botanist, natural historian & phy- 
 sician, over and above which he possesses 
 an exuberant fancy & a flow of wit 
 w b is anything but German ; indeed I 
 
74 The Letters of 
 
 suspect that he is the first living writer in 
 Deutschland, for a nearer acquaintance with 
 Goethe has inclined me to rate him much 
 lower than I had anticipated ; out of his 
 works w 11 fill pretty fatly some 3<Dvols not 
 like Mr. Colburns in capacity of page 3 
 at most contain what is really good. As a 
 poet is he inferior to his late lordship w and 
 in the novel line somewhere about Mac- 
 kenzie. The hasty Germans have betrayed 
 their literature & delivered it to the enemy 
 by exalting him to the supreme godship 
 thereof but ere his bones are cool pro- 
 bably they will pull down his statue from 
 it's high pinnacle on the poetic temple and 
 make it a step to the high altar of some 
 new pen-deity 
 
 They treat their poets as the Romans 
 did their emperors alive they are golden 
 heavenly fellows for whom reviews ascend 
 like triumphal arches they die a weeping 
 willow & an elegy stick over their 
 graves, and as the tree draws nourish- 
 ment out of their decaying corporeal sub- 
 stance, a younger rival sets the roots of his 
 fame in their literary remains and flourishes 
 
Thomas Love/I TSeddoes 75 
 
 as fast as these latter rot ; so Goethe has 
 done with regard to Klopstock & Wieland. 
 Their follies about his sitting between 
 Shakespeare & Sophocles are laughed at 
 every where but in the university pot- 
 houses when they grow glorious on the 
 fumes of smallest ale & rankest tobacco : 
 Nevertheless learn you German if you are 
 not already master of it, as I suppose : for 
 the solider literature deserves it History I 
 mean & criticism of the true sort 
 
 Ludwig Tieck is just about to publish in 
 English & German a number of the Eliza- 
 bethan fellows the young folk will then 
 become acquainted with our literary com- 
 moners, the steps up to Shakespeare, & if they 
 do not grow giddy on the ascent will have an 
 opportunity of contemplating from the sides 
 & terraces of this mountainous poetry the 
 molehill w h Goethe & Schiller have thrown 
 up & called the German Parnasso 
 
 I am preparing for deep & thorough medi- 
 cal studies : for I find literary wishes fading 
 pretty fast however I have writ two acts 
 of an affair w h if ever consummated will be 
 tolerably decent better I hope than Camp- 
 
76 The Letters of 
 
 bell & c I gave the thing I sent you about 
 Pygmalion 31 to the poor Oxford magaziners 
 but don't know whether they ever intended 
 to print it No one will read it if they do 
 for their pages are the shortest cut to obli- 
 vion one can think of. And now how do 
 you get on in England : has cousin John 8a 
 calved any more Epicisms ? Have Darley, 
 C. Lamb, Mrs. Shelley & c printed ? In a 
 word have you anything worth reading ? or 
 that you can read without many struggles ? 
 
 I am here at Cassel a pretty little Capital 
 of a pretty great rascal, the Elector of Cassel, 
 whose father sold some thousands of his 
 wretched subjects to England that he might 
 expend the price of their heads in making 
 a fine garden & building a palace in w h he 
 can't live. You see what sort of letters I 
 write, & you may bless your stars that they 
 are only quarterly apparitions I am going 
 to write to Procter just such another, so 
 you may comfort yourself with the thought 
 that there's fellowship in your post-office 
 misery 
 
 Whenever your pen is unemployed on 
 sheepskins favour me with a line ad- 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 77 
 
 dressed to Herr B bey Keil. Juden Strasse. 
 Gottingen Hannover. There are two of 
 the great Rothschild's sons studying here 
 just opposite me. At Leipsic they have 
 printed a Shakspeare in one vol. very 
 decently & the first edit, of Hamlet. Noeh- 
 den is right as to the pronunciation of eu 
 it is oi & a very broad one too in Han- 
 nover where they speak German best. 
 
 T. L. B 
 
 Addreutd to 
 
 " T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 
 3 Houndwell Lane 
 Southampton 
 
 Engelland " 
 Single 
 Oct 4 
 
78 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XVIII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Postmark 
 
 Qottingen Dec r 4 [1825] 
 Sunday 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, Up at 5 Anatomi- 
 cal reading till 6 translation from English 
 into German till 7 Prepare for Blumen- 
 bach's lecture on comp. Anat y & breakfast 
 till 8 Blumenbach's lecture till 9 
 Stromeyer's M lecture on Chemistry till 10. 
 10 to |- p. 12. Practical Zootomy | p. 
 12 to I English into German or German 
 literary reading with a pipe I to 2 Ana- 
 tomical lecture. 2 to 3 anatomical read- 
 ing. 3 to 4 Osteology. 4 to 5 Lecture 
 in German language. 5 to 6 dinner and 
 light reading in Zootomy, Chem. or Anaty. 
 6 to 7 this hour is very often wasted in a 
 visit sometimes Anatomical reading till 8. 
 Then coffee and read Greek till 10. loto 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 79 
 
 II. write a little Death's Jest book w h is a 
 horrible waste of time, but one must now 
 & then throw away the dregs of the day ; 
 read Latin sometimes or even continue the 
 Anatomy and at 1 1 go to bed. 
 
 I give you this account of my week day 
 occupations that you may collect from it 
 how small a portion of time I can save for 
 correspondence & c A few words in answer 
 to your last letter. I will frankly confess 
 to you that I have lost much if not all 
 of my ambition to become poetically dis- 
 tinguished : & I do NOT think with 
 Wordsworth that a man may dedicate 
 himself entirely or even in great part to 
 the cultivation of that part of literature, 
 unless he possesses far greater powers of 
 imagination & c than even W. himself, and, 
 (I need not add ; ) ergo, than I do : or 
 .bodily ill-health or mental weak 8 prevents 
 him from pursuing to any good purpose 
 studies in useful sciences. 
 
 At the same time I think you will not fear 
 that I shall become at any time a bare & 
 barren man of science, such as are so abund 
 ant & so appallingly ignorant on this side of 
 
8o The Letters of 
 
 Chemistry or Anatomy. Again, even as a 
 dramatist, I cannot help thinking that the 
 study of anat y phisol-psych : & anthro- 
 pology applied to and illustrated by history, 
 biography and works of imagination is that 
 w h is most likely to assist one in produc- 
 ing correct and masterly delineations of 
 the passions : great light w d be thrown 
 on Shakspeare by the commentaries of a 
 person so educated. The studies then of 
 the dramatist & physician are closely, almost 
 inseparably, allied ; the application alone is 
 different ; but is it impossible for the same 
 man to combine these two professions in 
 some degree at least ? 
 
 The science of psychology, & mental 
 varieties has long been used by physicians, 
 in conjunction with the corresponding cor- 
 poreal knowledge, for the investigation & 
 removal of immaterial causes of disease ; it 
 still remains for some one to exhibit the sum 
 of his experience in mental pathology & 
 therapeutics, not in a cold technical dead 
 description, but a living semiotical display 
 a series of anthropological experiments 
 developed for the purpose of ascertaining 
 
Thomas Lovell TJeddoes 8 1 
 
 some important psychical principle i.e. a 
 tragedy. 
 
 Thus far to show you that my studies, 
 pursued as I pledge myself to pursue them, 
 are not hostile, but rather favourable to the 
 developement of a germ w h I w 4 fain believe 
 within me. You will say, " this may be 
 theoretically true, but no such physician 
 has ever yet appeared." I shall have great 
 satisfaction in contradicting you, as Dr. 
 Johnson did the man who denied motion. 
 You talk about too much practice & so forth. 
 I believe that is what is least to be feared ; 
 I am very nearly unconnected, am not apt 
 at flattery or the social humiliations to w h 
 the fashionable physician is bound ; am 
 perhaps somewhat independent, & have a 
 competence adequate to my philosophical 
 desires There are reasons why I should 
 reject too much practice, if it did intrude ; 
 really I am much more likely to remain a 
 patientless physician. 
 
 And now I will end this unnecessary 
 subject, by telling you that Death's Jest- 
 book goes on like the tortoise slow & sure ; 
 I think it will be entertaining, very un- 
 
 F 
 
82 The Letters of 
 
 amiable, & utterly unpopular. Very likely 
 it may be finished in the spring or summer ; 
 I shall not if I can help it return to Eng- 
 land, but shall send it to you or Procter to 
 see what can be done about printing it with 
 the Pygmalion & the other thing whose 
 name I forget, as it will have a certain con- 
 nection in a leading feature with them : of 
 w h I believe the former is much the best. 
 
 As yet I have hardly any German ac- 
 quaintance here, as I cannot speak the 
 language very tolerably ; from one or two 
 specimens, with w h I am more intimate & 
 a general external knowledge of the body 
 of students, I can decidedly say of those 
 here at least that they have been causelessly 
 and disgracefully ridiculed in our ignorant 
 & flippant travels & periodicals : There is 
 an appetite for learning, a spirit of dili- 
 gence, and withal a goodnatured fellow- 
 feeling wholly unparallelled in our old 
 Apoplectic & paralytic Almse Matres ; 9 
 students out of 10 at this time of the year 
 rise at 5 or 6, study the whole day & night, 
 & Saturday night & sunday morning are set 
 aside for social communication. I never 
 
Thomas Lovell Iteddoes 83 
 
 was better employed, never so happy, never 
 so well self-satisfied. I hope to remain 
 here three years at least, I shall then pro- 
 bably visit Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, some 
 of the Italian curiosities, & finally Paris, 
 for I intend to devote 8 or 10 years to 
 these studies, combined with the languages 
 necessary and a slender thread of practical 
 literature. You see I will not fail of being 
 something by not exercising what talent I 
 have. I feel myself in a measure alone in 
 the world & likely to remain so, for from 
 the experiments I have made I fear I am a 
 non-conductor of friendship, a not-very- 
 likeable person so that I must make sure 
 of my own respect & occupy that part of 
 the brain w h should be employed in ima- 
 ginative attachments in the pursuit of im- 
 material & unchanging good. 
 
 I am ashamed of having scribbled a 
 letter so full of myself but I send it 
 because it may entertain you & I think 
 you require some explanation of my way of 
 studying medicine. Shame on you for 
 having anticipated a regular M.D. to arise 
 out of my ashes after reduction in the 
 
84 The Letters of 
 
 crucible of German philosophy. Apollo 
 has been barbarously separated by the 
 moderns, I would endeavour to unite him. 
 Of German literature, professors here, 
 Anecdote and news in our next, w h will not 
 appear before the receipt of your next. 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
 As P. will certainly not have answered my 
 letter when you are in town at Xmas scold 
 him in your best German. I really will 
 answer him in a German letter if he is 
 so bad again. 
 
 Could you find a Prometheus unbound 34 
 and a Cenci and send them straight and 
 fearlessly to bey Keil Juden Strasse ? 
 
 Keil is my landlord, bey is Chez. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 "T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 
 3 Houndwell Lane 
 Southampton 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 85 
 
 LETTER XIX 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 (jottingtn 
 [Postmark 12 <Dcc jtej] 
 
 LIEBER KELSALL, Pardon the evident 
 selfishness of this second letter, w h , 1 hope, 
 will meet you in town ; I should be infi- 
 nitely obliged to you if you could find 
 time to visit Devereux Court & obtain 
 from the landlady Mrs. Landers, a port- 
 manteau w h I left there, intending to have 
 returned to England soon. As in all pro- 
 bability this will not happen for years, (and 
 if it does I shall be very much annoyed,) 
 it will be better to take these things ; to 
 wit, a portmanteau, hat & box, & writing- 
 desk out of the lodgings, where most likely 
 they would be forgotten, and Mrs. Landers 
 will give them to you on seeing this letter. 
 If you will then take the trouble to break 
 
86 The Letters of 
 
 open the portmanteau, you will find a 
 miscellany of shirts, stockings, coats, & 
 manuscripts ; the latter I leave entirely, at 
 your disposal, recommending them, however, 
 to the dispensation of fire & sword ; now 
 take a great stout box of deal or so & stuff 
 all the shirts & coats & trousers & stockings 
 in, but none of the books, unless there 
 should happen to be a Prom : Unbound 
 among them : & if you could, add two or 
 three copies of the brides' trag : M Mr. 
 Rivington will I dare say allow me a few, 
 for I fear that now they can be little better 
 than waste paper to him ; & add the 
 Prometheus if not there. Then direct to 
 
 HERR BEDDOES 
 
 Bey Keil Juden Strasse Gottingen 
 Hannover 
 
 and send it ofF by the Harwich mail, via 
 Hamburg, I shall repeat my thanks upon 
 receiving it : & in return hope to be able 
 to send something that may entertain you 
 at all events bye & bye. At present 
 Anatomy, anatomy, anatomy, of man, dog, 
 & bird occupy so much of my time that 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 87 
 
 you must pardon me for being very dull, 
 my head is full of the origin and insertion 
 of muscles & such names as trachelo- 
 mastoideces, Cerato-chondroglossus & Bucco 
 pterygo-mylo-genio-cerato : chondro-cricco- 
 thyreo-syndesmo-pharyngeus. But this 
 beginning is the worst part of the science, 
 which after all is a most important and 
 most interesting one ; I am determined 
 never to listen to any meta-physician who is 
 not both anatomist & physiologist of the 
 first rank. 
 
 You will not expect much literary in- 
 telligence ; in Germany as in England the 
 greatest writers of the century are either 
 corporeally or spiritually dead. The theatre 
 is a much duller affair than I imagined, tho' 
 it is much better than the English : of w h 
 one must altogether despair. Fuimus Troes. 
 But here in the almost innumerable uni- 
 versities you are sure to meet with little 
 galaxies of Hofraths & professors ; all men 
 of more or less talent and information. 
 The best here in their several ways are 
 Benecke, 86 the English professor, a man 
 who understands more English than most 
 
88 The Letters of 
 
 natives*; Langenbeck & Hempel, Anatom- 
 ists, & Surgeons ; Krauss, Conradi, and 
 Himly medical professors ; Heeren & Saal- 
 feld, historical ; & Krause philosophical 
 besides the Eichhorns & Hugo celebrated 
 Jurists & divines : & the clever old hum- 
 ourous Blumenbach. 
 
 One of the most interesting of the idler 
 lectures given here, is by Saalfeld on the 
 history of the French Revolution. This 
 man is a real historian, & no bad orator; 
 but the government people do not much 
 patronize him, as he is extremely free, and 
 if he does not hesitate to condemn Napo- 
 leon, has still less remorse in laying bare the 
 infamy of the Polish transaction : he is 
 indeed one of those people, who are dread- 
 ful [torn by seal\ Id continental discipline 
 for his talent \torn\ moderation ; if he had 
 less of the one, he would no longer be 
 [tolejrated at the university ; if less of the 
 other he would be removed from his catheder 
 by the power of police ; & if the latter had 
 effected a total eclipse of the former, he 
 might now be Hofrath & Knight of the 
 Guelphic order. 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 89 
 
 How docs your winter get on ? We rise 
 very damp & foggy & the students have 
 been in vain praying for snow that sledging 
 may come in. I wish you a Xmas en- 
 riched with the most delightful plum- 
 pudding & pantomime ; these are luxuries 
 the names of w h have scarce yet pene- 
 trated this unfashionable region of Germany. 
 There is a shop in the Strand, und zwar at 
 the corner of Bedford Street where you 
 may get shirt-collars at is. 3d. a piece, get 
 me eight I beseech thee, & for all things 
 you shall really be paid almost immediately, 
 Once more send me not the portmanteau, 
 hatbox or desk, no boots & no books save 
 as aforesaid. I leave all but coats & 
 trousers, stockings, shirts, neck-cloths, great 
 coat, shirtcollar, drawers & so weit to the 
 mercy and compassion of yourself & him of 
 Southton Row. Visit me with a German 
 commission in return. 
 
 Present my compliments to Mrs. Procter ; 
 and I will venture to complain to her of the 
 conduct of a certain literary character ; I 
 have given up verse, or I w d write a satire on 
 B. C. 37 & call it Bradypus tridactylos Leben 
 
90 The Letters of 
 
 Sie wohl. Fears not B. C. a second attack 
 from L. E. L. ? 
 
 I enclose a i payable in London if the 
 Harwich Bank has not broke. I should 
 like to have a few Br. tragedies, but hope 
 they can be procured without paying for 
 them, to me they w d be dear at 8 / 4 . 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 "T. F. KELSALLEsq 
 
 care of B. W. Procter Esq 
 
 14 Southampton Row 
 
 Russell Square 
 
 London 
 
Thomas Lovell *Beddoes 9 1 
 
 LETTER XX 
 
 To BRYAN WALLER PROCTER 
 
 Postmarks An Herrn 'Beddots 
 " Qottingen bey Eysel 
 
 7 Mar " 77 Weender Strasst 
 " F.T.O. Qottingen 
 
 Mr 13 Hannover" 
 
 1826" 
 
 To DAY a truant from the odd old bones 
 And winds of flesh, which, as tamed rocks 
 
 and stones 
 
 Piled cavernously make his body's dwelling, 
 Have housed man's soul: there, where time's 
 
 billows swelling 
 
 Make a deep ghostly and invisible sea 
 Of melted worlds, antidiluvially 
 Upon the sand of ever crumbling hours 
 God- founded, stands the castle, all it's 
 
 towers 
 With veiny tendrils ivied : this bright day 
 
92 The Letters of 
 
 I leave its chambers, and with oars away 
 Seek some enchanted island where to play. 
 And what do you, that in the enchantment 
 
 dwell 
 
 And should be raving ever, a wild swell 
 Of passionate life rolling about the world 
 Now sunsucked to the clouds, dashed on 
 
 the curled 
 
 Leafhidden daisies ; an incarnate storm 
 Letting the sun through on the meadows 
 
 yellow ; 
 
 Or anything except that earthy fellow 
 That wise dog's brother, man ? O shame 
 
 to tell ! 
 Make tea in Circe's cup, boil the cool 
 
 well, 
 
 The well Pierian, which no bird dare sip 
 But nightingales. There let them kettles 
 
 dip 
 Who write their simpering sonnets to it's 
 
 song 
 
 And walk on Sunday's in Parnassus park. 
 Take thy example from the sunny lark, 
 Throw off the mantle which conceals the 
 
 soul, 
 The many-citied world, and seek thy goal 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 93 
 
 Straight as a starbeam falls. Creep not nor 
 
 climb 
 
 As they who place their topmost of sub- 
 lime 
 
 On some peak of this planet pitifully, 
 Dart eaglewise with open wings and fly, 
 Until you meet the gods. Thus council I 
 The men who can, but tremble to be 
 
 great, 
 
 Cursed be the fool who taught to hesitate 
 And to regret : time lost most bitterly. 
 And thus I write and I dare write to thee, 
 Fearing that still, as you were wont to do, 
 You feed and fear some asinine Review. 
 Let Juggernaut roll on, and we, whose 
 
 sires 
 Blooded his wheels and prayed around his 
 
 fires, 
 
 Laugh at the leaden ass in the God's skin. 
 Example follows precept. I have been 
 Giving some negro minutes of the night 
 Freed from the slavery of my ruling spright 
 Anatomy the grim, to a new story 
 In whose satiric pathos we will glory. 
 In it Despair has married wildest Mirth 
 And to their wedding-banquet all the earth 
 
94 fbe Letters of 
 
 Is bade to bring its enmities and loves 
 Triumphs and horrors : you shall see the 
 
 doves 
 
 Billing with quiet joy and all the while 
 Their nest's the skull of some old King of 
 
 Nile: 
 But he who fills the cups and makes the 
 
 jest 
 Pipes to the dancers, is the fool o' the 
 
 feast. 
 Who's he ? I've dug him up and decked 
 
 him trim 
 
 And made a mock, a fool, a slave of him 
 Who was the planet's tyrant : dotard Death: 
 Man's hate and dread : not with a stoical 
 
 breath 
 
 To meet him like Augustus standing up, 
 Nor with grave saws to season the cold 
 
 cup 
 
 Like the philosopher, nor yet to hail 
 His coming with a verse or jesting tale, 
 As Adrian did and More : but of his night 
 His moony ghostliness and silent might 
 To rob him, to uncypress him i' the light 
 To unmask all his secrets ; make him play 
 Momus o'er wine by torchlight ; is the way 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 95 
 
 To conquer him and kill ; and from the 
 
 day 
 Spurned, hissed and hooted send him back 
 
 again 
 
 An unmasked braggart to his bankrupt den. 
 For death is more "a jest" than life : you 
 
 see 
 
 Contempt grows quick from familiarity. 
 I owe this wisdom to Anatomy 
 Your muse is younger in her soul than 
 
 mine, 
 
 O feed her still on woman's smiles and wine, 
 And give the world a tender song once 
 
 more, 
 
 For all the good can love and can adore 
 What's human, fair and gentle. Few, 1 
 
 know, 
 
 Can bear to sit at my board when I show 
 The wretchedness and folly of man's all 
 And laugh myself right heartily. Your call 
 Is higher and more human : I will do 
 Unsociably my part & still be true 
 To my own soul : but e'er admire you 
 And own that you have nature's kindest 
 
 trust 
 Her weak and dear to nourish, that I must 
 
96 The Letters of 
 
 Then fare, as you deserve it, well, and live 
 In the calm feelings you to others give. 
 
 There, Mr. B. C. is your small doggrell ? 
 a punishment, tolerably severe, for your 
 delay in answering my letter ; pray be as 
 lazy again and you shall have a " double 
 only " of German hexameters in the 
 Klopstock style. 
 
 L. E. L. is at Gottingen too to the con- 
 fusion of German Ink & paper. Look 
 to 't my Parnassian. I am quite de- 
 lighted at Mrs. Shelley's overwhelm- 
 ing your charming friend of the New 
 Monthly : he has troubled the manes 
 of Sternhold, Hopkins & Robert Wisdom. 
 Apollo forgive him and make him Laureate 
 for it. Now you must tell me all about 
 the last Last Man. 
 
 Have you seen Martin's 38 Deluge ; do 
 you like it ? And do you know that it is a 
 rascally plagiarism upon Danby ? D. was 
 to have painted a picture for the King : 
 subject the opening of y e sixth seal in y e 
 revelations : price 800 guineas : he had 
 collected his ideas and scene, and very 
 
Thomas Love II ISeddoes 97 
 
 imprudently mentioned them publicly to 
 his friends & foes it appears ; Like 
 Campbell and Lord B : and lo ! his own 
 ideas stare at him out of Martin's canvass 
 in the institution this is Last man again 
 and why does not he paint a last Man ? 
 
 What do they at the wretched Theatres ? 
 any fool : tragedies ? Don't talk to me of 
 Magazines ; they are vermin I detest ; and 
 is Barley 89 delivered yet. I hope he's not 
 a mountain. Write or expect T. L. B. 
 Now once more O ye dry 
 
 Bones, & once more ye muscles &c. 
 
 I have given up Schiller he's never 
 original. Goethe is something like, though 
 not very : if you can by any means get 
 Taylor's translation of the Iphigenia, read 
 it Don't believe Lord Gower's Faust, it's 
 full of absurd and ignorant blunders, besides 
 it's evident tameness and lameness. 
 
 But what an idle generation you are : why 
 don't you learn German ? We Germans 
 learn English I assure you : and write it a 
 little. I would not have doggrelized you if 
 I had had anything to say worth a rotten 
 
 G 
 
98 ?be Letters of 
 
 apple ; but I only know about Anatomy 
 now : & Germany partakes of the existing 
 mental stagnation of Europe We'll try and 
 stirr it bye & bye. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 B. W. PROCTER Esq 
 14 Southampton Row 
 Russel Square 
 
 London 
 England 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 99 
 
 LETTER XXI 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 April i. A bad omen ! 
 [1826} 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, If you had received 
 all the letters which I had wished to write 
 to you, you would have little to complain 
 on the score of slack correspondency, but 
 really we people in Germany have as little 
 to say as we people in England and my 
 thoughts all run on points very uninterest- 
 ing to you i.e. on entrails and blood- 
 vessels ; except a few which every now and 
 then assumed an Iambic form towards the 
 never-ending Jestbook ; it lies like a snow 
 ball and I give it a kick every now & then 
 out of mere scorn and ill-humour, the 4 th 
 act & I may say the 5 th are more than half 
 done, so that at last it will be a perfect 
 mouse: but such doggeril ask Procter 
 
ioo The Letters of 
 
 else whom I lately visited with a rhyming 
 punishment for his correspondential sin. 
 Ask him too what he's doing ? I see 
 nothing about editions of poets & c yet ? 
 And I assure you I see a great deal about 
 literature and it's royal society to wit the 
 Lit. Gaz. which comes regular & dull to 
 the tutor of the Rothschild's who live oppo- 
 site : what a poetical Famine : you must be 
 reduced to Bernard Barton 40 & Hunt's 
 Blacking Bottles, they are the only classical 
 publications of the season. 
 
 However if my friend Death lives long 
 enough to finish his jest book it will come 
 with it's strangenesses, it contains nothing 
 else, like an electric shock among the small 
 critics, & I hope to have the pleasure here 
 of reading a cunning abuse of it from the 
 pen of Jerdan. 41 I'll tell you what, if 
 Procter does not write any more we will 
 not any longer believe that he's Barry C. 
 The spirit of some old picture dealer has 
 got into him ; did you see the signs that 
 he picked up & took for Correggios; I 
 remember smoking a pipe under them 
 in Shropeshire ; do not you ? If he 
 
Thomas Love 1 1 "Eeddoes 101 
 
 scrapes a little he'll find the Marquis of 
 Granby underneath. 
 
 On the z6 th Feb* we had the Burschen in 
 all their glory : Blumenbach & Eichhorn 
 that is to say the stream of flowers & the 
 Squirrel celebrated the 5o th anniversary of 
 their professorships. As soon as it was dark 
 between 5 & 600 of us, horse & foot, assem- 
 bled each with a torch & formed a two & 
 two procession thro* the town to the house 
 where they were feasting, drew round the 
 square, and on Blumenbachs appearance at 
 the window a short speech was made by 
 the leader followed by several tremendous 
 " vivats ! " 
 
 He made his speech ; we departed and 
 threw our torches into a bonfire. This 
 however was only the halo, the pale out- 
 skirt, now comes the thick dazzling centre 
 of the promised Burschen glory and that 
 was the commerz, i.e. a general assemblage 
 of all the different Landsmannschaften here 
 to drink and of course smoke together. I 
 went with the Russians ; for we few 
 English don't agree well enough to form a 
 separate club & altogether decline to risk 
 
102 The 'Letters -of 
 
 the character of the country by pushing 
 forward as its representatives in this holy 
 alliance. The great ceremony consisted in 
 a long anthem during which half a dozen 
 men with swords took the cap of every one 
 present in rotation off his head and singing 
 the solemn words thrust it on the sword 
 when the weapons were sheathed to the hilt 
 in their crowns, they were again returned as 
 solemnly to the possessor in state of perfora- 
 tion and replaced on his head as he chaunted 
 an oath " bald ein wahren Bursch zu seyn." 
 In the end we came to a general attack 
 upon tables benches windows & heads and 
 about 3 o'clock in the morning the flower of 
 the german youth was as drunk as a fidler : 
 intending to hear a lecture at 8. Blumen- 
 bach is one of the cleverest men in Ger- 
 many ; his works are distinguished for 
 nicety, acuteness and the minutest acquain- 
 tance with the in : and outside of Nature : 
 but in his lecture-room he would be a 
 capital subject for Mathews : he lectures 
 on Natural History, that is his auditors 
 bring his very capital manual in their hands 
 & sit out : in an instant one hears a noise 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 103 
 
 as of Punch on the stairs & the old pow- 
 dered professor pushes in grunting amid as 
 much laughter as Listen. He then begins 
 a lecture composed of jokes, good stories, 
 imitations, inarticulate sounds & oaths & 
 this being ended goes as he came a good 
 clever merry old man. 
 
 Then there is Langenbcck 4 ' J the Anato- 
 mist who was once a barber, he's the Kem- 
 ble of this Munden : during his lecture he 
 throws himself into a thousand attitudes 
 starts, points and declaims and paces loftily 
 up and down his little stage he too is a man 
 of firstrate merit as anatomist and surgeon. 
 
 Heeren 43 squeaks like Velluti ; Hugo 44 
 is lame and Bouterwek 45 deaf; this is the 
 story about them quite a proven^al tale. 
 
 When young in their travels Heeren fell 
 in love with the wife of a very fierce grena- 
 dier ; and one evening when the husband 
 was out, went to enjoy a tete a tete with 
 the lady to prevent interruption he placed 
 his friends as centinels, Bouterwek at the 
 bottom, Hugo at the top of the stairs : the 
 man comes in drunk, gives Bouterwek a 
 box on the ear that knocks him over and 
 
104 The Letters of 
 
 deafens him for life, runs up, kicks Hugo 
 all the way down stairs & breaks his leg : 
 breaks into the room and does to Heeren 
 what Bowdler does to Shakspeare. Had 
 the friend of Dr. Johnson who wrote a 
 tragedy the catastrophe of which was cas- 
 tration heard this story he might have pro- 
 duced a noble Gaeteo. 
 
 You'd be quite delighted to see how I 
 disguise myself here : no human being w d 
 imagine that I was anything but the most 
 stoical, prosaic, dull anatomist : I almost 
 outwork the laborious Lauerkrauss and to 
 tell you truly I begin to prefer Anatomy & c 
 to poetry, I mean to my own, & practically 
 besides I never c d have been the real thing 
 as a writer : there shall be no more accurate 
 physiologist & dissector. Now you must 
 tell me all about the Last Man ; I am very 
 glad that Mrs. S[helley] has taken it from 
 the New Monthly Fellow and am sure that 
 in almost every respect she will do much 
 better than either of us : indeed she has no 
 business to be a woman by her books. Re- 
 member I wrote twice & don't remember 
 that N 2 was a rankly selfish effusion. 
 
Thomas Lo-vell Tteddoes 105 
 
 How I envy you the pleasure of dissecting 
 & laughing at such a grotesque fish as the 
 Improvisatore. 46 Don't be malicious & give 
 it to the reviewers, else I will publish 
 "The Southampton Bowwindow a Satire 
 on Kelsall." You may look out for some 
 entertainment in " Bristol Macaronics " it 
 is written by Eagles 47 a very clever fellow, 
 author of a translation of the Batrachomyo- 
 machia published by Elton in Lond. Mag. 
 
 Benecke who taught Coleridge German 
 here, says that he has a very superficial 
 knowledge of it. From what I know of 
 Kant, i.e. his Anthropology a very sensible 
 acute man-of-the-world book I suspect 
 C. has never read him, at all events he has 
 given the English a totally absurd opinion 
 of him. Thank you for the box, because it 
 never came. Do what you will or can 
 with the other things : you are very 
 welcome to Schiller to enrich your upper 
 shelves : I shall not read him ever again. 
 Ask me about poets ? & c talk of Anatomists 
 & I'll tell you something. I have left off 
 reading Parnassian foolery ? I can bear a 
 satire still tho* and write one as Jest- 
 
io6 The Letters of 
 
 book shall show. Tell me about the 
 last Man. I am very much obliged to 
 Mrs. S. she has saved me the trouble of 
 spreading the secret of Campbell's ears : 
 direct now. 
 
 An Herrn & c 
 
 bey Straus. 484. Buch Strasse 
 
 & give this direction to the late Barry 
 Cornwall, I send his dead body, w h has the 
 impudence to pretend to live still & does 
 not write even to me, a wrong man 
 
 This is the true S. Pure. 
 
 Does Procter write in KellsalPs Magazine ? 
 At the end of my next book shall be Arion 
 (A : wry : one) a monody on the Death of 
 B. C. with proposals for an edition of his 
 works in usum Delphini Did I ever pun 
 before ? It is anatomy that works in me so 
 wittily. Adieu. T. L. B. 
 
 Thank you for the box to day because 
 it has come. You're right the Cenci is 
 best, because truest. Your inventory was 
 most capital, a legal exercise I presume, 
 particularly the logical division of Woollen 
 
Thomas Lovell ^eddoes 1 07 
 
 stuffs I for the throat II for the neck 
 III for the wrist. If I had room I could 
 find in my heart to be as tedious as the 
 two kings of Brentford all over again. Why 
 did you send me the Cenci ? I open my 
 own page, & see at once what damned trash 
 it all is. No truth or feeling. How the 
 deuce do you, a third & disinterested person, 
 manage to tolerate it ? I thank heaven 
 that I am sitting down pretty steadily to 
 medical studies. Labour then can do 
 almost all. Only think of growing old 
 under the laurels of the literary Gazette or 
 Campbell's Mag. Have you seen the 
 Monthly Mag. since its resurrection ? 
 Tomorrow I electrify Benccke, who has 
 a considerable indifference to L d Byron, 
 with Shelley. It will give him a new idea 
 of Englishmen. I sh d like to see your 
 agony on this Cross it being Easter week. 
 You dont study Anatomy, Botany, Physi- 
 ology ? Chemistry & c . Come write me. 
 
 How many pipes do you smoke every 
 day ? I'm quite a novice only three, I will 
 bring Procter a magnificent Meerschaum 
 Kopf if he'll promise to smoke it yellow or 
 
io8 The Letters of 
 
 you either. Depend on it tis the great 
 help to Metaphysics ? Have you seen 
 Leigh Hunt 48 since his return ? & what is 
 Elia 49 about ? And Darley ? 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 "T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 
 3 Houndwell Lane 
 Southampton 
 England " 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 109 
 
 LETTER XXII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 (jottingen 
 [Postmark Oct : 5 1826] 
 
 LIBBER KELSALL, Der, den du so eifrig 
 die schonen Wissenschaften und Lituratur 
 treibst,derin"des Lebens goldenen Baum," 
 den sangenden Baum von den Tausend und 
 einen Nachten suchest, der dem Anbeter 
 der saligen Gottheiten den Musen u. s. w. 
 war unterhaltender kann der Liebhaber 
 von Knaben der flussiger Botaniker und 
 Physiolog mittheilen ? u. s. w. 
 
 Well I hope that has frightened you : 
 however as I can still write a little English 
 & it will be a profitable exercise I will con- 
 tinue in that be-L-E-Led and be-Milmaned 
 tongue. That I have not sent you a letter 
 sooner, will be scarce a cause of complaint 
 
no The Letters of 
 
 or discontent when you learn that, all my 
 sublunary excursions this summer have been 
 botanical ones, & my transluscary (it is a 
 good word & I only recollect it in Drayton's 
 Epistle to Reynolds has Johnson it) a 
 thought or two for a didactic .Z?oem (is that 
 rich tig ?) on Myology, wh I was prevented 
 from executing by finding that a preceding 
 genius of the scalpel had led the Muses a 
 dance to his marrowbones and cleaver. 
 
 I wish you would come & see me : not 
 only because it would save me the chagrin 
 of dosing you (the shop !) with superfluous 
 solutions of nonsense in ink : but that you 
 might look over my unhappy devil of a 
 tragedy, which is done and done for : it's 
 limbs being as scattered and unconnected 
 as those of the old gentleman whom Medea 
 minced & boiled young. I have tried 20 
 times at least to copy it fair, but have given 
 it up with disgust, & there is no one here 
 for whose judgement in such things I would 
 give a fig or a teacup without a handle (I 
 have one at the critic's service) conse- 
 quently neither their praise or blame can 
 lure or sting me onwards however we 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 1 1 1 
 
 must disappoint disappointments by taking 
 them coolly, and throw a chain-bridge across 
 impossibilities or dig a passage under them, 
 or Rubiconize them if one has the good 
 saddle horse Pegasus to ride & I will find 
 out some way of bestowing my dulness on 
 you in it's ore of illegibility 
 
 I gave you (or did I not :) a caricature of 3 
 professors last letter, and now you shall have 
 a little more Goettingen scandal. Tobias 
 Mayer 50 is professor of nat. philosophy, alittle 
 fellow in top-boots, with a toothless earth- 
 quake of a mouth, & a frosty greycoat he 
 never can find words repeats his alsos & c & 
 by endeavouring to make up for want of elo- 
 quence by violent action, he literally swims 
 through his subject. His dad was a good 
 astronomer & published a famous map of 
 the moon. This " Wife for a month " of 
 the earth revenged the publication of her 
 secret hiding-places on the most natural 
 object of female heavenly malice, his wife 
 thus ingeniously Top-booted Toby in his 
 lecture was talking of her sonnetship ; & 
 came to the subject of her portrait "among 
 others" said he "Tobias To-bi-as 
 
H2 The Letters of 
 
 Mayer who was a-mong others was my 
 father." 
 
 Tieck has published in the Urania Tas- 
 chenbuch for 1826 a story called Dichter- 
 leben which is a very well worked adven- 
 ture of Marloe & Green's with Shakspeare. 
 the latter however is too german & he 
 announces an English translation, probably 
 by himself, to be published at Leipsig under 
 the title of the Lives of Poets : but you 
 are a bad Marlowite or none at all I like 
 the man on many scores. Here is a Dr. 
 Raupach 51 who lays a tragedy or two in the 
 year mostly windeggs but he's the wit 
 of the folks about Melpomene's sepulcre in 
 Germany. Schiller you know took her out 
 of the critical pickle she lies in & made a 
 few lucky galvanic experiments with her, 
 so that the people thought she was alive 
 when she was only kicking. Do you know 
 that a French Dr. of Medicine too, has pub- 
 lished a gossiping tour in England in letters, 
 in which he criticises our late friend Barry 
 C. under the name of Procter. The 
 fellow's book is all out of Blackwood ex- 
 cepting a plate or two of autographs out of 
 
Thomas Love/! Tteddoes 113 
 
 the Forgotten Forget me not Goethe is 
 preparing a new edition of his rhymed & 
 prosy commissions XXXX. vols for 10 
 dollars who'll buy who'll buy ? They are 
 as cheap as oysters if not so swallowable. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Gottingen is a 
 slightly Chalybeate spring & a little inn 
 with a tea garden whither students & Phil- 
 istines (i.e. townsmen who are not students) 
 resort on Sundays to dance & ride on the 
 Merry-go-round, an instrument of pleasure 
 which is always to be found on such places, 
 and is much ridden by the German students, 
 perhaps because it as well as waltzing pro- 
 duces mechanically the same effects as the 
 week-day hobby-horse the philosophy of 
 Schelling & c doth physically i.e. a giddiness 
 & confusion of the brain. 
 
 Behind this Terpsichorean re/xevoc rises a 
 woody rocky eminence on which stands a 
 fair high tower & some old mossy and ivy- 
 hugged walls, the remains of an old castle 
 called the Plesse : the date of the tower is 
 said to be 963 : if this be true it may have 
 earned a citizenship among the semi-eternal 
 stony populace of the planet : at all events it 
 
 H 
 
ii4 2^* Letters of 
 
 will be older than some hills which pretend 
 to be natural & carry trees and houses e.g. 
 Monte Nuovo. 
 
 On this hill & in the holes and vaults of 
 the old building resides a celebrated reptile, 
 which we have not in England the sala- 
 mander. He is to a lizard what a toad is to 
 a frog, slow, fat & wrinkled of a mottled 
 black & yellow, it is true that under his skin 
 one finds a thick layer of a viscid milky fluid 
 of a peculiar not disagreeable smell which 
 the beast has the power of ejecting when 
 irritated & by this means might for a short 
 time resist the power of fire. 
 
 Where the vulgar fable has its origin I am 
 altogether ignorant, I believe it comes from 
 the middle ages ; from the monkish writers 
 of natural history perhaps & they might 
 have had a spite against the poor amphibium, 
 because he is unorthodox enough to live 
 a long while after you have removed his 
 stomach & intestines & therefore con- 
 demned him to the flames for impiety against 
 the belly gods 'A^ay/a & 'A/cparoTror^e. 
 The servants at the altars of these thundering 
 deities (v. Euripides Cyclops 327) may adduce 
 
'Thomas Lovell *Beddoes 1 1 5 
 
 physiological authority for the immateriality 
 of their adored Paunch. J. Baptista van 
 Helmont placed the soul, which he nick- 
 named Archaeus, in the stomach & whatever 
 the clergy knew more about the spirit in 
 question I do not think they are inclined to 
 let the cat out of the bag. This is a plea- 
 sant doctrine for aldermen and Kings, the 
 dimensions of the soul perhaps correspond- 
 ing with the size of its habitation : only 
 they must beware of purges it would be a 
 mishap to leave ones soul in a close-stool- 
 pan like George the 2nd. 
 
 To return to our Maria-spring, the afore- 
 said tenement or tenements of fantastic- 
 toeness : & what I had intended to tell you : 
 it was here that an unhappy Hungarian who 
 came to Gottingen three or 4 years ago to 
 study medicine, & had wandered to pro- 
 pitiate his Archiius with beer & tobacco at 
 this place was smitten with the charms of 
 the tavern-keepers daughter : she was in- 
 sensible & he desperate : he left Gottingen 
 & built a hut under a rock in the Plesse wood 
 where he lived 2 years, descending occasion- 
 ally to feed his eyes upon the beauties of the 
 
1 1 6 The Letters of 
 
 cruel one. But either the lady departed or 
 his passion burnt out, for at the end of this 
 time the hermitage was left by its love-lorn 
 founder & it now remains as an object of 
 curiosity for folks, who see it : hear his tale 
 & laugh at it. 
 
 Such is alas ! the state of sentiment 
 in this part of Germany : & probably if 
 Werter's hermitage stood here it would 
 be equally profaned hard-heartedness & 
 worldly prudence has it's paw upon the 
 poor planet : and as Chaucer sung long ago 
 Pity is dead and buried in gentle heart 
 but we have lost the sepulchre And we 
 fellows who cannot weep without the grace 
 of onions or hartshorn, who take terror by 
 the nose, light our matches with lightning, 
 have plucked the " tempest winged chariots 
 of the deep " of its winds & imped its 
 pinions with steam. We who have little 
 belief in heaven and still less faith in man's 
 heart, are we fit ministers for the temple of 
 Melpomene ? O age of crockery ! no let 
 Scandal & Satire be the only reptiles of the 
 soul-abandoned corse of literature About 
 Anne Boleyn. G. D. Joanna & 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 1 1 7 
 
 I 
 
 Come with me thou gentle maid, 
 The stars are strong and make a shade 
 Of yew across your mother's tomb 
 Leave your chamber's vineleaved gloom 
 Leave your harpstrings, loved one, 
 "Tis our hour." the robber said. 
 Yonder comes the goblin's sun 
 For when men are still in bed 
 Day begins with the old dead. 
 Leave your flowers so dewed with weep- 
 ing 
 
 And our fevrish baby sleeping, 
 Come to me, thou gentle maid 
 " Tis our hour," the robber said, 
 
 II 
 
 To the wood whose shade is night 
 Went they in the owls moonlight, 
 As they passed the common wild 
 Like a murderous jester smiled 
 Dimpled twice with Nettly graves. 
 You may mark her garment white 
 In the night wind how it waves: 
 The night wind to the churchyard flew 
 And whispered underneath the yew, 
 
1 1 8 The Letters of 
 
 " Mother Churchyard, in my breath, 
 
 I've a lady's sigh of death." 
 
 " Sleep thou there, thou robber's wife," 
 
 Said he clasping his wet knife. 
 
 DR. RAUPACH 
 
 Direct (if you answer before March) Bey 
 Ramsahl. Post Strasse I have not been 
 out [of] Gottingen now for a year i.e. any 
 distance, & shall probably not leave it for 
 as long a space. What is der seeliger 
 ifomfoall about ? Adieu, adieu, adieu. 
 
 Have you written no prologue this year 
 for the Th. royal Southton or have you 
 dropped that since the retirement of Mrs. 
 Hamblin ? T. L. B. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 
 at Admiral Bligh's C.6. 
 Fareham 
 Hants 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 1 1 9 
 
 LETTER XXIII 
 
 To BRYAN WALLER PROCTER 
 
 October tf* 1826 
 
 MY DEAR PROCTER, This Gottingen life 
 is little productive of epistolary materials 
 or of any adventure interesting beyond the 
 town walls ; and I have not been six miles 
 from the circuit of these during the last 
 year. However, I meditate and must per- 
 form a pilgrimage to Dresden, for the sake 
 of its pictures, and then I hope to pick out 
 a few plums to communicate to you. 
 
 These matters, I take it for granted, re- 
 tain their interest for you, because I have 
 a lingering attachment to them, and in 
 sincerity I acknowledge that you possess a 
 truer and more steady feeling for the 
 beautiful in imagination ; and the law- 
 studies will probably only compress and 
 concentrate it. You will give me leave to 
 
I2O The Letters of 
 
 believe that you will not and cannot 
 entirely abandon the studies and labours 
 which have many years pretty exclusively 
 possessed you, and by which you have ob- 
 tained a distinguished reputation ; and if 
 you do not, I shall take it. Me you may 
 safely regard as one banished from a service 
 to which he was not adapted, but who has 
 still a lingering affection for the land of 
 dreams ; as yet, at least, not far enough in 
 the journey of science to have lost sight of 
 the old two-topped hill. 
 
 I wish, indeed, that the times were more 
 favourable to the cultivators of dramatic 
 literature, which from a thousand causes ap- 
 pears to be more and more degraded from its 
 original dignity and value among the fine arts. 
 Andyet I believe that the destined man would 
 break through all difficulties and re-establish 
 what ought to be the most distinguished de- 
 partment of our poetic literature ; but per- 
 haps enough has already been done, and we 
 ought to be content with what times past 
 have laid up for us. If literature has fallen 
 into bad hands in England, it is little worse 
 off than in Germany, for living and active 
 
Thomas Love II Heddoes 121 
 
 are few writers above a secondary rank, and 
 they almost unknown beyond the shadow of 
 the double eagle's wings. 
 
 Jean Paul 52 is lately dead, and a new 
 edition of his voluminous writings is pro- 
 ceeding from the press. 
 
 I have read little of his, and that little 
 has pleased me less. In his happier moods 
 he resembles Elia, but in general he is little 
 better than a pedantical punster. 
 
 Tieck has made a good little story by 
 threading together the few facts we have 
 of Marlowe's life, and an English trans- 
 lation is advertised by a Leipzig bookseller, 
 probably by himself. When it appears I 
 shall send it to you by the first opportunity, 
 without waiting for your order. 
 
 A quantity of our modern indifferent 
 fellows have been cheaply reprinted by 
 different speculating booksellers. It is a 
 pity they have no good selector, who could 
 spare them the pains of recondemning 
 paper and print to the re-awaking of such 
 trash. It would be as reasonable of dyers 
 to reprint the London waistcoats and 
 breeches of 1810 or '16 ; for a pattern or a 
 
122 The Letters of 
 
 poem of this sort are equally long-lived, and 
 deserve to be so. 
 
 In the neighbourhood is a little lake, 
 See-Burger-See. We went there botanising 
 a few weeks ago, and were entertained by 
 our boatman with a genuine legend. A 
 castle had formerly stood on the edge of 
 the water, and the ruins of it still exist on 
 the rocks and under the waves. It was 
 formerly inhabited by a knight who had a 
 confidential cock and a prying servant. 
 Once a month the master, to keep his ears 
 awake to the language of his crowing oracle, 
 partook of a mysterious dish ; and it was 
 decreed that whenever a second pair of 
 ears were able to receive and comprehend 
 Chanticleer's conversation, the castle should 
 fall. At last, then, the servant removed 
 the cover of the monthly viand and found 
 a snake under it : he tasted some of this 
 broiled worm of the tree of knowledge, 
 and was from that day forth an eavesdropper 
 of the confidential twitters in sparrows 1 
 nests and hen-coops. The prophetic cock 
 soon began to use fowl language, and 
 proclaim the approaching downfall of the 
 
Thomas Love I I *Beddoes 123 
 
 towers of burg. The servant who 
 
 had translated colloquies between fly and 
 fly, bee and flower, did not fail to compre- 
 hend the warning ; rushed to his master, 
 who was already on his horse and riding 
 out of the castle gate : the walls tumbled, 
 the tower bowed, the groom rushed after 
 his master and seized the horse's tail ; the 
 knight plunged his spurs into the sides of 
 his steed, leapt to land, and left his 
 treacherous servant among the waves and 
 ruins. 
 
 Here are also the Gleichen, two castles 
 belonging to the family of Ernst von 
 Gleichen, famous for having two wives : 
 W. Scott has told the story somewhere. A 
 grave is shown at Erfurt as containing the 
 relics of the three, and at one of his castles 
 a large bed ; but it appears that this three- 
 headed matrimony is fictitious and alto- 
 gether unsupported by historical documents. 
 These castles overlook a prettyish village, 
 which was a favourite haunt of poor 
 Burger the ballad- writer. He was a private 
 teacher in Gottingen, and probably starved 
 or at all events hastened through the gates 
 
124 ^he Letters of 
 
 of death by poverty and care. Schiller 
 was supposed to be envious of him, and did 
 him a great deal of mischief by ill-natured 
 criticism ; but Burger had more notion of 
 the right translunary thing than his reviewer. 
 About Weber ? What grief at the death ? 
 His fellow-countrymen and fellow fiddlers 
 were well-pleased with his burial or intended 
 burial honours. 
 
 I wish you joy of Sir R. G V 8 being 
 
 out of the way ; you may sit upon a wool- 
 sack yet. Was it to fill your sheet that 
 you sent a good deal of advice or remon- 
 strance in your last to me ? Perhaps you 
 forget it. I only mention it to observe 
 that it is a little singular that a dramatic 
 writer, a person who has observed and 
 knows something of human character, should 
 take the trouble to attempt corrections of 
 the incorrigible, and pour so much oil 
 upon a fire by way of extinguishing it. 
 Allow me to say that you are mistaken if 
 you think I wilfully affect any humour ; 
 even that of affecting nothing. I always 
 make a point of agreeing with everything 
 that a fool pleases to assert in conversation, 
 
Thomas Love II *Beddoes 1 2 5 
 
 and only combat assertions or opinions of a 
 person for whom I have respect. TJerbum 
 sap. You people in England have a pretty 
 false notion of the German character, and 
 flatter yourselves with your peculiar and 
 invincible insular self-complacency that 
 you know all about it ; for national vanity 
 I believe after all you arc unequalled. 
 The Frenchmen rests his boast on the 
 military glories of la grande nation ; the 
 German smokes a contemptuous pipe over 
 the philosophical works of his neighbours ; 
 but the Englishman will monopolise all 
 honourable feeling, all gentle breeding, all 
 domestic virtue, and indeed has ever been 
 the best puritan. Is the revolution in the 
 " Quarterly " true ? The last number we 
 had here did smack somewhat of " Black- 
 wood." Present my best compliments to 
 Mrs. Procter, and don't let your answer be 
 as dull as this. 
 
 Yours 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES. 
 
 Recollect I write from Gottingen. 
 "Death's Jest Book" is finished in the 
 
126 'The Letters of 
 
 rough, and I will endeavour to write it out 
 and send it to you before Easter : at all 
 events I think parts of it will somewhat 
 amuse you : bi TroXXot will find it quite 
 indigestible. W. A. Schlegel is professor 
 at Bonn, a ten years old Prussian university 
 on the Rhine. His brother Friedrich is in 
 Austria, and writes puffs for the Holy 
 Alliance. No Austrian is allowed to study 
 here Gottingen is so famous for liberality. 
 
 I intend to study Arabic and Anglo- 
 Saxon soon. 
 
 I have just bought three salamanders. 
 They are pretty, fat, yellow and black 
 reptiles, that live here in the ruins of an 
 old castle in the neighbourhood ; on the 
 Hartz I hear they are larger. It is not 
 a bad retributory metempsychosis for the 
 soul of a bullying knight. 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 127 
 
 LETTER XXIV 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Toitmark 
 
 [Cjottingtn ~~l 
 
 20 April : 1827 J 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALLY, This is an odd bit 
 of paper, but you must excuse it ; the 
 company of stationers shut up their doors 
 as soon as the " company of clouds " take 
 their station in Apollo's highroad : or to 
 speak un-euphuistically the paper-vendors 
 are in bed ; I have no Gottingen vellum for 
 I seldom write a letter, and feeling a little 
 that way inclined, a rare state of inspiration 
 at present with me, I shall not thwart the 
 rising deity because the rags on w h he is to 
 vent his fury are not exalted to the highest 
 perfection of Paperhood. Forgive me if I 
 write bad English ; I am just now the 
 only English person here, and live in the 
 most enviable solitude, the few Germans 
 
128 The Letters of 
 
 I associate at all with are away as it is va- 
 cation time, and I am waited upon by a slow 
 Teutonic damsel as speechless as the hus- 
 band of the Silent Woman 54 could desire. 
 
 I would not believe your enemy if he 
 said that you were so indolent as you 
 desire yourself. I know what indolence 
 and idleness is too pretty well, and am not 
 now altogether free from attacks of these 
 evil ones and recollect with dread the 
 state of mental flatulence wh: I endured for 
 sometime, really in a great measure because, 
 thanks to the state of education in England, 
 I did not know what to study. You pro- 
 bably describe a passing mood of this nature 
 otherwise but Conscience is ever the best 
 adviser. 
 
 I read very little of the German polite 
 literature as they call it, but lately I was 
 induced to look into some of Tiecks original 
 writings in consequence of the very agree- 
 able impression I received from some critical 
 remarks of his on Shakspeare (much truer 
 & more imbued with a feeling of the actual 
 existence of Shakspeare's men & women, 
 than the cold philosophizing abstractions of 
 
Thomas Love II *Beddoes 129 
 
 Schlegel)(I can pronounce that name rightly 
 now. Jeer no more at my German !) He 
 (Tieck) as B. C. says in a parenthesis, has 
 written a good deal Tales and Dramatic 
 Tales some of these latter are very long 
 mostly in ^ parts of 5 acts each but excessive 
 agreeable reading, with a vein of gentle tonic 
 humour wh. never lets one sleep ; he is never 
 very strong or deep, but altogether displays 
 more general power as a dramatist than any 
 of the more celebrated Germans. He par- 
 ticu[lar]ly delights in presenting nursery 
 tales in a dramatic form ? he has a Puss in 
 Boots, Blue Beard, Fortunatus and little 
 Red Riding hood. This last is short but a 
 most delightful absurdity. The dramatis 
 personae are the heroine Grandmother. 
 A Huntsman who is in search of the Wolf. 
 The Wolf (Mr. McCready's part as villain) 
 Dog, & Robin-Redbreasts, special allies of 
 Red Riding hood's because of their sympathy 
 in colour and a Cuckoo The scene dis- 
 covers the Grandmother sitting alone on 
 a Sunday morning and expecting her little 
 relative, she comes with some cake and 
 chatters with the old lady some time is 
 
 i 
 
130 The Letters of 
 
 particularly eloquent in praise of her red 
 riding hood she goes and leaves the 
 housedoor open to the dismay of the Old 
 lady on Redridinghoods return thro' the 
 Forest she makes acquaintance with the 
 Redbreasts and meets the Huntsman who 
 announces the incursion of a ravenous wolf. 
 To this principal personage the reader is 
 now introduced he relates his history to 
 the dog, how in his youth he was a cosmo- 
 polite and philanthrope, deserted his 
 barbarous clans-wolves and came into the 
 village to gain knowledge and to be useful 
 in his generation : here he became 
 acquainted with a shewolf of the neigh- 
 bourhood whose person was peerless and 
 after whose spotless Life and amiable 
 manners one might have written A whole 
 duty of Shewolves : however his vita Nuova 
 like Dante's was broken off by the death of 
 this his fairly fair in that she was murdered 
 by a peasant at her evenings repast on a lamb: 
 & now Sir Isgrim is become Childe Harold 
 in WolPs clothing, he contemns the canine, 
 hates and vows vengeance on the human 
 kind, and devotes to the manes of his lost 
 
Thomas Love/1 "Beddoes 1 3 1 
 
 lady the head of little R. R. whose father 
 slew the Fornarina and Queen Elizabeth, 
 and Ninon & Mrs. Fry of she-wolfhood : 
 the dog his friend is a good-natured fellow, 
 a temporizing phlegmatic Gneculus esuriens, 
 who praises all government as long as he 
 has a bone to pick ; attempts to dissuade 
 Sir I., fails & retires. 
 
 Little R. R. meantime has got her custard 
 & pot of honey to take to her Grandmother 
 this evening altho' it is growing dark & now 
 follows a scene of omens & warnings she & 
 another little girl blow off the seeds of dande- 
 lions heads to see how long they shall live 
 the other blows a long while in vain, but the 
 Scarlet woman with one puff sends all her 
 pappers adrift but vain is this omen of 
 Flora's, R. R's father is probably a radical 
 & takes in the Mechanic's Magazine for 
 his little one is a complete philosopher and 
 retorts the exultation of her fellow-dande- 
 lion-blower by reducing the phenomenon 
 to natural principles she has blown the 
 dandelions head clean at one puff because 
 she has good lungs & will therefore live 
 longest and sends away tother little one 
 
132 The Letters of 
 
 crying : a peasant crosses her and advises 
 her not to go this evening thro' the wood 
 as it is nearly dark and the wolPs abroad : 
 this has no effect & now her household 
 gods stir themselves for the last time and 
 produce a wonder to detain her enter^the 
 Cuckoo : 
 
 Cook for Grandam-koo another time 
 Gook not koo the wood koo-night 
 Gook look koo through 
 Gook brook koo who 
 
 Gooks lurks koo the there 
 Cuck a wolf or a bear 
 Cuck cannot cuck any more 
 Spooking for kinds is a bore 
 Cuckoo Woe to thee Cuckoo 
 
 Little R. Cuckoo you fool learn to speak 
 
 better English. 
 Koo-night indeed ha ! ha ! 
 
 enter Dog.) 
 Dog. Bough-vow. Bough-vow 
 
 (probably a cockney dog) 
 Bow your way home 
 How couldst thou come 
 
'Thomas Lovell Heddoes 133 
 
 Bow alone vow 
 
 Boughs cloudy arc. 
 
 Cows browse not there, 
 
 Vows wolf to tear 
 
 Bow thou thce to bits 
 
 I bow now and quit, (exit.) 
 
 She goes on : reaches her granddams 
 Chamber. The wolf enters lying on a bed 
 and R. R. admires the size of her nose: eyes: 
 teeth : at this cue the wolf siezes her & in 
 the struggle the bedcurtains fall before 
 them, the Robins fly in at the window 
 & ^discover the murder to the Huntsman 
 who is without: he shoots into the room and 
 kills the wolf Curtain falls. 
 
 This is a trifle but Fortunatus, Emperor 
 Octavius, & Genevra contain very beautiful 
 things & are more animated with a dramatic 
 spirit than any of those tasteless fatulity- 
 plays with the translations of w h Mr. Gillies 65 
 has so liberally presented, our Blackwood- 
 reading public. I am studying Arabic & 
 think of taking the field against Heber 56 in 
 the winter I am reading Dante's Vita 
 Nuova it is a simple Confessio amantis 
 
134 The Letters of 
 
 interwoven with curious Ptolemean Astro- 
 nomy & Catholic Theology the sonnets 
 & c are much more to my taste than that 
 Petrarcan eau d'Hippocrene sucre : did P. 
 & Laura ever come into your head in the 
 scene between Slender & Sweet Anne ? 
 My next publication will probably be a 
 dissertation on Organic Expansion ; or an 
 enquiry into the laws of the Growth & 
 Restoration in organized matter. 
 
 I am now already so thoroughly pene- 
 trated with the conviction of the absurdity 
 & unsatisfactory nature of human life that 
 I search with avidity for every shadow of a 
 proof or probability of an after-existence 
 both in the material & immaterial nature 
 of man. Those people, perhaps they are 
 few, are greatly to be envied who believe 
 honestly and from conviction in the Xtian 
 doctrines: but really in the New T. it is 
 difficult to scrape together hints for a 
 doctrine of immortality Man appears to 
 have found out this secret for himself & it 
 is certainly the best part of all religion and 
 philosophy, the only truth worth demon- 
 strating : an anxious Question full of hope 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 1 3 5 
 
 & fear, & promise for wh. Nature appears 
 to have appointed one solution Death. 
 In times of revolution & business, and even 
 now the man who can lay much value in 
 the society, praise, or glory of his fellows 
 may forget, and he who is of a callous 
 phlegmatic constitution may never find the 
 dreadful importance of the doubt. I am 
 haunted for ever by it ; & what but an 
 after-life can satisfy the claims of the 
 oppressed in nature, satiate endless & 
 admirable love & humanity & quench the 
 greediness of the spirit for existence : but 
 
 As an almighty night doth pass away 
 From an old ruinous city in a desert, 
 And all its cloudy wrecks sink into day : 
 While every monstrous shape and ghostly 
 
 wizard, 
 
 That dwelledwithin the cavernous old place 
 Grows pale and shrieks and dies in its 
 
 dismay: 
 And then the light comes in and flowery 
 
 grace 
 
 Covers the sand, & man doth come again 
 & Live rejoicing in the new-born plain : 
 
136 The Letters of 
 
 So you have seen great gloomy centuries, 
 (The shadow of Rome's Death) in w h did 
 
 dwell 
 
 The men of Europe, shudder & arise, 
 So you have seen break up that smoke of 
 
 Hell 
 
 Like a great superstitious snake, uncurled 
 From the pale temples of the awaking 
 
 world. 
 
 These lines were written in the album 
 of a man who had busied himself in his 
 pretty advanced life with political specula- 
 tions watched the progress of the American 
 and French revolutions with interest and 
 expectation. No English person or English 
 render in Gottingen c d or w d understand 
 them. For this reason I began to think 
 they might be good & have therefore 
 rewritten them for you 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 " T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 Fareham 
 
 Hants 
 
Thomas Love II Iteddoes 137 
 
 LETTER XXV 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 [Postmark] 
 Qdttingen 
 
 SJ May 182^ 
 
 4 One of my friends sent me a week or two 
 ago the following poem, wh. he had tran- 
 scribed out of an old album in the library 
 at Hamburg. The date 1604 was on the 
 binding of it He cannot give a more 
 decided description of the book. The lines 
 are written in a neat old English hand. 
 
 My thoughts are winged with hopes, my 
 hopes with Love, 
 
 Mount love unto the moon in clearest 
 night 
 
 And saie, as she doth in the heaven move 
 
 In earth so wanes and waxeth my de- 
 light, 
 
138 The Letters of 
 
 And whisper this but softly in her ears * 
 How oft doubt hange the head and trust 
 
 shed teares. 
 And you, my thoughts that seem mistrust to 
 
 varye t 
 
 If for mistrust my mistris do you blame 
 Saie, though you alter yet you do notvarye 
 As shee doth change and yett remaine the 
 
 same; 
 
 Distrust doth enter hartes but not infect 
 And love is sweetest seasoned with suspect. 
 If shee, for this, with clouds do mask her eyes 
 And make the heavens dark with her dis- 
 
 daine, 
 With windie sights J disperse them in the 
 
 skyes, 
 Or with thy teares desolve them in to 
 
 rayne 
 Thoughts, hopes and love returne to me no 
 
 more 
 
 * Shak. bestowed ears rather on such erratic stars as 
 Bottom than on the Moon 
 
 f (to carry, of course T.L.B) 
 
 % Benecke says this is rightly spelt for the time ; 
 taking for granted that the verses were written before 
 the book was bound, and swallowing the W.S. it 
 remedies a jingle between sighs and skies so far good. 
 
'Thomas Love II "Beddoes 139 
 
 Till Cinthia shyne as shce hath done 
 before. W. S. 
 
 * I have communicated the lines, with a 
 strict regard ever to the interpunctuation, 
 exactly as I received them.' (I too 
 T. L. B.) Benecke in the Wunschelrathe 
 (Divining Rod) A dead Gottingen peri- 
 odical No. 34. April 27. 1818. Gothe gave 
 this translation in his periodical Vol. 2. 
 No. 3 Stuttgard 1820. p. 32 
 
 Here grunteth the old pig of Weimar 
 
 Gothe has done no good here, first he 
 says out of an album of 1604 whereas the 
 book was bound in 1604 was it bound 
 before or after the sheets were written on 
 I suppose according to English custom, 
 it was a blank book bought by some dille- 
 tante for a scrap : M.S. book Such are 
 seldom very soon filled and therefore in 
 all probability the lines were written, here 
 at least, in the latter days of Shakspeare. 
 Two lines of it w h I need not point out to 
 you give the thing a possibility But who 
 
140 The Letters of 
 
 is Cynthia ? In the sonnets & c is no Cyn- 
 thia mentioned & altogether there is scarce 
 any evidence of Shakspeares being in love 
 in a sonneteering way he was probably 
 too well acquainted with the tricks of 
 Authorship, too intimate with the artifice 
 and insincerity of poetry to think of avail- 
 ing himself of it in any serious passion at 
 this time of his life (see Sonnet 130). 
 
 His sonnets I take to be early * productions 
 dictated by an ardent attachment to W. H. 
 who was younger t than himself, and writ- 
 ten all before he had become a poetical 
 artist. It may be that these lines were 
 written hastily by him for W. H. or per- 
 haps some Court gentlemen to serve as a 
 complimentary poem or song for his lady 
 But is there any necessity for raising so 
 great a spirit, is it absolutely necessory that 
 no other W. S. co d have written these lines ? 
 The internal evidence is so little satisfac- 
 tory to my feelings that I cannot think 
 Goethe pardonable for his temerity in 
 printing Shakspeares name at the end of 
 
 * See sonnet 32 & 11 
 
 t S. 96 compared with the exaggerating melancholy 
 73 rd 
 
Thomas Love II 'Beddoes 141 
 
 the verses upon such deficient historical 
 grounds. Compare too the Italian frivolity, 
 the careless superficial playfulness, the con- 
 strained elegance & roundness of this little 
 bit of verse with the deep & ardent expres- 
 sions of that wondrous book of sonnets 
 where he has turned his heart inside out & 
 given us all to read all that the tender & 
 true spirit had written on the walls of his 
 chamber, : the former is as the dimple of 
 the coquetting man of the world to the 
 avrjptdpov yeXaoT-ta the starry tremulous 
 universal smile of an ocean of passion, 
 which ebbed & flowed about the roots of a 
 love, as firm & sacred as the foundations of 
 the world. 
 
 So far from being ready to attribute 
 anything he c d have written to S. I 
 am inclined to deny the authenticity of 
 many smaller pieces & songs such as that 
 to Silvia in 2 Gent, of Verona. At this 
 period of his life (40 years of age) his 
 spirit was at rest, he was wearied of the 
 " light airs & recollected terms. Of those 
 most brisk and giddy-paced times," that 
 feeling was awakened to full consciousness, 
 w h dictated the true, self condemning ei- 
 
142 The Letters of 
 
 pressions of the no th Sonnet, & he was 
 yearning for the quiet truth of enjoyment, 
 the peace of life. He had long learned that 
 there were mysteries in the feelings and 
 passions of the soul, some of w h he had too 
 rashly revealed ; that the most exquisite 
 happiness is silent, it's delights unutterable. 
 He had uncovered to profaner eyes some of 
 the farthest sanctuaries of the heart, he had 
 lent to vulgar tongues the sacred language 
 of truth & divine passion & it was this re- 
 pentance & sorrow for the violation, which 
 speaks so sorrowfully in that little poem, 
 which deterred him from printing the com- 
 positions in w h he had made his own soul 
 a thoroughfare for the world. At this time, 
 wearied and disgusted as he clearly was 
 with the fate wh. had necessitated him to 
 feed cold eyes with the emotions of his 
 eternal nature, c d he have so returned to 
 the cold conceits with w h he had dallied 
 before he had learned the truth & sacred- 
 ness of human feeling ? I cannot think so. 
 But that an old fellow of letter-press, an 
 author of our days, who w 4 send the paper 
 wet with his own heart's blood to the 
 
"Thomas Lowell TSeddoes 143 
 
 printer that fools might wonder & book- 
 men adore his art, sh d think so, is what we 
 can but expect from this vulgar prostituted 
 age. I fear that Printing is a devil whom 
 we have raised to feed & fatten with our 
 best blood & trembling vitals. I (excuse, 
 if you laugh at, this egotism of insignifi- 
 cance) will not again draw the veil from 
 my own feelings to gratify the cold prying 
 curiosity of such, as the million are, & will 
 remain T. L. B 
 
 You will hardly thank me for this letter, 
 I have gone on with it without attending 
 to the laws & purposes of correspondence 
 but send it that you may gather from the 
 expressions a way of thinking w b grows 
 upon me daily Do you think I am right 
 both with relation to the lines w h have occa- 
 sioned them& the sentiment in general or in 
 neither ? I hope your instinct will lead you 
 thro* this labyrinth of remark, note Query 
 it looks like a skreen full of puzzles 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 Fareham 
 
 Hants 
 
144 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XXVI 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 A Tuesday in Oct. Qottingen 
 [Postmark] 21 Oct. 1827 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, This week has been 
 more productive of epistolary fruits to me, 
 than the foregoing 3 months. On Saturday 
 came a young Scotch Lawyer, M r Fraser, 
 with a note from the conveyancing phoenix 
 which has arisen from the ashes of the late 
 B. C. gent, and a tall Swiss who expects 
 to become professor of the Teutonic 
 language in Univ. Londin the latter 
 acquaintance pleased me much the more of 
 the two, he is a man of good, & extensive 
 Education with an interest for all human 
 sciences and arts and smoked his new 
 bought large Gottingen pipe well. The Law 
 gentleman is Editor of the new foreign 
 Review who was recruiting for contributors 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 145 
 
 & wanted to catch me : however I am not 
 magazinish inclined and do not augur 
 well of the undertakings of young Editors, 
 who are well informed of hardly anything 
 but their own superior capacities an occult 
 science enough ; still as it is always as well 
 to give Cerberus a sop, when one has a 
 thought of one day retreading the Tartarus 
 emeticus of Modern literature, I treated 
 him to a promise of an article upon modern 
 Hebrew literature of the unholy kind. 
 
 The writer of this is to be a native of 
 Odessa, a man who has a quantity of brain 
 but no breeches, and for Hebrew utterly 
 incomparable, for I presume there are few 
 Jews or Christians pious folks who can or 
 have translated Schiller, written songs &c. 
 in that desolated and abandoned language. 
 Moreover he utterly refused to button up 
 his reason & belief in the prophetical old 
 clothes into which the shoulders of the 
 events of later years have been thrust he 
 hath alas never been christened, is a deep 
 philosopher, a lauder of Spinosa : in fact a 
 choice morsel for the torch which Calvin 
 &c. brandished : a fellow after Julians 
 
146 The Letters of 
 
 heart : but then he would sup with the 
 devil must needs have a long spoon, to toss 
 some of his broth into the trough at which 
 David's sow doth squeal and wag her curly 
 tale and that is wanting to my Russian 
 Pyrrho. This treatise, if I can get him to 
 write it, will be admirable for all people who 
 know or don't know anything of the Jews 
 
 The M r Fraser brought too a copy 
 of his Bijou for w h Procter has written. 
 This for Gottingen is an unfortunate name. 
 Blumenbach tells in his "At home" on 
 Natural history a tale of M. Bigou in Paris, 
 who was a collector too of a peculiar and 
 odious description, a Nightman Errant who 
 went batfowling after Excrement of every 
 species of every genius. This man may 
 have been inspired by the God of the 
 Kamtschatkadaler, Jupiter Rutka, who fell 
 in love, according to their sacred traditions, 
 with his own ordure when it was frozen, 
 and believed it to have been a fair maiden, 
 such as they are in Kamschatka, till his 
 intreaties had melted her icy bosom, & his 
 nose was convinced of the error of his heart. 
 
 You wish to convince me of my error 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 147 
 
 regarding the publication of expressions 
 of feeling: which are ours for the enjoy- 
 ment of domestic happiness : I repeat 
 that I regard it as a profanation : does not 
 Shakespeare grant it, & who but him had 
 built an ear for the tyrant vulgar where it 
 might eaves drop & overhear the secret com- 
 munings of human souls ? 
 
 It would be worth while to consider the 
 domestic lives of all the greater poets of 
 modern times ; for the ancients lacked those 
 refinements and domestic enjoyments of 
 which we speak. Shakspeare, Dante, Milton, 
 all who have come next to the human heart, 
 had found no object in life to satiate the rest- 
 less yearnings of their hearts & appease at 
 the same time the fastidious cravings of their 
 imaginations. Dissatisfaction is the lot of 
 the poet if it be that of any being, & there- 
 fore the gushings of the spirit ; their 
 pourings out of their innermost on imaginary 
 topics because there was no altar in their 
 home worthy of the libation. It is good 
 that we should see from these involuntary 
 overflows of the soul what it is that moves 
 within us : such is the manna of the tree 
 
148 ^fhe Letters of 
 
 of life. But to force it, to count one's 
 fingers and take the sweat of our Grub 
 street brows for the true juice, the critical 
 drops w h the souls struggles must press 
 from our veins ere it be genuine : to pant for 
 fame, to print & correct our tame frigid 
 follies, to be advertised in the newspapers 
 with the praise of the Lit.' Gaz. is really 
 abundantly pitiful and as ridiculous as the 
 crowning of the pedant Petrarch. To 
 annoy and puzzle the fools and amuse 
 oneself with their critical blunders is the 
 only admissible plea for printing for any 
 one who has been a few years from school 
 excepting poverty, Mr. Croly : excepting 
 avarice, Sir Walter. 57 
 
 Gothe has, as you probably by this time 
 know, published an interlude to Faust, in 
 which he gives him as a play fellow our 
 fair witch of Troy, Helena, who bestows 
 her name on the piece I have read it 
 once and not very carefully through and 
 found nothing very extraordinary : fine 
 passages which remind one of Euripides 
 and Iphigenie, & graces such as his better 
 productions contain are there : & a spirit 
 
Thomas Lovell Tteddoes 149 
 
 plays upon the surface of his fancies which 
 announces the presence of a creator, but on 
 the whole it is not palpable, it dances o'er 
 the brain and leaves no footstep there. 
 Still there is something irritating in it & it 
 is probably a hieroglyphic in which the 
 man pourtrays the passage of antique fable 
 into the middle ages : the best thing perhaps 
 is a great fearful old housekeeper of 
 Menclaus who frightens Helen from Sparta 
 to the castle where Faustus receives her, 
 follows & threatens her, and at the end of 
 the piece lays aside the mask, mantle and 
 cothurn & discovers herself to be Mephis- 
 tophiles. A review of it is to be inserted 
 in the foreign review from the pen of the 
 professor of Northern Literature elect in 
 London. 
 
 I can really send you nothing of my 
 own, I have a pretty good deal in frag- 
 ments which I want to cement together 
 and make a play of among them is the 
 last Man. They will go all into the Jest 
 book or the Fool's Tragedy the historical 
 nucleus of which is an isolated and rather 
 disputed fact, that Duke Boleslaus of 
 
150 The Letters of 
 
 Munsterberg in Silesia was killed by his 
 court fool A.D. 1377. but that is the least 
 important part of the whole fable I have 
 dead game in great quantities but when or 
 how it will be finished ^Esculapius alone 
 knows : I will give you a song out of it 
 w h seems to me bad but my English 
 vocabulary is growing daily more meagre, 
 and I have neither much time nor much 
 inclination to keep up my poetical style by 
 perusing our writers : I am becoming daily 
 more obtuse for such impressions and rather 
 read a new book on anatomy than a new 
 poem English or German. 
 
 Yet let me assure you that your idea of my 
 merits as a writer is extravagantly surpassing 
 my real worth : I w d really not give a shil- 
 ling for any thing I have written, nor sixpence 
 for anything I am likely to write. I am 
 essentially unpoetical in character, habits & 
 ways of thinking : and nothing but the 
 desperate hunger for distinction so common 
 to young gentlemen at the Univ y , ever set 
 me upon rhyming. If I had possessed the 
 conviction that I could by any means 
 become an important or great dramatic 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 1 5 1 
 
 writer I would have never swerved from 
 the path to reputation : but seeing that 
 others who had devoted their lives to 
 literature, such as Coleridge and Words- 
 worth, men beyond a question of far higher 
 originality and incomparably superior 
 poetical feeling and Genius, had done so 
 little, you must give me leave to persevere 
 in my preference of Apollo's pill box to his 
 lyre, & should congratulate me on having 
 chosen Gottingen instead of Grub street for 
 my abode 
 
 Indeed all young verse grinders ought to 
 be as candid and give way to the really 
 inspired. What would have been my con- 
 fusion & dismay, if I had set up as a 
 poet, and later in my carreer anything real 
 and great had start up amongst us & like a 
 real devil in a play frightened into despair 
 & futerity the miserable masked wretches 
 who mocked his majesty. 
 
 These are my real and good reasons for 
 having at last rendered myself up to the 
 study of a reputable profession in which the 
 desire of being useful may at least excuse me 
 altho I may be unequal to the attempt to 
 
152 The Letters of 
 
 become a master in it ; & I assure you that 
 the approbation which you have pleased to 
 bestow upon a very sad boyish affair, that 
 same Brides Tr : which I w d not even be 
 condemned to read through for any con- 
 sideration, appears to me a remarkable & 
 incomprehensible solecism of your otherwise 
 sound literary judgement. 
 
 Now it being a star and moonlight night 
 and a bevy of ladies crossing the water in 
 a boat well let them sing but methinks its 
 damned moorish & obscure 
 
 Wild with passion, sorrow-beladen, 
 Bend the thought of thy stormy soul 
 Onit'shome, on it's heaven, the lovedmaiden 
 And peace shall come at her eyes' control 
 Even so night's starry rest possesses 
 With its gentle spirit these tamed waters 
 And bids the wave with weedy tresses 
 Embower the ocean's pavement stilly 
 Where the sea girls lie, the mermaid 
 
 daughters 
 
 Whose eyes not born to weep 
 More palely lidded sleep 
 Than in our fields the lily 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 153 
 
 And sighing in their rest 
 More sweet than is it's breath 
 And quiet as it's death 
 Upon a lady's breast. 
 
 Heart high beating, triumph bcwrcathed 
 Search the record of loves gone by 
 And borrow the blessings by them be- 
 queathed 
 
 To deal from out of thy victory's sky. 
 Even so throughout the midnight deep 
 The silent moon doth seek the bosoms 
 Of those dear mermaid girls asleep 
 To feed its dying rays anew 
 Like to the bee on earthly blossoms 
 Upon their silvery whiteness 
 And as the rainbow brightness 
 Of their eyelash's dew, 
 And kisseth their limbs o'er ; 
 Her lips where they do quaff 
 Strike starry tremors off 
 As from the waves our oar. 
 
 You hardly deserve it for the last time 
 you did not say thankye for a great some- 
 thing snake wh. I had caught and caged 
 in a sonnet for you, however so much to 
 
1 54 The Letters of 
 
 show you what you might have expected 
 and to induce you to thank the disposition 
 of providence wh. will preserve to you any 
 part of your personal property which you 
 w d wantonly devote for a box of such like. 
 Such verses as these & their brethren will 
 never be preserved to be pasted on the 
 inside of the coffin of our planet. Thank 
 you for Mr. Hood, he seems to be pretty 
 tolerable : & not at all in danger to be too 
 deep for his readers. Apollo have mercy 
 on him. 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 If you are rich & charitably inclined or 
 are acquainted with such, you can send to 
 Coutts on my account any small contribu- 
 tions for my un-Xtian Russian : he wants 
 to take his M.D. but it costs alas 30 I 
 dunn all my acquaintance. Tell me how 
 many pence you give us. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 Fareham 
 Hants 
 
 England 
 
Thomas Love II Iteddoes 155 
 
 LETTER XXVII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Clifton Ap. 8. 1828 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, On the iy th l hope 
 to be in London, and on the following 
 Saturday to leave it ; as imperious necessity 
 requires my presence at Gottingen on y e 
 3O th & something still more imperious than 
 necessity calls me to another Continental 
 town in the Netherlands where I must 
 consume a day or two on my passage. In 
 fact as soon as I am M.A. my first desire 
 will be to step into the Ostend packet, w h 
 I sh d do directly after leaving Oxford, if I 
 had not some Law business w h will keep me 
 about 2 days in London. Nothing can 
 equal my impatience & weariness of this 
 dull idle pampered isle. 
 
 Letters & invitations without number w h 
 have been or must be answered by return of 
 
156 'The Letters of 
 
 post in the same way prevent me from being 
 more diffuse. I sh d be very glad to see you 
 if possible, but do not be in a hurry to be 
 disappointed. You will easily even in the 
 country stumble upon a person as indifferent 
 to fine situation or nearly so as 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. B. 
 My landlady is 
 
 Mrs. Landers 
 
 6 Devereux Court 
 Temple Bar 
 
 London. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 Fareham 
 Hants 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 157 
 
 LETTER XXVIII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 ^Postmark 
 [Gottingen] 2*J Ftl? 1829 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, A day sooner or later 
 than this letter, will arrive, I hope, at No. 3 
 Fig tree court at length, the celebrated 
 Fool's Tragedy or D' 8 J book. I have 
 written to Procter announcing the fact to 
 him and leaving to him whether he will 
 interest himself about its furtherance to the 
 press, as I acknowledge I have no right to 
 expect it from him. If you are in town get 
 it either from him or Bourne 68 & be critical. 
 There is some wretched comic part in it, 
 w h I cannot improve nor give up I hope 
 however that it is no unworthy cotemporary 
 of the Briton Chief. Have you read any- 
 thing of the new Mr. Montgomery ? 89 He 
 appears actually a good deal worse than the 
 old. Allan C's anniversary 60 I have seen 
 
158 The Letters of 
 
 here, & I suppose shall never see another : 
 All the folks seem to have been trying who 
 could be most stupid. Procter's Tempta- 
 tion however is a redeeming exception & 
 makes the book worth something till he 
 reprints it. There is a freedom, and a 
 degree of poetical and dramatic management 
 in it w h I only regret to see in such com- 
 pany, & thrown away on a purposeless scene 
 for a temporary purpose. I should like to 
 see a play in that way & why could not & 
 should not he give it us ? He is only about 
 as much too brief as I am too long-winded ; 
 but he can correct his failing more easily. 
 
 My cursed fellows in the jestbook would 
 palaver immeasurably & I could not pre- 
 vent them. Another time it shall be 
 better, that is to say if the people make it 
 worth my while to write again. For if this 
 affair excites no notice I think I may con- 
 clude that I am no writer for the time & 
 generation, and we all know that posterity 
 will have their own people to talk about. 
 
 You are, I think disinclined to the stage: 
 now I confess that I think this is the 
 highest aim of the dramatist, & and should 
 
'Thomas Love II "Beddoes 159 
 
 be very desirous to get on it. To look 
 down on it is a piece of impertinence as 
 long as one chooses to write in the form of 
 a play, and is generally the result of a 
 consciousness of one's own inability to 
 produce anything striking & affecting in 
 that way. Shakespeare wrote only for it, 
 L d B. despised it, or rather affected this as 
 well as every other passion, which is the 
 secret of his style in poetry & life. 
 
 In my preface I have made use of an essay- 
 on Tragedy by Southey's Dutch friend Bil- 
 derdijk 61 which is, I think, extremely satis- 
 factory and establishes the independence of 
 the English Drama of all Greek authority 
 on an undeniable historical foundation. B. 
 to be sure is directly opposed to the English 
 in taste, but this is nothing to the purpose, 
 he has given us good weapons if we can 
 only use them. Is it not really a ridiculous 
 fact that of all our modern dramatists none, 
 (for who can reckon Mr. Rowe now a days ?) 
 has approached in any degree to the form 
 of play delivered to us by the founders of 
 our stage. All from Massinger & Shirley 
 down to Shiel & Knowles more or less 
 
160 The Letters of 
 
 French : and how could they expect a 
 lasting or a real popularity ? The people 
 are in this case wiser than the critics : in- 
 stinct and habit a truer guide than the half 
 & half learning & philosophy of ramblers, 
 quarterlys, and magaziners. 
 
 Poor M r professor Milman will really be 
 quite horrified, if he should live to read the 
 J. book, at the thought that a fellow of so 
 villainous a school as its author should have 
 been bred up%t Oxford during his poetical 
 dictatorship there. I hope he will review 
 me. Indeed I only lament that so much 
 absurdity in reviews is likely to escape me 
 on account of my foreign residence. 
 
 Luz is an excellent joke : but tell me if I 
 do not write too irreligiously for Cautland, 
 I am so accustomed to German professors & 
 rationalist theologians, who come into 
 public places & say that they do not wish 
 to be considered as Christians that I have 
 quite forgotten the proper respect for the 
 tenderness of those elect souls who are 
 determined that God shall damn their un- 
 converted neighbours & and help him a 
 little as far as lies in their power in this 
 
Thomas Lovell *Beddoes 1 6 1 
 
 life. I like candour very well, but do not 
 see the fun of being a martyr. Si populus 
 vult decipi, decipiatur. 
 
 For the rest, the play is too long, the first 
 Act somewhat in Briton Chief 62 style, the 2 nd 
 dull & undramatic, the 3 latter better in all 
 respects, so begin with 3 rd Scene 3 rd Act if 
 you want to read to the end without being 
 greatly bored. There are too many songs & 
 twoof them are bad, somewhat Moorish and 
 sentimental. Weakness you will find in 
 the 2 nd & beginning part of 3 rd scene of 4 th 
 act. A sweet but tedious sop for the 
 admirers of the pretty I have thrown in at 
 Scene 3 of Act V. but if I err not you have 
 somewhere found among my MSS a sort of 
 dying glorification of a young lady wh. is 
 better and just fitted for the occasion. My 
 Friend Isbrand I recommend to your 
 attention : he's a nice fellow. 
 
 As to the Deaths I am doubtful. Procter 
 will abuse their song as vulgar & will be 
 right, but Death is a vulgar dog : and not 
 admissible at any other court than Duke & 
 Fool Isbrand's. I thought of making Isbr. 
 allude to Goethe & Chateaubriand when he 
 
1 62 'The Letters of 
 
 proposes to make his new fool, minister, 
 but the former must not be even in jest 
 ridiculed by any one who has a sense of his 
 very great and various merits., By the way 
 his Faust as he wrote it has been played 
 lately & with great success at Brunswick. 
 A hint to those who think that good & 
 stirring poetry will be rejected by the 
 public : for the Germans (vide Kotzebue, & 
 the robbers,) have more taste for melodrama 
 & that right prosy than our good bloody 
 minded cocknies. But then the patents, the 
 patents ! To them we are indebted for our 
 dramatic desertedness, for the translations 
 from the French, for Beasly's Operas, 
 Peake's comedies, and the Chief's tragedy. 
 I have been lately reading the comedies 
 of Holberg 63 the Dane, of whom his 
 own countrymen & many Germans speak 
 so highly, altho Schiller talks of the 
 filth and ribaldry into which H. sinks, 
 & Schlegel speaks of the atmosphere of 
 his plays as one in which "there pours 
 down continually a heavy shower of 
 cudgels." These two good , latter people 
 have only read the elder German translation 
 
Thomas Lovell Tleddoes 163 
 
 w h was good for nothing. Holberg writes 
 with a great deal of humour, draws char- 
 acter rudely, but decisively, & the Danes 
 are right to be proud of him. Another 
 living Dane, Ingemann, 64 has written two 
 very good W. Scottish historical novels 
 on subjects out of his national history 
 
 My Russian is a very curious clever & 
 learned fellow without a farthing in the 
 world or the talent to make it & has dug 
 up a great deal of interesting matter relative 
 to the Hebrew doctrine of immortality. 
 The King of Bavaria is just going to publish 
 the first volume of his poetical works : he 
 is a man of taste, talent & rational views, 
 of course catholic. 
 
 Fr. Schlegel died lately at Dresden sud- 
 denly : he & his wife, a daughter of Mendels- 
 sohn ! had both embraced the catholic re- 
 ligion : he lived in Vienna. Wrote proclama- 
 tions for Francis I. &Metternich,& apologies 
 for the Jesuits, his lectures on the philoso- 
 phy of history must be therefore amusing. 
 Milliner the Guilty, has just published a 
 tragedy in which he & Cotta the bookseller 
 are the principal characters. A very washy 
 
164 *fhe Letters of 
 
 poet D r Raupach 51 is the most fertile drama- 
 tic writer in Germany now a days he is at 
 Berlin: a thing brought out at Cov.: Garden 
 last year was a not acknowledged translation 
 of his Isidor & Olga 'twas called the 
 " Serf." 
 
 Shakspeare was not wrong in letting 
 Antigonus be shipwrecked in Bohemia. 
 Valdemar the II nd of Denmark called the 
 victorious fetched his wife Margaretha 
 daughter of the King of Bohemia by 
 water from Prague. We have only to 
 read Elbe instead of seas, for I suppose one 
 may be shipwrecked very well in a river : 
 at all events the Elbe is good enough for a 
 stage shipwreck. My motto in correspond- 
 ence is, you are aware, " no trust ! " if you 
 dont answer I don't rejoice I have used 
 some of the Last man for the end of Fool's 
 Trag : as you will see T. L. B. Shall I 
 review the King of Bavaria & send him to 
 some paper ? 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 Fareham 
 
 Hants 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 165 
 
 LETTER XXIX 
 
 To BRYAN WALLER PROCTER 
 
 igf h April, 1829 
 
 MY DEAR PROCTER, Accept my thanks 
 for the patience and attention with which 
 you have read my M.S., and for the manner 
 in which you have spoken of it. I fear 
 that if you had expressed your disappro- 
 bation of some of it still more strongly, I 
 should have been obliged to confess that 
 you were right. If you, as I have cause 
 to apprehend, are not too well engaged in 
 other and more substantial pursuits, you 
 would oblige me still more by specifying 
 the scenes and larger passages which should 
 be erased (that is to say, if I am to let any 
 considerable part remain as it is, for per- 
 haps it might take less time to enumerate 
 such bits as might be retained?). For of 
 the three classes of defects which you 
 
1 66 The Letters of 
 
 mention obscurity, conceits, and mysti- 
 cism, I am afraid I am blind to the first 
 and last, as I may be supposed to have 
 associated a certain train of ideas to a cer- 
 tain mode of expressing them, and my four 
 German years may have a little impaired 
 my English style ; and to the second I 
 am, alas ! a little partial, for Cowley was 
 the first poetical writer whom I learned to 
 understand. I will, then, do my best for 
 the Play this summer ; in the autumn I 
 return to London, and then we will see 
 what can be done. I confess to being idle 
 and careless enough in these matters, for 
 one reason, because I often very shrewdly 
 suspect that I have no real poetical call. 
 
 I would write more songs if I could, but 
 I can't manage rhyme well or easily. I 
 very seldom get a glimpse of the right sort 
 of idea in the right light for a song ; and 
 eleven out of the dozen are always good 
 for nothing. If I could rhyme well and 
 order complicated verse harmoniously, I 
 would try odes ; but it's too difficult. 
 
 Am I right in supposing that you would 
 denounce and order to be rewritten all the 
 
Thomas Lovell Tteddoes 1 67 
 
 prose scenes and passages ? almost all the 
 first and second, great part of the third act. 
 Much of the two principal scenes of the 
 fourth and fifth to be strengthened, and its 
 opportunities better worked on. But you 
 see this is no trifle, though I believe it 
 ought to be done. 
 
 Can you tell me whether VondePs 
 "Lucifer" has been translated? It is a 
 tragedy somewhat in the form of Seneca. 
 J. von Vondel was born in Cologne, 1587 
 (according to Van Rampen), and "Lucifer" 
 published in 1654. Milton, born in 1608, 
 published "Paradise Lost" 1667. 
 
 It is to me very unlikely that Milton 
 should have been acquainted with the 
 Dutch language in Holland long after this 
 
 period, and M was Cromwell's Latin 
 
 secretary ; therefore, if he had any business 
 with the Dutch, he would not have trans- 
 acted it unnecessarily in their language, 
 and I do not recollect that he visited 
 Holland in his travels ; if he had, he would 
 hardly have gone farther than learned 
 Leyden. Both on this account and 
 because I am rather partial to Holland and 
 
1 68 The Letters of 
 
 the Dutch (for their doings against Spain, 
 their toleration, their (old) liberty of the 
 press, and their literature wonderfully rich 
 for so small a people), I was very much 
 pleased and struck on finding two lines in 
 Venders " Lucifer," which I translate 
 literally : 
 
 " *And rather the jirst prince at an inferior court y 
 Than in the blessed light the second or still less." 
 " LUCIFER/* Act II 
 
 Does it not seem as if at certain periods 
 of the world some secret influence in 
 nature was acting universally on the spirit 
 of mankind, and predisposing it to the 
 culture of certain sciences or arts, and 
 leading it to the discovery even of certain 
 special ideas and facts in these ? I do not 
 know whether the authors of "philosophies 
 of history have as yet made this obser- 
 vation, but it is sufficiently obvious, and 
 might be supported by numerous instances. 
 So in our times Scheele and Priestly ; 
 the former in Sweden a few weeks later 
 than P. discovered oxygen gas. A little 
 time before we have half-a-dozen candi- 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 169 
 
 dates for the title of appliers of the power 
 of steam in mechanics, etc. Middle ton's 
 " Witch " and " Macbeth " present in the 
 lyrical parts so close a similarity, that one 
 can hardly doubt of the existence here of 
 imitation on one side. I cannot but think 
 that M. was the plagiarist, and that some 
 error must have occurred with regard to the 
 dates of the two pieces. 
 
 The King of Bavaria has commenced 
 poet, and a very sorry one he appears to be 
 from the newspaper extracts. Kings as well 
 as cobblers should keep to their craft and 
 Louis is a very reputable king ; but still 
 every inch a king, as you may see from 
 his having made Thorwaldsen a Knight of 
 the Bavarian Crown ! 
 
 That you may see that I am not the 
 only careless dramatist going, I quote you 
 three lines from Oehlenschlager's new 
 play, the "Norseman in Constantinople." 
 " Ha ! " his great, strapping tragic hero 
 says in rage and despair : 
 
 "Ha! knew the porkers what the old boar suffers, 
 T^hey would raise up a dismal grunt and straight 
 Fret him from torture" 
 
170 The Letters of 
 
 This is as literally translated as possible ; 
 and do not disbelieve me if it should not 
 happen to be in the German translation, 
 which, of course, is more likely to be in 
 London than the Danish original. I have 
 it from the latter ; probably it is not in 
 the German, which I have not seen. 
 Moreover, Oehlenschlager is one of the 
 very first of continental dramatists, perhaps 
 the first, far above Miiller, Grillparzer, 
 Raupach, Immermann, etc. 
 
 I will sacrifice my raven to you ; but 
 my crocky is really very dear to me ; and 
 so, I dare say, was Oehlenschlager's pig-sty 
 metaphor to him. 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES. 
 
Thomas Lovell Heddoes 1 7 1 
 
 LETTER XXX 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Gottingen '29 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, You will probably 
 by this time have heard from Procter & 
 Bourne the decision of the higher powers 
 with regard to Isbrand & his peers: the 
 play is to be revised & improved. The 
 whole summer therefore will be occupied 
 in this business & in the autumn on my 
 return to town we will finally revise and 
 consult with the booksellers & c . I have 
 requested Procter, if he can find time, to 
 specify his objections, and as soon as he 
 has done that I shall do the same by you 
 
 What you have brought forward is, I be- 
 lieve, quite right & shall be adopted. With 
 regard to the ruling unamiability of the 
 prominent characters, the weakness of the 
 women & c you are right : and here also I 
 
172 'The Letters of 
 
 have hit upon an important improvement 
 as it appears just now to me, wh. I think 
 you will approve. Instead of some weak 
 Balaam two page scenes I will introduce 
 a formal wooing of Amala by Adalmar, 
 which she shall gently but pretty firmly 
 decline : he shall then be supported by the 
 arguments & authority of her father, the 
 dull old gentleman : Amala shall then 
 declare herself most peremptorily against it 
 & appeal to Adalmar's generosity : he will 
 give her up honourably, but it must appear 
 that they are really or going to be married for 
 the purpose of bettering Athulf by means of 
 this disappointment and his contrition. 
 
 After this the Cain & Abel scene will 
 tell better it shall be ameliorated & 
 curtailed. The other lady can hardly 
 be brought much more forward Having 
 lost her love in the first act she would be 
 infinitely tedious in the four latter but 
 her scene of meeting with the raised up 
 Wolfram which really is capable of being 
 rendered perhaps the finest in a poetical 
 point of view is to be re-written, wh. you 
 will find necessary. 
 
Thomas Lovell Tleddoes 173 
 
 The charge of monotony in character is 
 well grounded, but I can hardly do anything 
 in this case, for the power of drawing 
 character & humour two things absolutely 
 indispensable for a good dramatist, are the 
 two first articles in my deficiencies : and 
 even the imaginative poetry I think you will 
 find in all my verse always harping on the 
 same two or three principles : for which 
 plain & satisfactory reasons I have no 
 business to expect any great distinction 
 as a writer : being allowed to be better 
 than what is absolutely bad, & not quite 
 an imitator is not enough for any lasting 
 celebrity. 
 
 Read only an act of Shakespear, a bit 
 of Milton, a scene or two of the admir- 
 ably true Cenci, something of Webster, 
 Marston, Marlowe or in fact anything 
 deeply, naturally, sociably felt and then 
 take to these Jestbooks you will feel at 
 once how forced, artificial, insipid, & c . &*v 
 all such things are. To keep me up, you 
 must be a daily reader of Walker, Sheele 
 and the Lit Gaz. Parnassians. Believe me 
 its only just now for want of a better, and 
 
174 The Letters of 
 
 that better or those dozen betters will rise 
 whenever the public should favour this 
 class of productions : they are in England 
 beyond a doubt but opportunity whose 
 merit is great too, has not and probably 
 will not call them forth Procter has 
 denounced the carrion crows I can spare 
 them : but he has also as "absolutely 
 objectionable " anathematized Squats on 
 a toadstool, with its crocodile ; which I 
 regard as almost necessary to the vitality of 
 the piece. 
 
 What say you ? If a majority decide 
 against it, I am probably wrong. If you 
 say it is nonsense I and Isbrand reply 
 that we meant it to be so : and what were 
 a Fool's Trag : without a tolerable portion 
 of nonsense. I thought it consistent with 
 the character and scene and in its small 
 way, and in comparison with the other 
 minor merits of the play a set off like 
 the nonsense of Wagner in Marlowe's, and 
 the Monkies (not monkey: cats as some 
 translators say,) in Goethe's Faustus not 
 to speak of higher nonsense in higher 
 compositions. 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 175 
 
 Here is something of old Walther von 
 der Vogelweide who wrote in the earlier 
 part of the 13 th century, but in his old 
 German it is infinitely better 
 
 Under the lime tree on the dalned ground 
 
 Two that I know of made this bed 
 There you may see heaped and scattered round 
 
 Grass and blossoms broken and shed, 
 
 tAll in a thicket down in the dale ; 
 Tandaradei sweetly sang the nightingale. 
 Ere 1 set foot in the meadow already 
 
 Some one was waiting for somebody ; 
 There was a meeting Oh! gracious lady, 
 
 There is no pleasure again for me. 
 
 Thousands of kisses there he took, 
 Tandaradei see my lips t how red they look. 
 Leaf and blossom he had pulled and piled 
 
 For a couch, a green one, soft and high ; 
 tAnd many a one hath gazed and smiled 
 
 Passing the bower and pressed grass by : 
 
 tAnd the roses crushed hath seen, 
 Tandaradei, where I laid my head between , 
 
 In this love-passage if any one had been there, 
 How sad and shamed should I be ; 
 
 But what were we a doing alone among the 
 
 green there 
 
 No soul shall ever know except my love and me, 
 tAnd the little nightingale 
 
 Tandaradei she, I wot, will tell no tale. 
 
176 The Letters of 
 
 The King of Bavaria has not yet pub- 
 lished : but very flat specimens of his royal 
 highness, his muse, have appeared in the 
 papers 
 
 I must now send to the post 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 Fareham 
 Hants 
 
 England 
 
Thomas Love II ISeddoes 177 
 
 LETTER XXXI 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Wurzburg 2 'District ^* no 
 
 [Postmark] ig July 1830 
 
 MY DEAR. KELSALL, Your letter finds me 
 at leizure (sic) (excuse all misspellings, my 
 mother tongue begins to fade away in my 
 memory and I was just going to write this 
 word analogically like pleasure) and I will 
 reply to, though perhaps not answer it. 
 All about the play annoys me because I 
 have utterly neglected it and feel not the 
 least inclination to take any further trouble 
 in the matter : however perhaps I may try 
 this season, it cannot be printed this 
 summer, and in autumn perhaps something 
 may be done. This indifference is of 
 itself almost enough to convince me that 
 my nature is not that of one, who is 
 destined to atchieve anything very im- 
 
iy8 The Letters of 
 
 portant in this department of literature ; 
 another is a sort of very moderate some- 
 what contemptuous respect for the pro- 
 fession of a mere poet in our inky age. 
 
 You will conceive that such a feeling 
 accords well with, and perhaps results from a 
 high delight in, first rate creators and illus- 
 trators of the creation as ^Eschylus, Shak. 
 & c and a cordial esteem for those who, as 
 highly polished moderns, have united their 
 art with other solid knowledge & science, 
 or political activity Camoens, Dante & 
 lower down many French and English 
 accomplished rhymers ; and now Goethe, 
 Tieck & c . 
 
 In the third place a man must have 
 an exclusive passion for his art, and all 
 the obstinacy and self denial wh : is 
 combined with such a temperament, an 
 unconquerable and all enduring will always 
 working forwards to the only goal he 
 knows ; such a one must never think that 
 there is any human employment so good 
 (much less suspect that there may be not a 
 few better,) so honourable for the exercise 
 of his faculties, ambition, industry and 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 179 
 
 all those impolitic and hasty virtues which 
 helped Icarus to buckle on his plumes and 
 w h we have left sticking in the pages of 
 Don Quixote. 
 
 I am even yet however seriously of 
 the opinion that it is ornamental and 
 honourable to every nation and genera- 
 tion of mankind if they cherish among their 
 numbers men of cultivated imagination 
 capable of producing new and valuable 
 works of art ; and if I were soberly and 
 mathematically convinced of my own 
 genuineness (inspiration as the ancients w d 
 say) I might possibly, tho 1 I won't promise^ 
 find spirit and stability enough to give up 
 my time to the cultivation of literature. 
 
 If dreams were dramatic calls as in 
 the days or nights of ^Eschylus I might 
 plead something too He, according to 
 Athenaeus, sleeping in a vineyard, pro- 
 bably after acting a part in some Thes- 
 pian satyric dialogue, had a vision of 
 Bacchus descending to him and bidding 
 him arise and write tragedies. The author 
 of Agamemnon had a good right to relate 
 such a nocturnal visit, if it had been paid 
 
i8o The Letters of 
 
 to him, or even to invent it if a less divine 
 nightmare had invited him to mount his 
 hobby horse. We will not ask how many 
 have won in this or any other lottery and 
 the number they saw in their slumbers. I 
 in my bed in Wurzburg did dream that 
 I bought in an old bookshop for a small 
 moiety of copper money, a little old dirty, 
 dogs-eared, well-thumbed book and thereon 
 in great agitation and joy saw at the first 
 glance into the dialogue ('twas a playbook,) 
 that it contained half-a-dozen genuine and 
 excellent unknown plays, wh: no one could 
 have written whose name and nature was 
 not W. S. 
 
 To return to reality I will say then 
 that I will try to write over again this 
 last unhappy play, tho* I have no appe- 
 tite to the task, and then I w d wish 
 to have it printed with any other little 
 things that you may have and think worth 
 printers ink because a second edition is not 
 to be thought of, and anyconsequentpoetical 
 publication of mine very improbable. 
 
 It is good to be tolerable or in- 
 tolerable in any other line but Apollo 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 1 8 1 
 
 defend us from brewing all our lives at a 
 quintessential pot of the smallest ale 
 Parnassian ; such hope or memory is little 
 soothing for any one whose mind is not 
 quite as narrow as a column of eights 
 and sixes. 
 
 I sometimes wish to devote myself ex- 
 clusively to the study of anatomy & 
 physiology in science, of languages, and 
 dramatic poetry, and have nothing to 
 hinder me except unsteadiness and indo- 
 lence : wh. renders it extremely probable 
 if not absolutely certain that I shall never 
 be anything above a very moderate dabbler 
 in many waters : if another very different 
 spirit does not ^ome over me very very 
 soon you will do well to give me up. 
 Indifference grows upon us and that 
 renders my case very desperate. 
 
 Once more about the crocodile song J 
 have sent Bourne another song instead of 
 it about an old ghost ; one in the place of 
 the 2 nd song of the bridal serenaders, w h 
 was very commonplace and ought to have 
 been abused by you, tho' I put these three 
 purposely together, one something Moorish 
 
1 82 The Letters of 
 
 in rhythmus and expression, not equal to 
 him (his song style is the bestfa/se one I 
 know and glitters like broken glass or he 
 calls us and will show us a beautiful pros- 
 pect in heaven or earth, gives us a tube to 
 look thro* which looks like a telescope, and 
 is a kaleidoscope ) but a tolerable watery 
 imitation the 2 nd a specimen of the bad 
 but very popular sentimental if oh ! and 
 why ? lovesong, and the 3 rd in the style w h 
 to my conviction is the right and genuine 
 one in tone, feeling and form for a song 
 of the tender and more poetic kind. 
 
 No critic however will see what I meant 
 & indeed I may have failed in my purpose, 
 for Bourne seemed to like the I st as well 
 as the 3 rd I do not know whether I have 
 written to you about song-writing, it is 
 almost the only kind of poetry of w h I have 
 attained a decided and clear critical theory; 
 in some letter either to you or Bourne I 
 said a good deal about it ; but what need of 
 it? You have Shak: and the dramatists, Her- 
 rick, Suckling & c and know what I mean. 
 
 It is not easy to write a song with ease, 
 tenderness, and that ethereal grace w h 
 
'Thomas Lovell *Beddoes 183 
 
 you find among these writers. & c c & c . 
 Tieck's tale "Dichter-leben " in Urania 5 
 or 6 relates more to Marloe than Shak- 
 speare. Tho this latter and Kit's crony 
 Robert Green contribute their groats worth 
 of wit to illustrate his repentance : and 
 Nash is there too and Hemings in good 
 keeping. I don't know whether it's trans- 
 lated is William Lovell by the same 
 among your novels from the German, a 
 capital thing : indeed T[ieck] is always 
 clever but has studied so much in the old 
 English and Spanish school that he is 
 scarcely to be called popular among his 
 country men tho' everywhere acknowledged 
 and dreaded. I have learned much from 
 his writings, from him and Wieland more 
 than [from] any German writer. 
 
 Some prejudice or other kept me a long 
 while from reading anything of Kleists, be- 
 cause I had somewhere read a vile maga- 
 zine Translation of his " Spring," and I hate 
 poems about the seasons : the other day I 
 took up his " Kathchen von Heilbronn " a 
 chivalrous play, and was very agreeably sur- 
 prized my criticism is never worth much 
 
1 84 The Letters of 
 
 touching poetry of a loftier character but I 
 confess I am inclined to look upon Kleist 
 as a person of very great talent for the 
 romantic drama, there is evidently an 
 inoculation from the Shakspearian vein in 
 the piece, and a nature & simplicity w h 
 sends howling the pompous pasteboard 
 affectations of Milliner, Raupach and 
 other Calibans who lick the shoe of Gries's 
 translated Calderon. His prince of Hom- 
 berg and other works I have not yet read, 
 altho* I really believed a week ago that I 
 was acquainted with everything worth 
 reading in German belles lettres from 
 the Niebelingenlied down to Tiecks last 
 novel. 
 
 How is it possible that it could have 
 escaped your tact for the drama, that the 
 I st act of D s J. B. must end with the last 
 words of Wolfram, all the rest being 
 superfluous and derogatory ? You will see 
 it clearly if you look into the scene again 
 and draw your pen through all the Ahs 
 and Ohs and HMs w h follow. 
 
 You have never any of you said a word 
 about the preface is it to be printed or 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 185 
 
 not ? I think better not it is ill-written and 
 contains nothing new excepting the quota- 
 tion from Bilderdijk w h I prize highly as the 
 historical vindication of the Shakspearian 
 form, and therefore a decisive refutation of 
 all application of Aristotelian maxims to 
 our drama for those who require an 
 authority besides that of the feelings of 
 the people. I believe I shall leave the 
 crocodile where he is : and put the "old 
 ghost " into the shoes of Adam & Eve 
 about whom I care nothing : and I prefer 
 being anonymous as aforesaid. 
 
 I hardly venture to open my M.S. ; I read 
 Shakspeare, and Wordsworth, the only Eng- 
 lish books I have here, and doubt and seem 
 to myself a very Bristol diamond, not 
 genuine, altho* glittering just enough to be 
 sham. 
 
 Wurzburg is one of the oldest uni- 
 versitys in Germany a very clever prof, 
 of Medicine, and capital Midwife brought 
 me here and a- princely hospital Franco- 
 nian wines are mostly white. Stein, 
 Leisten, Gressen are the best ; Wurzb. 
 lies amidst vine covered hills, and the 
 
1 86 The Letters of 
 
 Maine flows away at a considerable breadth 
 I stay till August's end then perhaps 
 to Florence so you had better write before 
 that time 
 
 T. L. B 
 
 Bourne tells me that Dr. Satan Montgomery 
 has been buffeted by Macaulay in the Ed : ; 
 glad of it, altho' such critical works have 
 forfeited their authority in consequence of 
 their vile mistakes. Do people read 
 L d Byron still as they used to or is 
 Montgom : really his successor ? Have 
 you not read Pelham & c ? 
 
 I have made a mistake about Kleist. There 
 are 2 German Boets of the name. Christian 
 Ewaldo K. born 1715 died of the wounds 
 he received at ye battle of Kunnersdorf in 
 Frederick great's army Aug. 24 1759. wrote 
 The Spring & c . Heinrich von K. the 
 dramatist committed suicide in partnership 
 with Mrs. Adolphine Sophia Henricke 
 Vogel in a wood near Potsdam Nov r 21. 
 1811. 
 
 Tieck has translated the 2 nd Maidens 
 Trag : and attributes it to Massinger, I 
 
Thomas Lovell Tteddoes 187 
 
 must ask him why ? the poisoning and 
 painting is somewhat like him but also like 
 Cyril Tourneur & it is too imaginative 
 for old Philip. 
 
 Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KZLSALL Esq 
 Fareham 
 Hants 
 
 England 
 
1 88 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XXXII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Wurvburg 
 I ^Di strict 
 [Postmark 10 Jan 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, Another winter in 
 Wurzburg : I do not kno[w] when I shall 
 summon courage enough to return to your 
 deuced dear Island. You might have 
 written to me before this as you have now 
 matter enough in the Gun-Powder-Plot, of 
 which our literary periodicals speak so 
 mysteriously that I am totally at a loss 
 whether it be a merry political hoax, of 
 which the Germans have as yet no concep- 
 tion, or a serious Irelandiad : and then the 
 sixpenny old dramatists. 
 
 I have some idea of raising my ghost (in 
 the never ending D's J. B.) at the close of 
 the 5 th act, and amalgamating the last scene 
 
Thomas Love II Tteddoes 189 
 
 of the third with the last of the 5 th the I st 
 act must then be cut in two w h is practicable 
 enough but then I am at a loss for business 
 and a good blow at the end of the 3 rd . And 
 a play in four acts is a cripple. Either 
 three or 5. 
 
 In the first the deed must be com- 
 mitted the consequences of w h employ 
 the following : in the second a reaction 
 attempted and a second seed sown for 
 ripening in the after-time : in the third, 
 which needs not to be the most powerful 
 as I once thought, the storm gathers, doubts 
 rise, or the termination w h appears to be at 
 hand is intercepted by some bold and 
 unexpected invention, a new event the de- 
 velopement of a character, hitherto obscure, 
 a new resolve & c gives a new turn to the 
 aspect of the future : in the fourth all is 
 consummated, the truth is cleared up, the 
 final determination taken, the step of 
 Nemesis is heard : and in the fifth the 
 atonement follows. 
 
 The first, fourth and fifth must be most 
 attractive and interesting from the con- 
 fliction of passions and the events occa- 
 
190 The Letters of 
 
 sioned by them : the 2 is a pause for 
 retrospection, anticipation ; in the third 
 is rather the struggle between the will 
 of man and the moral law of necessity 
 w h awaits inevitably his past actions the 
 pivot of all tragedy. I have really begun 
 a little to alter the ill-fated play in question. 
 What do you say to a drinking song like 
 this at the beginning of the present 2 nd 
 act ? I am not in the least satisfied with 
 it ? On second thoughts I will not bore 
 you with it indeed it is utterly useless to 
 send you anything, for you always forget 
 to criticize, and abuse properly w h it is the 
 duty of every friend to do as long as the 
 confided piece remains in M.S. Otherwise 
 you sh d have observed how stupid and 
 superfluous almost all the 2 nd act of J B is 
 how commonplace the 2 nd bridal song in 
 the 4 th & & c ad infinitum. 
 
 You may give me credit for carelessness, if 
 you will not for want of superabundant vanity 
 (a spice is necessary & self-esteem the wise 
 it call) ; it is 8 years since I have published 
 anything, & how long will it be before I 
 am again under the press ? heaven knows 
 
Thomas Lovell *Beddoes 191 
 
 I think the reading populace ought to be 
 much obliged to me for my forbearance : 
 'tis a pity that other young rhyming gents 
 are not equally economical of their tedious- 
 ness, Campbell is really a good example 
 or would be but I fear his poverty & not 
 his will consented. Leopold Schefer, 85 a 
 good novellist, proposes, for the purpose 
 of resuscitating the drama to return to 
 the custom of the Greeks, i.e. to keep 
 all Theatres closed through the greater 
 part of the year and to open them during 
 a few holiday-weeks once in 3 years, 
 I think at Easter, Christmas &, for the 
 representation of plays for a prize a good 
 chimaera. 
 
 Many things are quite absurd and de- 
 structive of all poetry in arrangements 
 w h appear not of the slightest conse- 
 quence. I am convinced that playbills for 
 instance are very pernicious ; one should 
 never know the actors names and private 
 circumstances, the spectators would then be 
 compelled to identify them with their 
 dramatic characters, the interest w d be much 
 purer and undivided, the illusion carried as 
 
192 The Letters of 
 
 far as it can & ought to be how can 
 people enter deeply into the spirit of a 
 tragedy for instance in comedy it is a 
 matter of less consequence, whose question 
 is, how do you like Kean to-night ? Is not 
 Claremont delightful in Rosenkranz ? etc. 
 Othello & Richard & Rosenkranz are here 
 obliged to play Claremont & Kean instead 
 of the reverse. 
 
 The actor on the other hand deprived 
 of his private name & existence must 
 feel more convinced of the reality of his 
 5-act life, would be liberated from the 
 shackles of timidity & the temptations 
 of individual vanity, w d [grow] careless 
 about his creditors & be unable to try & 
 
 please the lady's as Mr. with the 
 
 handsome leg &c. wink to his friends in 
 the pit & c & c . To whet curiosity and 
 occasion astonishment is not the least 
 important object of the dramatist ; the 
 actors might have learned from Scott that 
 anonymous mysteriousness is one of the 
 most effective arts for this purpose A 
 distant idea of the use of this concealment 
 probably caused the custom observed in the 
 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 193 
 
 announcement of a new play principal 
 characters by Mess rs Doe & Roe but 
 the names of the people in the drama ought 
 to be printed with the necessary key [father, 
 son & c ] not those of the gentleman who 
 lodges at the pastry cooks, wears the thread- 
 bare coat, & c . 
 
 The Greeks (from whom we can learn 
 much if we understand their motives ) 
 were in possession of this secret, and this 
 is the real meaning of their masks, wh. 
 have so much bothered the critics ; and 
 these were doubly useful, they deceived to 
 a certain degree not only the spectator, but 
 also the actor with the semblance of an 
 heroic and unknown person, and prevented 
 the annoying familiarity of the people on 
 the stage. Of course I do not wish to see 
 these sort of masks on our stage (our 
 passionate drama renders them impossible 
 though it might be an interesting ex- 
 periment to try them once in an adaptation 
 of Agamemnon, the Bacchae, Antigone or 
 Electra to conclude with the satyric 
 J) ram a the Cyclops :) it is only to be 
 lamented that we have no other means of 
 
 N 
 
194 ?be Letters of 
 
 completely disguising our actors and making 
 Richard, Hamlet, Macbeth as absolutely 
 distinct and independent individuals as 
 CEdipus & Orestes must have been the 
 Athenians w d I am sure have pelted their 
 fellow citizen and neighbour as the pathetic 
 hobbling, ulcerous Philoctetes off the stage 
 with onions, only a conviction of his reality 
 could have reconciled their frivolous 
 imagination with him or subdued them to 
 compassion and Agamemnon or Hercules 
 unmasked would have been saluted with 
 their nicknames from all sides. 
 
 Othello's colour is a sort of mask, & this is 
 a reason perhaps why Shak : has given him 
 so much less ideal language and more simple 
 household truth than his other characters, 
 the whole play is barer of imagery than any 
 other of his, except the musicians with 
 their silver sound there is no conductor for 
 laughter from the tragic characters; Sh: 
 seems really to intend more illusion than 
 elsewhere, & is not the purpose gained ? 
 
 The witches, Peter & the nurse, the grave- 
 diggers & Polonius, in a less degree Kent & 
 Lear's Fool, are all more or less purposely 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 195 
 
 destructive of the tragic illusion give time 
 to recover from the surprize vvh the course 
 of the events produccfs] : their good is that 
 they give the hearer to understand that 
 the poet is not absolutely in earnest with 
 his deaths & horrors & leaves it to them to 
 be affected with them or not as they think 
 proper, and secondly, that the audience, as 
 well as every body, is much less inclined 
 to laugh at & deride the gravity of a person, 
 with whom his wit & satire has compelled 
 them to laugh besides that the change is 
 grounded on the law of oscillation w h 
 pervades all physical and moral nature 
 sleeping and waking (merriment & tears), 
 sin & repentance, life & death, w u all 
 depend & are consequent on one another. 
 
 So much for my dramaturgic ideas on 
 playbills, I do not know that any one else 
 has fallen on them what do you think of 
 them as theory ? The pause between the 
 acts wh the Greeks and Sh : I believe 
 did not allow is another dangerous inno- 
 vation : the thread of events is interrupted, 
 one talks to one's neighbour, hears news 
 and forgets the fictitious in the real events, 
 
196 The Letters of 
 
 the state of mind produced by the opening 
 is altered, and as soon as we are with 
 difficulty brought back to the track over 
 w h the poet w d lead us another interruption 
 undoes all again. The actors in the mean- 
 time chat behind the scenes, Cordelia flirts 
 with her papa, Arthur makes King John a 
 pigtail, Constance comforts herself with a 
 cup of tea, Juliet dances with the dead 
 Mercutio and all such things occur wh 
 breed familiarity & carelessness and damp 
 the excited imagination, cool the ardour of 
 the players. 
 
 These & some other apparently trifling 
 things have, I am convinced done the 
 drama much more harm, rendered it 
 less poetical, and spoiled the audience 
 & performers, than the innocent dogs, 
 & horses, who act always better than the 
 bipeds & w h are as allowable as painted 
 houses & c . Agamemnon's chariot was 
 drawn by real horses I doubt not, Shakes- 
 peare made a good use of his friend's dog 
 who played Lance & e & c . I acknowledge 
 that licences, patents, theatrical censure & c 
 have been far more noxious ; the stage 
 
 
Thomas Love II 'Beddoes 197 
 
 must be as free as the press before anything 
 very good comes again. But these things 
 w h I point out can easily be removed, others 
 probably not before the abolition of tithes, 
 corn bill & c . 
 
 If parliament had nothing to do of greater 
 consequence, L d Melbourne who dabbled 
 in Drury lane theatricals might do some- 
 thing for us & I wish some one w d pub- 
 licly remind him of the subject. Tiecks 
 continuation of Dichtcrlcbcn is a de- 
 lightful explanation of Shakespeares life 
 & sonnets, I suppose it is already translated 
 somewhere : it appeared in his Novellen- 
 kranz Taschenbuch Aug. 1831. 
 
 Adieu & answer & send me the song and 
 death scene you spoke of; you are lazy 
 enough & cannot complain of me unless you 
 improve. I wish you w d tell me what things 
 of Tiecks are translated as I should wish to 
 introduce him to the English as he deserves. 
 I think he w d be & know he ought to be 
 much more relished than Goethe who after 
 all is only a name in England it is a 
 confounded bore & baulked me much that 
 I have no connection with any publisher 
 
198 "The Letters of 
 
 or journalist in England I sh d then have 
 some stimulus & c do some good, now t 
 can do nothing 
 
 T.L. B. 
 I 
 
 I leave Wurzburg in March : destination 
 uncertain. 
 
 ^Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 Fareham 
 Hants 
 
 England 
 
Thomas Love II IZeddoes 199 
 
 Wurzburg May j !l /Sjf 
 
 After promising to subscribe 5 towards the subscrip- 
 tion for the support of candidates who were professed 
 supporters of the Reform Bill : 
 
 LETTER XXXIII (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Wur-zburg May <f !i fSj2 
 
 WE have been fortunate enough at W : 
 to have entertained a considerable number 
 of the most distinguished Polish officers 
 and other exiles from that unconquered, 
 tho' at present enslaved, country, among 
 others Rybinsky, Dembinski, Stanislaus 
 Astrowski with his 3 sons, and we expect 
 Malachowski daily : Saxony, Bavaria, and 
 the other smaller states of Southern Ger- 
 many have done much to obliterate the 
 stain, which the perfidious conduct of the 
 Prussian government have attached to the 
 German name : but I am afraid that the 
 
2oo The Letters of 
 
 Polish and European people will not be 
 very ready to forget and forgive the pitiable 
 imbecility of France and the temporising 
 selfishness of England in this matter. 
 Every Bavarian carried a $oke on the new 
 king of Greece in his heart, many a one on 
 his tongue. 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 201 
 
 LETTER XXXIV (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Strasburg Sept" 2$ til 1832 
 
 THE absurdity of the King of Bavaria 
 has cost me a good deal, as I was obliged to 
 oppose every possible measure to the arbi- 
 trary illegality of his conduct, more for the 
 sake of future objects of his petty royal 
 malice than my own, of course in vain. 
 
 P.S. By the way I have taken an M.D. 
 at Wurzburg but do not at present desire to 
 make use of the title. 
 
202 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XXXV (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Zurich 1833 Dec r i8 th 
 
 MY DEAR PHILLIPS, I beg you to present 
 my best compliments to Mrs. R. Phillips 
 for her kind message : I am afraid our 
 friend Kelsall was guilty of putting me into 
 the Athenaeum. 66 It is of as little conse- 
 quence as possible, but curious enough that 
 those lines of which I imagined that I had 
 burnt the only copy some years ago in Got- 
 tingen, should nevertheless have gained the 
 light of letter press in London. I wish they 
 had been more worthy of it. 
 
 With all deference to the opinion of Mrs. 
 R. Phillips and all thank's for her kind par- 
 tiality, I cannot help thinking that every 
 able bodied person, capable of what's called 
 tuning the lyre to all manner of ballads & c 
 who spares the much annoyed reading 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 203 
 
 public his possible and impossible produc- 
 tions, is entitled to some sort of acknow- 
 ledgment for his rare forbearance. 
 
 I believe that the London publishers are 
 extremely unwilling to publish translations 
 of foreign medical works : nevertheless I 
 should wish much to know whether no one 
 would undertake the printing of one which 
 is destined to appear at Easter, Schoen- 
 lien's 67 Natural History of the diseases of 
 Europeans it will consist of about 6 vols 
 of which I or 2 will come out in the Spring 
 Sch : is perhaps the most distinguished 
 of German Physicians, (now professor here, 
 banished by that ingenious Jack-a-napes of 
 Bavaria) & his work is destined to attract 
 the attention of the medical men of all 
 nations. 
 
 I know both him and German, and 
 should wish to render the literature of 
 my country a service by translating the 
 book for the MSS of the first volume I 
 would require nothing but cannot afford 
 anything more than the trouble. I know 
 that the book must be sooner or later 
 Englished, I do not expect that any book- 
 
204 The Letters of 
 
 seller will take my offer and so in the end 
 it will be done like most of the Anglo- 
 German things of the kind by some one 
 only half acquainted with the language as 
 an exercise. * 
 
Thomas Love II *Beddoes 205 
 
 LETTER XXXVI (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Zurich FeJ>y 27. 1834 
 
 I SHALL wish on my return to England to 
 have a pretty decent sum of money for the 
 purchase of books, in specie, foreign ones, 
 and other expensive materials of a medical 
 life : furniture & c & c for German books 
 alone I shall have need of some hundreds. 
 In spite of all the stupidity of medical book- 
 sellers & of the insular and insolent self 
 sufficiency of their authors and readers in 
 England I shall translate Schoenlien and, 
 if I cannot otherwise get it printed, pub- 
 lish it at my own expense. The apparent 
 imprudence of this resolution will be amply 
 vindicated after some years. Since the 
 time of Boerhaave no work, not even ex- 
 cepting Cullen, has appeared which has 
 the like importance of this. 
 
206 The Letters of 
 
 \ 
 
 LETTER XXXVII (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Zurich May 2^' 1834 
 
 I AM not sure whether I shall repair to 
 Paris or return to England probably the 
 latter, since Russia advances with so hasty 
 strides towards the Alps from whence then 
 she will cast her withering shade over the 
 whole Continent. 
 
'Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 207 
 
 LETTER XXXVIII (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Zurich March j h 2835 
 
 I SUPPOSE it is only a joke of Mr. Bourne's 
 that he hints of having heard from some 
 acquaintance of mine that I had taken a 
 house here was become professor & c stories 
 which I only request you to contradict if 
 you should happen to meet with gossipers 
 on so insignificant subjects, because the 
 latter assertion might tend to awaken ex- 
 pectations which the degree of my scien- 
 tific knowledge could only ultimately dis- 
 appoint. As I can conceive nothing more 
 hostile to honest success, it is utterly con- 
 trary to my intention ; if any one should 
 imagine that I am more than I am, and it 
 would be much more ingenious if such as 
 have leisure to speculate on my merits 
 would endeavour to turn the telescope of 
 
208 The Letters of 
 
 their imaginations and try to think me less 
 excuse my dear sir this egotism but no 
 one likes to be written down an ass in 
 golden capitals. 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 209 
 
 LETTER XXXIX (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Zurich Sept r 14 1835 
 
 I HAVE been since the end of June here 
 where I shall probably not become professor. 
 Schoenlien proposed me as such to the 
 medical faculty of the University and the 
 latter unanimously seconded him. The 
 board of education however objected to the 
 nomination, inasmuch as a very reasonable 
 regulation requires that every Professor of 
 the University shall have either published 
 some scientific work or officiated some 
 where as teacher. This rule they are 
 naturally disinclined to transgress and I to 
 write, having nothing new to communi- 
 cate or to have the trouble of lecturing, 
 without a collection of specimens, [which] 
 would be to no purpose and indeed imprac- 
 ticable. 
 
 o 
 
2io The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XL 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Zurich chez M. Waser Neustadt 
 [Postmark] g March 1837 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, I am preparing for 
 the press, as the saying is, among other 
 graver affairs, a volume 68 of prosaic poetry 
 and poetical prose. It will contain half a 
 dozen Tales, comic, tragic, and dithyrambic, 
 satirical and semi-moral : perhaps half a 
 hundred lyrical Jewsharpings in various 
 styles and humours : and the stillborn 
 D.J.B. with critical and cacochymical re- 
 marks on the European literature, in specie 
 the hapless dramas of our day. 
 
 I am not asinine enough to imagine that 
 it will be any very great shakes, but what 
 with a careless temper and the pleasant 
 translunary moods I walk and row myself 
 into upon the lakes and over the alps of 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 211 
 
 Switzerland it will, I hope, turn out not 
 quite the smallest ale brewed out with the 
 water of the fountain of y e horse's foot. 
 
 Now then, I write to beg you, as the saying 
 is, to send me in a letter a copy of a certain 
 scene and song w h you, being the possessor of 
 the only existing MS. thereof once proposed 
 as an amelioration of one in D's J. B. This' 
 affair will be very much cut down, a good 
 many faults corrected ; a little new matter 
 added to it : and the whole better arranged. 
 But I can hardly consent to eradicate my 
 crocodile song, wh. you know, B. C. and 
 all persons of proper feeling, as the saying 
 is, strongly condemned. After all I only 
 print it because it is written and can't be 
 helped and really only for such readers as 
 the pseudonymical lawyer mentioned, 
 W. Savage L[andor] : yourself etc. ! (if 
 there be yet a plural number left). G. D. 69 
 appears to me to have grown deuced grey, 
 whether it be the greyness of dawn, of life's 
 evening twilight, or of a nascent asinine 
 metempsychosis I cannot distinguish at this 
 distance. 
 
 As a specimen I send you a bit ot 
 
212 The Letters of 
 
 foolery and a snack of fine feeling, and 
 if you don't answer me before June I shall 
 let another rhymed bore loose at you : or 
 what will be as bad, I hope a few of my 
 anatomical discoveries and physiological 
 fancies. I dare say you have been many 
 years a happy married man : I am still 
 
 Your unhappy humble servant, and the 
 Lord knows singley and sinfully virtuous 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 P.S here they are but they allude to 
 passages in the tales containing 'em 
 
 Has no one seen my heart of yore ? 
 
 My heart bids run away ; 
 And if you catch him, ladies, do 
 
 Return him me, I pray. 
 On earth he is no more I hear 
 
 Upon the land or sea 
 For the women found the rogue so queer 
 
 They sent him back to me. 
 In heaven there is no purchaser 
 
 For such strange ends and odds 
 Says a Jew, who goes to Jupiter 
 
 To buy and sell old goods. 
 
Thomas Lovell Tteddoes 2 1 3 
 
 So there is but one place more to search, 
 
 That's not genteel to tell 
 Where demonesses go to church, 
 
 So Xtians fair, farewell. 
 
 I think of thee at daybreak still, 
 
 And then thou art my playmate small 
 
 Beside our strawroofed village rill 
 Gathering cowslips tall, 
 
 And chasing oft the butterfly, 
 
 Wh. flutters past like treacherous life. 
 
 You smile at me and at you I, 
 
 A husband boy & baby wife 
 
 I think of thee at noon again 
 And thy meridian beauty high 
 
 Falls on my bosom like young rain 
 Out of a summer sky. 
 
 And I reflect it in the tear 
 W h 'neath thy picture drops forlorn 
 And then my love is bright & clear 
 & manlier than it was at morn. 
 I think of thee by evening's star, 
 
 And softly, melancholy slow, 
 An eye doth glisten from afar 
 
 All full of lovely woe. 
 
214 3*be Letters of 
 
 The air then sighingly doth part 
 
 And or from death the cold, or Love 
 
 I hear the passing of a dart, 
 
 But hope and move & look above. 
 
 I think of thee at black midnight 
 And woe & agony it is 
 To see thy cheek so deadly white, 
 To hear thy graveworm hiss.* 
 But looking on thy lips is cheer. 
 They closed in love, pronouncing love. 
 And then I tremble, not for fear, 
 But in thy breath from heaven above. 
 
 Now if you wish to avoid any further 
 similar visitation of doggrell you'd better 
 take your quill from behind your ear and 
 write and write and write like to a rat 
 without a brief. Apropos of [blank] know 
 that J. G. H. B. 70 has been poetizing, Novel- 
 lizing, and magazinning a year or two &, by 
 Haynes Bayly, 71 better than your h ble serv*, 
 as the saying is. But what is Hecuba to 
 you ? I dare say you've forgotten all such 
 
 * No : he don't, no more nor a Bristol alderman at 
 t'other turtle. ED. [Beddoes.] 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 215 
 
 childishnesses as these, and you're then in 
 the right on't, not so h ble serv 1 . But who 
 can help being an ass as long as he must 
 graze in y e vale of tears ? That onion 
 wisdom, w h preventeth transformation, 
 (moly allium Dioscorides. Sibthorpe 
 nigrum Sprengel if. Spr. Gesch. d. Botanik 
 B d n s 37. 68 n f u T. 2. ahem !) a'n't the 
 potherb I fancy. A jew, a jew, a jew ! 
 Remember me 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 March g, 1837 
 
 P.S I send this directed to Revell Phil- 
 lips Esq re because I don't know your 
 whereabouts but I suppose you're in Eng- 
 land. 
 
216 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XLI 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 [Postmark] 
 [Zurich"] 
 
 Ma y 15 
 
 covered with snow. 
 Temperature + 6 R 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, My best thanks for 
 your prompt and agreeable answer. Your 
 part of the letter being much more satis- 
 factory than mine. I know not what the 
 creator of a planet may think of his first 
 efforts when he looks into the cavernous 
 recesses which contain the first sketches of 
 organized life beings, but it is strange 
 enough to see the fossilized faces of ones 
 forgotten literary creatures years after the 
 vein of feeling in wh. they were formed, 
 has remained closed and unexplored. 
 
 I shall not be able to make much of the 
 
 death scene, it is too diffuse and dithyrambic. 
 
 v__ 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 217 
 
 Pray do not make too much of my produc- 
 tions : you go too far by much in talking 
 of fashionable publishers and the spring 
 season. Most probably I shall be reduced to 
 print at my own expense, for no Oilier exists 
 at present, I believe, and one can hardly 
 expect to get rid of 100 copies by sale. 
 
 I know well that publishing at one's 
 own cost is as promising a speculation, 
 as that in Spanish bonds for a man 
 who wishes to lose ; but the work is so 
 perfectly adapted to remain unread that 
 it would be unfair to think of mulcting 
 any unoffending bookseller to the necessary 
 amount. At first I intended to have it 
 printed by Baudry or Galignani at Paris or 
 at Brussels : but it goes on so slowly in 
 this cold and snowy weather that it may 
 cost me much more time than I antici- 
 pated. 
 
 I w d gladly send you copies of the four 
 chapters, containing as many tales, finished, 
 if I had any creature here capable of 
 writing English, but I cannot endure 
 copying what I have myself written. I 
 do not intend to publish or republish 
 
218 The Letters of 
 
 anything of an earlier date (except D. J. B). 
 Pygmalion is, if I recollect aright, consider- 
 able trash, and what the devil is Alfarabi ? 
 Did you ever meet with the exile of Idria 
 a narrative poem, by Bourne ? J have not 
 seen it or Christ xfied by a reformed 
 college acquaintance of mine, the rev d W. 
 E. Wall. I sh d apprehend that the latter 
 had exceeded in atrocity the rev d Cleophas 
 and the Pharisees. 
 
 I thank you sincerely for your kind in- 
 vitation to Fareham, of w h I think to 
 avail myself one time or other. I have 
 been staying all the winter here for 
 the purpose of taking an extensive Alpine 
 walk in July and August. It was my 
 intention to have gone up to the top of 
 several mountains w h I have not yet visited, 
 Pilate, the Titlis &, but I fear that the 
 great quantity of snow w h has fallen in 
 the winter and is still falling at this 
 moment will hardly be so far melted by 
 the sun of this summer, as yet powerless, 
 as to leave the latter, a tallish fellow about 
 10700 feet above the level of y e sea, 
 accessible to wingless bipeds ; so I must even 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 219 
 
 content myself with once more treading on 
 the summits of my humbler acquaintance, 
 Rigi, Faul & Seidelhorn etc. These summer 
 excursions among the vallies, the glaciers and 
 the mighty eminences of this magnificent 
 countries are to me the most delightful of 
 all relaxations, without w h I sh d be as dull 
 and sour as the refuse whey, in w h no pig 
 has dipped his snout. 
 
 I am sorry to acknowledge that the 
 later writings of Landor have not reached 
 our subalpine region. So much the better, 
 there will be something new for me 
 when I return that I shall be able to 
 read. Have you read Tieck's Shakespeare 
 Novels (Dichterleben Th. I. u. 2.) and is 
 W. S. L's Dearstealing 72 as true and worthy 
 of its hero ? T., a writer whom I prefer 
 very much to the Goethe about whom the 
 folks in y r Isle, who manage to wade 
 through his treacherous pages on the back 
 of some square fat dictionary, are all gone 
 stark staring, translating mad T. published 
 a year or two ago in his Novellenkranz a 
 biographical romance in w h Camoens plays 
 the principal part w h I prefer to his 
 
220 The Letters of 
 
 Shakspeare and hold to be the most perfect 
 of his, and consequently of German human 
 fictions. His dramatic poems, fairytales 
 & c are I believe nearly unknown in your 
 part of Europe. 
 
 But of this anon when I happen to 
 be in your neighbourhood. Such matters 
 are fitted for discourse over a tankard than 
 one over the channel and across France. 
 What are the votaries of the Muse doing 
 yonder ? What is Cosmo dei Medici ? ^ 
 Paracelsus ? StrafFord ? and Sergeant Tal- 
 fourd's Ion or John ? You must know that 
 Baudry and Galignani print little besides 
 the fashionable novels, wh. I can seldom 
 manage to read in spite of the most devoted 
 application. Bulwer excepted, who is very 
 entertaining, as long as he abstains from 
 aspiring to a sublimer or more poetical 
 sphere, than the very respectable one of 
 pickpockets and lawyers (I beg pardon) 
 and old clothesmen. 
 
 My fingers are now so cold that I must put 
 them into my pockets and sing you a very 
 objectionable piece of foolery, enough to ruin 
 the reputation of any one, who wishes to 
 
Thomas Love II *Beddoes 221 
 
 introduce his writings into good society 
 Allons ! It's a sparkling piece of anecdote 
 filed out of the golden Legend and ex- 
 tracted from Chap V of the Ivory Gate 
 or lesser Dionysiacs (my new book ) 
 
 THE NEW CECILIA. 
 
 Whoever has heard of St. Gingo 
 
 must know that the gipsy, 
 
 he married, was tipsy 
 
 every night of her life with old stingo : 
 and, after the death of St. Gingo, 
 the wonders, he did do, 
 his infidel widow 
 denied with unladylike lingo 
 
 " A parcel of nonsense together," & 
 
 Tost Gingo a fig, and a feather end. 
 
 " He no more can work wonder 
 
 Then a clyster-pipe thunder 
 
 or I sing a psalm with my nether end." 
 As she spoke it, her breakfast beginning on 
 a tankard of homebrewed inviting ale, 
 Lo ! the part she was sitting & sinning on 
 struck the ioo th psalm up like a nightingale. 
 Loud as birds in an Indian forest, or 
 A mystic memnonian marble in 
 
222 The Letters of 
 
 The desert at daybreak, that chorister 
 breathed forth its CEolian warbling : 
 
 Therefore, Ladies, repent & be sedulous 
 in praising your lords, lest, ah well a day ! 
 a judgement befall the incredulous, 
 & their latter ends melt into melody. 
 
 What stuff! I shall not give you any 
 more extracts, for fear of spoiling your 
 appetite for the promised laughable mouse 
 in toto. To tell the truth however I 
 prefer the above and such like absurdity 
 to your Pygmalion and contend that the 
 same is far more poetical. To be sure it 
 is rather too much in the style of Campbell, 
 but hardly so entirely as fairly to deserve 
 the name of an imitation. 
 
 You are desirous of knowing what my 
 thoughts or superstitions may be regarding 
 things human, sub human, and superhuman : 
 or you wish to learn my habits, pursuits, 
 and train of life. Now as you have not 
 me before you in the witness's box, you 
 must excuse my declining to answer directly 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 223 
 
 to such questioning. I will not venture on a 
 psychological self portraiture, fearing, and I 
 believe with sufficient reason, to be betrayed 
 into affectation, dissimulation, or some other 
 alluring shape of lying. I believe that all 
 autobiographical sketches are the result of 
 mere vanity not excepting those of St. 
 Augustin & Rousseau falsehood in the 
 mask & mantle of truth. 
 
 Half ashamed and half conscious of his 
 mendacious self-flattery the historian of his 
 own deeds, or geographer of his own mind 
 breaks out now and then indignantly and re- 
 venges himself on his own weakness by tell- 
 ing some very disagreeable truth of some other 
 person, and then re-established in his own 
 good opinion marches on cheerfully in the 
 smooth path towards the temple of his own 
 immortality. Yet even here you see I am 
 indirectly lauding my own worship for not 
 being persuaded to laud my own worship. 
 How sleek, smooth tongued, paradisical 
 a deluder art thou, sweet self conceit ! 
 Let great men give their own thoughts on 
 their own thoughts : from such we can 
 learn much : but let the small deer hold 
 
224 The Letters of 
 
 jaw and remember what the philosopher 
 says, " fleas are not lobsters : damn their 
 souls." 
 
 Without any such risk, however, I can 
 tell you how I employ, or abuse, my time. 
 You must know that I am an M.D of the 
 U. of Wurzburg and possess a very pass- 
 able knowledge of anatomy & physiology 
 etc. that I narrowly escaped becoming pro- 
 fessor of comparative Anat y in the U. 
 of Zurich, (having been recommended 
 unanimously for that chair by the medical 
 faculty here,) by means of a timely quarrel, 
 in which I engaged more solito with several 
 members of the government. 
 
 Now being independent & having all the 
 otium, if not the dignitas eines privatisiren- 
 den Gelehrten, sometimes I dissect a beetle, 
 sometimes an oyster, and very often trudge 
 about the hills and the lakes, with a tinbox 
 on my back, and " peep and botanize " in 
 defiance of W. W. Sometimes I peep half 
 a day through a microscope. Sometimes I 
 read Italian (in w h I am only a smatterer,) 
 or what not, & not seldom drink I & smoke 
 like an 
 
Thomas Love II Tteddoes 225 
 
 As sudden thunder, 
 
 Pierces night, 
 As magic wonder, 
 
 Wild affright, 
 Rives asunder 
 
 Mens delight, 
 Our ghost, our corpse and we 
 
 Cleave The Sea 
 
 As hath the lizard 
 
 Serpent fell, 
 As goblin grizard 
 
 From the spell 
 Of pale wizard 
 
 Sinks to hell ; 
 Our life, our laugh, our lay 
 
 Pass away. 
 
 As startle morning 
 
 Trumpets bright, 
 As snowdrop scorning 
 
 Winter's might 
 Rises warning 
 
 Like a spright : 
 We buried dead and slain 
 
 Rise again 
 
226 The Letters of 
 
 And so I weave my Penelopean web and 
 rip it up again : and so I roll my impudent 
 Sisyphean stone ; and so I eat my beefsteak, 
 drink my coffee, and wear my coats out at 
 elbow, and pay my bills (when I can,) as busy 
 an humble bee, as any who doth nothing. 
 
 I hear and read not a jot about B. 
 Cornwall. Two years ago when I visited 
 your Island I left a horridly scribbled dirty 
 old card at his chambers, which, as far as 
 I know, was never returned. Now no 
 one has behaved so frankly, kindly, and 
 encouragingly to me as he did. He 
 overrated my twopenny poetical talent 
 as much as yourself, but exerted himself 
 most disinterestedly ; were it another cause 
 I would say nobly in my favour. 
 
 I will some day or other show you his 
 letter tome (1829) about the wretched fool's 
 Tragedy, which is as candid as goodnatured, 
 and wellwishing as man ever wrote. I 
 sh d be extremely sorry not to enjoy his 
 acquaintance after my return to your island : 
 but being a great wretch, a horrid radical 
 & a person entirely unfitted for good 
 society, I never wonder at my acquaint- 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 227 
 
 ances disavowing [or] cutting me, as the 
 Arabs & the English say. Don't care a 
 zephyr as long as cash, good spirits, and 
 foolery in brain. 
 
 Capital was my first adventure in 1835 
 at Dover. London Coffee house, old gentle- 
 man in coffee room. Waiter says I, I wish 
 to smoke a cigar, have you a smoking room. 
 W* No occasion sir, you can smoke here. 
 /. (to O.G.) Perhaps it may be disagreeable 
 to you sir, in which case O.G. By no 
 means. I'm myself a smoker (laying aside 
 specs, and looking like Cosmogony : Jen- 
 kins-) /. I have good Cigars, will you 
 d. m. t. f. to accept of one. O.G. Very 
 kind. /. Come from Calais ? O.G. Bou- 
 logne. Go to Bristol. /. Anche io sono 
 Bristoliano. O.G. Know King ? 7. Wife 
 my aunt. O.G. Are YOU ? /. Son of well- 
 known physician at Clifton. O.G. Not of 
 D r B.? /. Same unworthily. O.G. That's 
 curious. Your brother married my niece 
 a fortnight ago. /. Happy man ! Hear of 
 it now for y e first time. Tories will never 
 be my heirs. O.G. O ! G ! (reassumes 
 specs and exit.) /. I ! exeo. 
 
228 The Letters of 
 
 Good joke at Canterbury. I visit an old 
 schoolfellow, who has become high church, 
 tory, and not being quite up to German, an 
 admirer of F. Schlegel. I said that this 
 fellow was become many years before his G 
 plaudite, apolitical renegade, a catholic pro 
 forma, a mystical writer, and a mercenary 
 scribe for the holy alliance. As we parted 
 he wished me good night and requested me 
 never to visit him again, if I should chance 
 to pass through Canterbury. You may 
 judge therefore how likely the gentlemen 
 of Charterhouse are to patronize my rhymed 
 enormities in the same measure, in w h the 
 Etonians have supported the innocent verses 
 of your loving cousin. 
 
 And here closeth this epistle. I 1 shall 
 hardly write again before I have finished my 
 book : w h grows as slowly as a yew tree at 
 present : the chapters on hand requiring a 
 light hearted sunniness of style, w h I can 
 only command when the birds are singing, 
 and sun is shining on morning dew. Yours 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 I hope to hear from you again before I 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 229 
 
 return to England & w d request you to send 
 me a copy of a song w h you recom[m]end : 
 I wish to be prodigal of lyrics & have only 
 about 22-23 as yet : one or two of w h are 
 of doubtful merit. In this confounded 
 weather the coldblooded frogs themselves 
 hardly have the heart to sing out their love 
 thoughts. 
 
 What do you say to the new drama- 
 tists. An article in the Dublin review, 
 w h I looked thro' a day or two ago, 
 contains extracts w h certainly indicate a 
 beating of the pulse, a warming of the 
 skin, and a sigh or two from the dramatic 
 lady muse, as if she were about to awake 
 from her asphyxy of a hundred years. 
 And y e Examiner is quite rapturous about 
 Straffbrd : altho* I confess that the extracts, 
 he chooses and praises appear to me not 
 exactly dramatic. One is a dialogue 
 between two people describing Pym's 
 appearance, action & c in a style w h has 
 been approved of by critics of late and 
 considered highly graphic. But it is not 
 very artificial ? 
 
 In Shak. such passages are rare and only 
 
230 The Letters of 
 
 in scenes, where the person whose actions 
 are described must necessarily be laconic if 
 not entirely speechless ; and where the 
 spectators in their doubt, fear, & wonder 
 naturally communicate to each other their 
 interpretations of the dumb show before 
 them. For instance in Hamlet where 
 the ghost, unwilling or unable perhaps 
 to speak to his son in the presence of 
 Horatio & the watch motions him to 
 follow. It is of some consequence to 
 settle one's opinion on a question of this 
 nature. I am not sure that I am right, 
 but I doubt : What say you ? And now I 
 leave you to your parchment joys 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 ^Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 Fareham 
 Hants 
 
Thomas Love II "Beddoes 231 
 
 LETTER XLII (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Zurich April 28 1838 
 
 DEAR PHILLIPS, I have been some weeks 
 employed in translating Mr. GraingerV 4 
 book on the Spinal Cord into German : the 
 book will be printed probably in the 
 summer : but before that happens I should 
 wish to communicate either personally or 
 by letter with the author on some points, 
 not essentially connected with the enquiry, 
 which have been set in a clearer light by 
 more recent writers. I allude especially to 
 some observations on the microscopic an- 
 atomy of the central organs of the nervous 
 system contained in the latter paragraphs 
 of the 2 nd chapter, which must be either 
 omitted or altered, inasmuch as it is no 
 longer admitted by the more experienced 
 
232 The Letters of 
 
 in these delicate researches that the peculiar 
 form ascribed by Ehenburg, Purkinge & c 
 to the primary medullory fibrils in the 
 brain and in its' dependancy, is to be found 
 in the fresh and uninjured organ. 
 
'Thomas Love 1 1 TSeddoes 233 
 
 LETTER XLIII (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Zurich May 5 th 1839 
 
 J AM in hopes that I shall at length 
 conclude an arrangement with a very 
 eminent publisher concerning the appear- 
 ance of the translation of Mr. Grainger's 
 work, of which I know not whether I 
 should say I am glad or sorry that no German 
 version has as yet appeared. 
 
234 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XLIV (Fragment) 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 Zurich Sept r 1 
 
 DEAR PHILLIPS, You will probably al- 
 ready have read of the catastrophe of 
 Zurich last Friday (the 8 th ) about 6000 of 
 the peasantry of this canton, half unarmed, 
 and the other half armed with scythes, 
 dungforks & poles, led on by a mad fanatic, 
 and aided by some traitors in the cabinet, 
 and many in the town, effected the downfall 
 of the government, by far the best and most 
 liberal that the canton ever lived under. 
 
 One of the most distinguished men, both 
 in science and politics, Hegetschweiler, 75 
 himself one of the most important members 
 of the government, was shot in the tumult, 
 and buried to day. Kellar was compelled 
 to flee and is at present in a neighbouring 
 republic ; where I visited him ; he desired to 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 235 
 
 be remembered to you. Besides him many 
 of the most eminent of the republic have 
 been obliged to seek safety elsewhere. 
 
 These disorders bordering on absolute 
 anarchy will account for my not having 
 been able to execute the deeds and dispatch 
 them before to-morrow as the communi- 
 cations were not safe. In consequence of 
 this state of things, in which neither 
 property nor person is secure I shall find it 
 necessary to give up my present residence 
 entirely. Indeed the dispersion of my 
 friends and acquaintance all of whom 
 belonged to the liberal party renders it 
 nearly impossible for me to remain longer 
 here. 
 
236 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XLV 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Giessen Nov r 13 1844 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, I deferred answer- 
 ing your letter, which I duly received in 
 Baden n r Zurich, in August, till I sh d be 
 able to say where I should fix for some 
 time. Altho* my arrangements are not yet 
 completed it is likely that I shall remain 
 here at least the winter. Of course you 
 know that Liebig's chemical school is in 
 this wretched little town : and wishing to 
 avail myself of his instructions I have come 
 to it. 
 
 My journey brought me thro* Basel, 
 where Paracelsus (not Mr. Browning's) (the 
 historical P. was a complete charlatan, 
 seldom sober, clever and cunning, living on 
 the appetite of his contemporaneous public 
 for the philosopher's stone and the universal 
 
Thomas Love 1 1 "Beddoes 237 
 
 medicine ; castrated as a child by the jaws 
 of a pig, all his life a vagabond, who at 
 last died drunk in his single shirt at Salz- 
 burg :) where P. burnt Galen's works 
 openly as professor of the university, 
 beginning the medical reform so, as Luther 
 did that in religion by his public confla- 
 gration of the bull launched against him. 
 
 P.wasapoeticalfellowin hiswaycertainly, 
 and in his writings a wholesale dealer in a 
 certain style, of which every prudent verse- 
 manufacturer will avail himself sparingly ; 
 no doubt the epithet given to that sort of 
 flowers of eloquence was derived from one 
 of his names, for he had many, as he might 
 often need an alias, and when he wrote at 
 full, denominated himself Philippus Aureo- 
 lus Theophrastus paracelsus Bombastus ab 
 Hohenheim. He was born at Hohenheim 
 near Einsiedeln in the canton Schwyz and 
 his surname was probably Bombast. But 
 the memory of P. has passed away with the 
 dance of Death, and the old university, 
 whose walls echoed once to the voices 
 of Vesalius, Oecolampadius, Melanchthon 
 and Erasmus, is just pulled down to make 
 
238 The Letters of 
 
 way for a new building in which teachers 
 of mediocrity will soon dictate to empty 
 benches. 
 
 Basel has retained a good collection of 
 Holbeins, who was a native of the town 
 where they tell odd stories of him. He 
 was employed once in painting a ceil- 
 ing for a patrician, who was somewhat 
 stingy, and knowing how apt the master 
 was to slip from his aerial perch into a 
 vintner's to enjoy himself, he left his 
 counting-house every vacant minute to 
 assure himself that the painter's legs were 
 dangling in their proper place from the 
 scaffold. H. could not endure such con- 
 straint, and to be able to absent himself 
 unperceived painted a pair of very sober 
 legs against the wall, which he left as his 
 proxy while his own were enjoying 
 themselves under the tippling bench. This 
 monument of his ingenuity remained till 
 within a few years but every leg has it's 
 end and we have nothing left but a leg-end 
 of those of Holbein. 
 
 I will spare you all remarks on the 
 liver-pasties and fortifications of Strasburg, 
 
Thomas Love II *Beddoes 239 
 
 the monotony of Manheim, and the mili- 
 taries of Mainz : referring you to Murray 
 etc. In Frankfort the new monument 
 of Goethe was just unveiled : it is 
 a Bronze designed by Schwanthaler, and 
 admirably executed : the pedestal orna- 
 mented in haut relief with groups out of 
 his principal fictions : as Mignonne, W. 
 Meister, and the harper : Hermann and 
 Dorothea, (stiff and disagreeable, perhaps 
 purposely modelled so by the artist, as 
 characteristic of that soporific composition:) 
 Faust and Meph, Iphigenia, Orestes and 
 Thoas, Egmont, Gotz, Erlking, Bride of 
 Corinth, etc, all graceful and harmonious. 
 G. turns his back to the Francfort Theatre, 
 why, I do not know : he certainly w d if he 
 was alive, for the actors are almost as bad 
 as the English : always with the exception 
 of Dem. Lindner and my old friend Weid- 
 ner, with whom I helped to keep his 66 th 
 birthday, celebrating the same with a 
 German sonnet, w h no doubt you are not 
 in the least anxious to see, so I'll sing you 
 another song, w h I believe is new to you 
 I have stuck it into the endless J. B. 
 
240 The Letters of 
 
 i. 
 
 In lover's ear a wild voice cried : 
 
 " Sleeper, awake and rise ! " 
 A pale form stood by his bedside, 
 
 With heavy tears in her sad eyes. 
 A beckoning hand, a moaning sound, 
 A new-dug grave in weedy ground 
 For her who sleeps in dreams of thee. 
 Awake. Let not the murder be. 
 Unheard the faithful dream did pray, 
 And sadly sighed itself away. 
 Sleep on, sung Sleep , to-morrow, 
 Tis time to know thy sorrow. 
 Sleep on, sung Death, to-morrow 
 From me thy sleep thou'lt borrow 
 Sleep on, lover, sleep on 
 The tedious dream is gone 
 The bell tolls one. 
 
 2. 
 
 Another hour, another dream, 
 Awake, awake, it wailed 
 Arise, ere with the moon's last beam 
 Her dearest life hath paled 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 241 
 
 A hidden light, a muffled tread, 
 A daggered hand beside the bed 
 Of her who sleeps in dreams of thee 
 Thou wak'st not : let the murder be, 
 
 In vain the faithful & c 
 
 Sleep on, love, sleep on 
 
 The tedious dream is gone 
 Soon comes the sun. 
 
 3- 
 
 Another hour, another dream. 
 A red wound on a snowy breast, 
 A rude hand stifling the last scream 
 On rosy lips a death-kiss pressed. 
 Blood on the sheets, blood on the floor, 
 The murderer stealing thro* the door. 
 Now said the voice with comfort deep 
 She sleeps indeed & thou mayst sleep 
 The scornful dream : then turned away 
 To the first bleeding cloud of day 
 Sleep on; sung Sleep & c 
 Sleep on lover, sleep on, 
 
 The tedious dream is gone, 
 The murder's done. 
 
 Also ; to fill up : 
 
242 The Letters of 
 
 i. 
 
 The swallow leaves her nest, 
 The soul my weary breast 
 But therefore let the rain 
 
 On my grave 
 
 Fall pure. For why complain, 
 Since both will come again 
 
 O'er the wave ? 
 
 2. 
 
 The wind dead leaves & snow 
 Doth hurry to and fro, 
 And once a day shall break 
 
 O'er the wave 
 
 When a storm of ghosts shall shake 
 The dead until they wake 
 
 In the grave. 
 
 Do not imagine that I do much in the 
 pottery way now. Sometimes to amuse 
 myself I write you a German lyric or 
 epigram right scurrilous, many of w h have 
 appeared in the Swiss and German papers 
 & some day or other I shall have them 
 collected and printed for fun. As for 
 
Thomas Lovell ISeddoes 243 
 
 publishing in England I am not inclined 
 that way : the old J. B., repeatedly touched 
 up, is a strange conglomerate, and I have 
 not since had time or inclination to begin 
 a right tragedy. Altogether the old thing 
 in its present shape may be hardly worse, 
 than the most that's presented to the public, 
 but that w d be in my opinion no excuse 
 for printing it. 
 
 All the rhymes I have seen many a year 
 are not worth the rags they are printed 
 on : and I think myself entitled to the 
 thanks of the British public for not having 
 bothered them the last 20 years. Recol- 
 lect, I might have written as much as R. 
 Montgomery : and have forborne. I am 
 happy to hear that you have a decent 
 edition of Shakspeare. From what you say, 
 I must however suspect that Knight has 
 not acted candidly towards the Germans. 
 That is very foolish - y for who does not 
 understand German nowadays, who is not 
 acquainted with German literature since 
 Lessing ? Always excepting Mr. Carlyle. 
 
 The hypothesis as to the authorship 
 of the two noble kinsmen belongs to 
 
244 Vb* Letters of 
 
 Tieck originally, and no doubt Knight 
 has availed himself of that Shakspearian 
 Critic's arguments. I have no books at 
 hand, and the work in w h it at first ap- 
 peared does not occur to me. But the 
 singular supposition that Chapman sh d 
 be the third dramatist concerned therein, 
 w h always appeared to me highly im- 
 probable, has prevented me from forgetting 
 it. Very likely the passage occurs in T.'s 
 criticism on Hamlet. The work appears 
 to me more like Dekkers or even Ben's : 
 Chapman is surely one of the Elizabethans 
 who has the least dramatic talent : but I 
 begin to forget all these things. 
 
 T.'s works contain a vast deal of excellent 
 observations on W.S. & have no doubt been 
 well plundered by the author of a biography. 
 T. is here as in every respect far superior 
 to W. A. Schlegel, whose name by the way 
 I do not pronounce Sklegel now : so that 
 you see I have learnt something in Germany. 
 
 Frankfurt a/m 
 
 Hotel de Landsberg 
 4 1* Jan. 1845 
 
 Liebig had no room ; so I went to 
 
Thomas Lovell TSeddoes 245 
 
 Berlin. There we had a week of royal 
 fun. One day they inaugurated the new 
 opera-house and the next chopped off 
 Tscheck's head And was not that a dainty 
 dish etc ? The Prussians, and particularly 
 F. W. IV, always disgust me very soon, so 
 I called on my way, on Saxony, and then 
 came here to stay 6 8 weeks till March e.g., 
 I have looked at your letter again and 
 am not convinced by that it is my business 
 to get anything printed. 20 years ago I 
 was so overrated, that of course I must fall 
 short of all reasonable and unreasonable 
 expectation. Times are much changed it 
 is true. I am not aware that there's one 
 single fellow who has the least nose for 
 poetry that writes. You seem to take Tea- 
 leaves for Bay : which is all very natural 
 and Chinese, according to the national 
 Anthem, 
 
 Drink* Britannia, Britannia drink your Tea, 
 For Britons, bores and buttered Toast! they all begins 
 Kith B. 
 
 Verily, verily 1 say unto you amid the 
 lyrical chirpings of your young English 
 
246 The Letters of 
 
 sparrows, shall come an eagle, and fetch 
 fire from the altar Miltonic to relight the 
 dark-Lanterns of Diogenes and Guy 
 Fawkes. As to the who, where and when 
 of the prophecy, axe Moore of the almanac. 
 Few are called this day, and none are 
 chosen. Doth the Imaum sing out Past 
 
 Charley Knight ? . . . 
 
 tin acock & a ra iny night, anc * saith the 
 watchman Allah il Allah ? Is the voice 
 that crieth in the Wilderness a penny 
 crumpet ? 
 
 The solution some day next century. 
 Yours T. L. B. 
 
 As to real Poetry 
 
 I have oft thought, 
 
 Thou art so beautiful above all women, 
 I might be you ; but yet 'tis happier still 
 To be another, to admire and love thee 
 as the author of D 8 J. B says 
 somewhere or other. 
 
 ^Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq re 
 Solicitor 
 Fareham 
 
 Hants 
 England 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 247 
 
 LETTER XLVI 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Shiffnall Aug //. 1846. 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, I have been in the 
 native land of the unicorn, about a week 
 and may remain 5 more : I should wish to 
 see and talk with you during my stay. As 
 you are the busy man I leave the arrange- 
 ments to your convenience. I had no time 
 to visit Procter in passing through London, 
 but am told that he is appointed to a high T * 
 office in the government of the kingdom 
 of y e moon, upon which, as a retired mem- 
 ber of the company of poets he was I sup- 
 pose accustomed to draw liberally. 
 
 I saw R. Phillips, of course, who w d desire 
 to be remembered to you, were he here : 
 he is stout morally and physically in spite of 
 the undeserved blows, which blind Fate has 
 showered on him. Poor J. G. H. Bourne, 
 
248 tte Letters of 
 
 another honest and industrious man, has 
 broken down under the pressure of griev- 
 ances and has left a large young family 
 behind him. These are all our common 
 acquaintance I believe. As for myself, the 
 world which I have carefully kept at arms 
 length has only made me somewhat more 
 indifferent and prosaic than before. Direct 
 to me Francis Beddoes Esq re Cheney 
 Longville n r Ludlow, and find out someway 
 of convincing yourself of the identity, of 
 w h I am not quite sure, 
 
 of your old and present friend 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
 ^Addressed to 
 
 THOMAS KELSALL Esq re 
 Fareham 
 
 Hants 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 249 
 
 LETTER XLVII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Catherine S* 
 
 Grange Road 
 Birkenhead 
 [Postmark] Mr 10 f&tf 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, I have been detained 
 since you had the kindness to answer a 
 letter of mine (Aug 13.) much to my dis- 
 taste in this extraordinary part of the world: 
 and am now staying in one of the most 
 abominable places this side of Tartarus, till it 
 shall please the apple blossom to appear. I 
 meditate still an incursion on your privacy 
 before I leave the Britannic shores, of which 
 I will apprize you some days in advance. 
 
 It will give me very great pleasure to 
 confer with you, but pray expect no addi- 
 tion to your experience from the scenes 
 of my existence ; nothing can be more 
 monotonous, dull and obscure : the needy 
 
250 The Letters of 
 
 knife grinder's adventures would have 
 been oriental marvels and pantomimic 
 mysteries in comparison. Prose of the 
 leadenest drab dye has ever pursued your 
 humble servant. But of that you will not 
 doubt, I believe I might have met with 
 some success as a retailer of small coal, or 
 a writer of long-bottomed tracts, but doubt 
 of my aptitude for any higher literary or 
 commercial occupation. But you will see 
 I believe I have all the dulness, if not the 
 other qualities of your British respecta- 
 bility. 
 
 You have been always good enough to 
 overrate any bit of verse & c I scribbled, so 
 that I was almost tempted to send you 
 something to go thro' at leisure, or treat 
 like any other drug, I might be unfortunate 
 enough to prescribe per post, as postage is 
 cheap ; but I find that I have lost or left 
 behind nearly all the very little that I have 
 committed to paper in English since last I 
 communicated with you : and what I have 
 is either utterly illegible, or mere refaccia- 
 menti of the unhappy Jest book, so that I 
 am compelled to spare you. 
 
Thomas Lovell <Beddoes 251 
 
 I hope to see you well, and as happy as 
 a man ought to be ; and to make pleasant 
 new acquaintance among the to me un- 
 known new generation of Kelsalls : and 
 may they flutter and sing in those sunny 
 places of the green wood of life from 
 which our shadows have passed away. 
 
 Pray say whether it will be still con- 
 venient to you to see, in 3 weeks or a month 
 for a hour or a day, 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. BEDDOES 
 
 ^Addressed to 
 
 T. F. KELSALL Esq 
 Fareham 
 Hants 
 
252 The Letters of 
 
 LETTER XLVIII 
 
 To THOMAS FORBES KELSALL 
 
 Har court Bdgs., 
 Temple, 
 
 London, 
 May 29, 
 
 MY DEAR KELSALL, The author of all 
 those celebrated unwritten productions, 
 amongst which I particularly solicit your 
 attention to a volume of letters to your- 
 self, will leave the station for Fareham at 
 seven o'clock to-morrow, and stay Sunday 
 at that place : 
 
 Poor bird, that cannot ever 
 Dwell high in tower of song : 
 
 Whose heart-breaking endeavour 
 But palls the lazy throng. 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 
Thomas Lovell 'Beddoes 253 
 
 LETTER XLIX 
 
 To A RELATIVE 
 
 Basel Oct 9 1848 
 
 MY DEAR A , I should have written 
 
 to you sometime ago, if I had not unfortu- 
 nately rather unpleasant news regarding my- 
 self to report. Do not, I beg of you, regard 
 the matter on its melancholy side alone, for 
 myself I am quite reconciled to my situation 
 and only dread comforters and condolers. 
 
 Late in the summer, in July, I fell with a 
 horse in a precipitious part of the neigh- 
 bouring hills and broke my left leg all to 
 pieces. In spite of the very best treatment 
 part of the fractured limb was obliged to 
 be sacrificed : (I beg your pardon for this 
 style, but I am writing on my back ;) and 
 a month ago the lower part of the leg 
 (below the knee joint) was taken off. 
 Thanks to the power of beneficial Chloro- 
 
254 The Letters of 
 
 form I felt not the least twitch of pain 
 during the operation, and since then I 
 have been slowly but with sure steps 
 advancing in the way of recovery ; and 
 before long hope to dot and go one. As 
 soon as I am quite well I shall return to Eng- 
 land, but I fear the winter may intervene. 
 You ask me to recommend you a German 
 book, but do not say on what kind of 
 subject or in what department of literature: 
 & even if you had, I sh d find it hazardous, 
 because tastes & habits, or trains of thought 
 and study render such different things 
 interesting to different individuals. Dreary 
 & dull is dear Mr. Schopenhauer, and 
 Henrik Steffens tells as little truth as 
 possible, I wot in his erlebtend. He has 
 writ some tolerable novels though, sketches 
 of Hyperborean Norwegian life, "Die 4 
 Norweger " and " Malcolm and Walseth," 
 (or "Walseth and Leith," I forget which,) 
 but if you wish to read goodish Memoirs, 
 very well written, ask for Varnhagen von 
 Ense. Have you not read his book about 
 his wife, the wonderful Berlin Jewess, Rahel, 
 (that is the title of his work,) ? 
 
Thomas Love II "Eeddoes 255 
 
 This Rahel Robert was really a woman of 
 great talent, and never printed anything 
 during his [sic] life, without the affectation 
 and mendacious vanity of the ginger bread 
 Bettine Brentano. I think Sternberg is 
 one of the best novelibts, (a Tieckianer) 
 and then you can read the rather lengthy 
 but well laboured novels (in 3 vols accord* 
 to the English Canon) of the late Frau von 
 Paalzaw Thomas Thyrnan, St. Roche, 
 Godwic Castle & others. Besides there is 
 Auerbach with SchwarzwalderDorpgeschich- 
 ten y very good, but some black-forest dialect, 
 tho' not enough to bore you much. 
 
 Did you ever enquire for the reisenden 
 Maler by Ernest Wagner, a contemporary 
 of old Wolfgang Goethe ? It is one of the 
 best German novels. I do not know why 
 people are always a reading new books. 
 Like new bread 'tis not always the most 
 digestible stuffthey are baked of; especially, 
 as you say, in French literature, but the 
 French have nothing since the settling of 
 their language in its present form, (for of 
 course I do not deny the genius of Cl. 
 Marot, Jodelle, Rabelais, Montaigne & c ) 
 
256 The Letters of 
 
 but Moliere, Le Sage, Beaumarchais & c 
 and the Memoirs, Sevigne included, which 
 are interesting and delightful reading. 
 
 I am just employed on St. Simons Mem 8 
 of Louis XIV and the Regent, and learn ten- 
 times more about the former than from 
 Voltaire. As to Harbers Innocent III, 
 pray recollect that I think of it as a most 
 learned work as opposed to the light 
 manufactures of Ranke on similar subjects. 
 You must not forget either that H. became 
 privately Catholic while he was Antistes 
 (so the Zwinglians call their Bishops) of 
 Schaffhausen, a protestant see ; I believe 
 that his con- or per-version was occasioned 
 by his researches for his work on that great 
 Pope, and you allmost trace his growing 
 inclination for Rome thro' the volumes. 
 They are rather hard reading, being packed 
 so closely with facts, and the style is over- 
 laden & J. Mullerish. Read also Gervinus 
 * Geschichte d. National - literatur der 
 Deutschen.' 
 
 Good bye 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
Thomas Lovell "Beddoes 257 
 
 LETTER L 
 To A RELATIVE 
 
 Direct under ewer to 
 Mom* <A. Frey Med D* 
 a rHopital, Basle 
 
 Basel 
 r Wednesday Nov r 8 1848 
 
 MY DEAR A , Do not think me 
 
 incapable of appreciating your offer of visit- 
 ing me here, if I resolve not to avail my- 
 self of it. In the first place I object to the 
 journey, which is free neither from diffi- 
 culty nor danger in the present state of 
 Germany, at this time of year & c 2 n(Uy You 
 must remember that I am in a hospital, (a 
 very pleasant one, with a large garden into 
 which my window looks,) that strange visi- 
 tors are only admitted during the day, and 
 you know how short that is ; besides I do 
 not wish to remain here a very long time : 
 & when yo# arrived I might very likely be 
 
258 The Letters of 
 
 preparing to leave. I therefore beg you to 
 allow me to decline your proposal without 
 suspecting me of being ungrateful. I am 
 going on well, sit up during the day, and 
 am just beginning to learn to walk. 
 
 One feels rather uncertain about Ranke's 
 merit or demerits as a writer, because per- 
 haps what appears worthy either of praise or 
 censure may not be properly attributable to 
 him. One of his earliest works was a 
 critical survey of the Italian Epic poets, in 
 which an English reviewer (Ed. or Quar- 
 terly ?) detected an extensive series of ac- 
 knowledged quotations from Panizzi's in- 
 troductory volume to his London Edition 
 of the till then rare Orlando of Bojardo. 
 I do not know whether the criticism was 
 taken notice of in Germany, but it appeared 
 rather a shabby affair ; and I have felt a dis- 
 inclin n to read anything of that writer since. 
 
 Lately there have been some audacious 
 instances of plagiarism among the younger 
 German authors, wh. have been sufficiently 
 blamed. The learned were sufficiently 
 abusive of Wagenfeld when he published 
 his false Janchoniathon, because that in* 
 
Thomas Lou ell *Beddoes 259 
 
 genious literary forgery had been considered 
 genuine by some of their most celebrated 
 philologians. But surely a literary theft is 
 at least equally reprehensible. 
 
 Who are now living at Edgeworth's 
 town ? St. Paul's ranks higher than 
 Christ's Hospital, I believe, and Emmeline 
 is therefore fortunate in obtaining a presen- 
 tation for her boy, if she is at as little ex- 
 pense as at the latter school. A clever, 
 diligent youth has a fair chance of a 
 scholarship, I believe, at Oxford. 
 
 A new collection of letters from Goethe 
 to a Frau v. Stein has just issued ; they were 
 written during the last century & appear to 
 be interesting. The great superiority of 
 the Germans in their poetical literature 
 consists however in their translations. 
 Voss's Homer, particularly the Odyssee, 
 (read if possible the first edition of that, or 
 a reprint of the same, because he injured it 
 afterwards by improvements & corrections) 
 Griess' Ariosto, Tasso & Calderon, Regiss' 
 Bojardo, Rabelais, Cid, Droyssen's ^Eschy- 
 lus & are vastly preferable to any transla- 
 tion I know in English, excepting perhaps 
 
260 The Letters of 
 
 Motteux* (who by the way was French by 
 birth & education) continuation & revisal 
 of Sir I. Urquharts Rabelais. 
 
 An acquaintance of mine has taken the 
 trouble to translate Uhland's Poems, 77 but in 
 want of a London publisher was obliged to 
 print at Frankfort / m ; with the exception 
 of a very few gross blunders his version is 
 correct as well as his versification ; and he 
 was wise enough to keep to the metres of 
 his original, even where the hexameter was 
 before him : but he has too much of the 
 conventional poetical language of the fash- 
 ionable modern potters to please me. It 
 was a difficult and no doubt tedious task, 
 for Uhland's poetry is nothing but language 
 well coloured, phraseology drearily deserted 
 by ideas. 
 
 Yours truly 
 
 T. L. B. 
 
 I am getting on very well. 
 
 Addressed to 
 Miss - 
 
 West Town 
 
 Bristol 
 
Thomas Love II TSeddoes 261 
 
 LETTER L 
 
 To REVELL PHILLIPS 
 
 [January 26 1849] 
 
 MY DEAR PHILLIPS, I am food for what 
 I am good for worms. I have made a 
 will here which I desire to be respected, 
 and add the donation of 20 to D r Ecklin 
 my physician. 
 
 W. Beddoes must have a case (50 bottles) 
 of Champagne Moet 1847 growth to drink 
 my death in. 
 
 Thanks for all kindness. Borrow the 
 200. You are a good & noble man & 
 your children must look sharp to be like 
 you. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 if my own, 
 ever, 
 
 T. L. B. 
 Love to Anna, Henry, the Beddoes of 
 
262 Letters ofT. L. "Beddoes 
 
 Longvill and Zoe and Emmeline King 
 also to Kelsall whom I beg to look at my 
 MSS. and print or not as he thinks fit. 
 I ought to have been among other things a 
 good poet. Life was too great a bore on 
 one peg and that a bad one. Buy for D r 
 Ecklin above mentioned [one of] Reade's 
 best stomach-pumps. 
 
 [This note, written in pencil, was found 
 folded on the poet's bosom, as he lay in- 
 sensible after taking poison, in his bed in 
 the Town Hospital of Basel. He died at 
 10 P.M. the same night.] 
 
NOTES 
 
 1. John Hunt, the journalist and publisher, brother 
 of Leigh Hunt. He had recently brought the Liberal 
 to a close. 
 
 2. The " Shelley affair " was the publication of 
 Shelley's Posthumous Poems in 1824, the part taken in 
 which by Beddoes is several times referred to in the 
 course of these letters. 
 
 3. Bryan Waller Procter, " Barry Cornwall," 
 though much Beddoes' senior, being at this time in 
 his thirty-seventh year, was the most intimate of all 
 the literary associates of the latter, and remained to 
 the last his faithful friend. He had in 1824 already 
 published almost all the works by which he is gener- 
 ally known. 
 
 4. No doubt the 1820 edition of Prometheus 
 Unbound. 
 
 5. C. E. Walker wrote several very successful 
 pseudo-poetical tragedies, such as Wallace, The Briton 
 Chief, and, in particular, The Warlock of the Glen, of 
 which Thackeray gives so funny an analysis. 
 
 6. Britain s Ida, a poem published under the name 
 of Spenser in 1628, now commonly attributed to the 
 youth of Phineas Fletcher. 
 
264 Notes 
 
 7. 'The Last Man, a tragedy projected by Becldoes, 
 but never finished. 
 
 8. " Bernard the Quaker " ; Bernard Barton, a 
 member of the Society of Friends and a minor poet. 
 He was one of Bed does' pet aversions. 
 
 9. George Darley (1795-1846), the dramatic critic 
 of the London Magazine under the signature of John 
 Lacy ; and afterwards more distinguished as the 
 author of Sylvia, the May Queen, and other dramatic 
 poems. 
 
 10. Eventually no portrait was used. I am in- 
 formed by Lady Shelley that the reason was that Jane 
 Williams, to whom Mary Shelley had lent the sketch 
 which it was proposed to engrave, mislaid it until it 
 was too late. 
 
 11. Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1792-1862), the 
 biographer of Shelley. 
 
 12. William Godwin. 
 
 13. Beddoes was behindhand in his information, 
 since Thomas Love Peacock had married Jane 
 Gryffydh, the " Welsh turtle," in March 1820. 
 
 14. John Hamilton Reynolds, the friend of Keats 
 and Hood. 
 
 15. This refers to the Notes from the Pocket- Book of a 
 late Opium-Eater, which De Quincey was at this time 
 beginning to contribute to Taylor and Hessey's London 
 Magazine. 
 
 1 6. The Second Maiden's Tragedy, which was then 
 just for the first time printed from a manuscript in 
 the Lansdowne Collection, was, and remains, a great 
 mystery. It was licensed in October, 1611. On the 
 back of the MS. a contemporary hand had written 
 "William Goughe " j the first of these names had 
 
Notes 265 
 
 been erased, and "Thomas" substituted. "Thomas 
 Goughe " had then been struck through, and " George 
 Chapman " written. Finally " Will. Shakespear." 
 had been substituted. Modern criticism has con- 
 jectured that either Chapman or Cyril Tourneur was 
 the author. It is interesting to see that Beddoes 
 instantly perceived the great poetical value of this 
 obscure drama. 
 
 17. Sir Timothy Shelley, the poet's father. 
 
 1 8. Charles Robert Mathurin (1782-1824), the 
 author of Melmoth the Wanderer. He died three 
 weeks after the date of this letter. 
 
 19. George Croly was at this time writing much for 
 the Literary Ga-zette, and had lately brought out a new 
 play, Cataling) but it was a tragedy, not a comedy. 
 
 20. Ham Beerpofs Invisible Comedy of See Me and See 
 Me Not was published in quarto, 1618, by Danbridge- 
 court Belchier. 
 
 21. Thomas Campbell had just published his 
 Theodric, a performance which had proved a sad dis- 
 appointment to his admirers. 
 
 22. William Lisle Bowles, the sonneteer and fore- 
 runner of the romantic movement. 
 
 23. The Fatal Dowry, a tragedy begun by Field, 
 completed by Massinger, and published in 1632. 
 
 24. The beginning, it would seem, of what ulti- 
 mately became Death** Jest-Book. 
 
 25. This volume was anonymous, and Coleridge 
 thought that Lamb had written it. The authorship 
 of Hood and Reynolds was soon revealed. 
 
 26. It is strange that the youthful Praed should 
 already be known by name to Beddoes, who probably 
 refers to his contributions to The Etonian. 
 
266 Notes 
 
 27. The Rev. John Moultrie, born in 1804. 
 
 28. Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A., the sculptor. 
 
 29. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the first great 
 German zoologist. Born in 1752, he had been since 
 1778 professor at Gbttingen, where he was to die in 
 1840. 
 
 30. Lord Byron. 
 
 31. " Pygmalion, or the Cyprian Statuary," was 
 one of Beddoes' most ambitious exercises in narrative 
 blank verse. The " Oxford magaziners " seem to have 
 rejected it, and it made its first appearance in the 
 Poems of 1851. 
 
 32. Moultrie. 
 
 33. Friedrich Stromeyer, born in 1776. He was a 
 very eminent chemist, had been professor of chemistry 
 at Gbttingen since 1810, and was to die in 1835. 
 
 34. The remainder of the 1820 edition of Shelley's 
 Prometheus Unbound was still on sale, and was to remain 
 so for many years. 
 
 35. The Bride's (or Brides'} Tragedy, published by 
 Beddoes when he was still at Oxford, in 1822. 
 
 36. Georg Friedrich Benecke (1762-1844), libra- 
 rian at Gbttingen, and a copious writer on early Ger- 
 man literature, on which he was a leading authority. 
 
 37. " Barry Cornwall," B. W. Procter. 
 
 38. This was the sensational landscape by John 
 Martin, afterwards exhibited in the West Room of 
 the Royal Academy (No. 403) in 1837. 
 
 39. A reference to Darley's dramatic miscellany, 
 called 1 he Labours of Idleness, 1826. 
 
 40. The very mild lucubrations of the Quaker poet 
 had just been rewarded by an annuity from his 
 co-religionists. 
 
Notes 267 
 
 41. William Jerdan, the active and influential 
 editor of the Literary Gazette. 
 
 42. Konrad Johann Martinus Langenbeck, born in 
 1778, was a celebrated anatomist and surgeon. He 
 had been professor of anatomy at Gbttingen since 1814, 
 
 43. Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren, the leading 
 German historian of his day, was born in 1760. In 
 1824-26 he was publishing his greatest work, the 
 Ideen uber Politik. He died in 1842. 
 
 44. Gustav Hugo, the eminent jurist and professor 
 of Roman law (1764-1844). Hugo had held the 
 chair of jurisprudence at Gbttingen since 1792. 
 
 45. Friedrich Bouterwek (1766-1828). Since 1802 
 professor of philosophy at Gbttingen. His interesting 
 autobiography had appeared in 1818. 
 
 46. The Improvisatore, a collection of lyrical poems, 
 printed in 1821, was Beddoes' first publication. 
 
 47. John Eagles, of Bristol, author of The Sketcher, 
 published in Blackiuood from 1833 to 1835. He had 
 previously been Sydney Smith's curate. 
 
 48. On the 1 2th of October, Leigh Hunt and his 
 family had returned from their too-famous visit to Italy. 
 
 49. Just a year before this was written, Charles 
 Lamb had " come home forever ," and was now quietly 
 rusticating at Enfield. 
 
 50. Johann Tobias Mayer (1752-1830), son of the 
 famous astronomer of the same name, had been pro- 
 fessor of mathematics at Gbttingen since 1790. 
 
 51. Ernst Benjamin Salamon Raupach was the 
 most prolific German dramatist of his age. He was 
 born in 1784. At the time Beddoes wrote, Dr. 
 Raupach had enjoyed a great success with his Die 
 Frcunde, 1825, and Isldor von Olga. 1826. 
 
268 Notes 
 
 52. Jean Paul Richter died on the I4th of 
 November, 1825. 
 
 53. This may refer to Lord Gifford, at that time 
 dying. He would doubtless be known to Beddoes, at 
 Bristol, of which city he had been Recorder, as Sir 
 Robert Gifford. 
 
 54. In Ben Jonson's comedy of Epicene. 
 
 55. Robert Pearse Gillies, the friend of Sir Walter 
 Scott, and the Kemperhausen of the Noctes, supplied 
 abundant translations of German literature to Black- 
 ivood^s. 
 
 56. " Heber " must be a jocose mode of spelling 
 " Hebrew." 
 
 57. " Avarice, Sir Walter." This is a striking 
 proof of the degree to which Scott's noble efforts to 
 recover his financial position were misunderstood. At 
 the very moment when Beddoes was penning this un- 
 fortunate phrase, the Chronicler of the Canongate was 
 struggling against the designs of the Israelites, and pre- 
 paring for " Calton Jail or a trip to the Isle of Man." 
 
 58. John G. H. Bourne, an early friend of Beddoes 
 and Procter. He published a poem called England 
 Won in 1845. Beddoes mentions his death as occurring 
 in 1846. 
 
 59. Robert Montgomery, who had published his 
 Omnipresence of the Deity in 1828. 
 
 60. Allan Cunningham began in 1829 to issue an 
 annual, called The ^Anniversary, to which various 
 people of distinction contributed. 
 
 61. Willem Bilderdijk, the Dutch poet, born in 
 1756, died in 1831. 
 
 62. The Briton CAiefvras a very popular tragedy by 
 C. E. Walker, produced in 1823. 
 
Notes 269 
 
 63. Ludwig Holberg, called the Father of Danish 
 literature, was born at Bergen in Norway in 1684. 
 He died at Sorb in Denmark in 1754. His works 
 are encyclopaedic in range, but it is by his brilliant 
 comedies that he is now best remembered. 
 
 64. Bernhard Severin Ingemann, the Danish poet, 
 born in 1789, and died in 1862. 
 
 65. Leopold Schafer, the lyrical poet and novelist, 
 was born in 1784. 
 
 66. These were the " Lines written in a copy of 
 Prometheus Unbound" which had appeared in the 
 tAthenaum for May 18. 
 
 67. Johann Lukas Schoenlein, born in 1793, was 
 one of the first clinical authorities of Germany. He 
 had been professor at Wurzburg since 1824. 
 
 68. This volume was to have been entitled The 
 Ivory Gate, but it was never sent to press. 
 
 69. George Darley, now utterly out of sympathy 
 with his own earlier predilections, was writing truculent 
 reviews in the tAth'.naum. 
 
 70. Bourne. 
 
 71. Haynes Bayly's Weeds of Witchery, a feeble 
 collection of songs, had just appeared. 
 
 72. Walter Savage Landor's Citation and Examination 
 of William Shakespear, published anonymously in 
 1834. 
 
 73. Cosmo del Medici was a blank verse tragedy by 
 Richard Hengist Home. 
 
 74. Richard Dugard Grainger, a young surgeon of 
 great promise, had published in 1837, a very original 
 volume On the Spinal Cord. Nothing is now known of 
 Bed does' German translation. 
 
 75. Hegetschweiler. This name has by Beddoes' 
 
270 
 
 Notes 
 
 previous editors (myself included) been mis-spelt 
 Hegetochweiber, the reference being thus concealed 
 to Johann Hegetschweiler, the distinguished Swiss 
 patriot and botanist. He was born in 1789, gave up 
 his scientific pursuits for the sake of politics in 1830, 
 and on the 8th of September 1839 was shot in the streets 
 of Zurich by one of the peasants who were invading 
 the town. 
 
 76. Procter had long been an annually nominated 
 Metropolitan Commissioner of Lunacy, but under the 
 new Act he was now appointed one of the permanent 
 commission. He resigned this post in 1861. 
 
 77. Thfs was the version of Uhland's poems, 
 with a biography and notes, published by A. Platt 
 in 1848. 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. 
 London & Edinburgh 
 

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