To Sir William Elford, Bickham, Plymouth.
Bertram House, April 3, 1815.
Alas! my dear friend, you are mistaken—quite mistaken, I assure you. I am not going to be married. No such good luck, as papa says. I have not been courted, and I am not in love. So much for this question. If I ever should happen to be going to be married (elegant construction this!) I will then not fail to let you into the secret; but alas! alas! alas! “In such a then I write a never.”
Pray have you read ‘The Lord of the Isles?’ I do not mean, as I once unwittingly did in the beginning of our correspondence, to draw you into the scrape of reading a poem; but, if you should by chance have looked at it, pray tell me how you like it. It is certainly a thousand times better than ‘Rokeby,’ and yet it does not please me as Scott’s poems used to do. I am afraid that I once admired him a great deal too much; and now am in some danger of liking him a great deal too little. Nothing is so violent as a rebound, either of the head or the heart. Once extinguished, enthusiasm and all the fire in Vesuvius will never light it again. I fancy that the world is something of my mind in this respect, and begins to tire of its idol. Only the world is not half so honest, and instead of knocking down one piece of wood, contents itself with sticking up another right before it. “It is not,” say all the gentle damsels of my acquaintance, “that we like Scott less—we only like Lord Byron better.” Now I do not—I like Scott less—but Lord Byron less still. The only modern poet whom I like better and better is Campbell.
I have told you that I would not put you in danger of being jingled into a fever by “mincing poesy;” but I have found out, to my great satisfaction, that I shan’t affront you by recommending a prose epic to your perusal; and I have lately been very much and very unexpectedly pleased with Lady Morgan’s (ci-devant Miss Owenson) ‘O’Donnel.’ I had a great prejudice and dislike to this fair authoress ever since I read a certain description of which she was guilty, where part of a lady’s dress is described as “an apparent tissue of woven air,” and really took up the book with an idea that nothing but nonsense could come from that quarter. I was, however, very much disappointed in my malicious expectations of laughing at her, and obliged to content myself with laughing with her. Her hero is very interesting—her heroine very amusing. There are some good characters, particularly a managing bustling woman of fashion; et pour la bonne-bouche there is an Irish servant not much, if at all, inferior to the admirable Irishmen of Miss Edgeworth.
À propos to novels, I have discovered that our great favourite, Miss Austen, is my countrywoman; that mamma knew all her family very intimately; and that she herself is an old maid (I beg her pardon—I mean a young lady) with whom mamma before her marriage was acquainted. Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers; and a friend of mine, who visits her now, says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of “single blessedness” that ever existed, and that, till ‘Pride and Prejudice’ showed what a precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very different now; she is still a poker—but a poker of whom every one is afraid. It must be confessed that this silent observation from such an observer is rather formidable. Most writers are good-humoured chatterers—neither very wise nor very witty:—but nine times out of ten (at least in the few that I have known) unaffected and pleasant, and quite removing by their conversation any awe that may have been excited by their works. But a wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk, is terrific indeed!
After all, I do not know that I can quite vouch for this account, though the friend from whom I received it is truth itself; but her family connections must render her disagreeable to Miss Austen, since she is the sister-in-law of a gentleman who is at law with Miss A.’s brother for the greater part of his fortune. You must have remarked how much her stories hinge upon entailed estates; doubtless she has learnt to dislike entails. Her brother was adopted by a Mr. Knight, who left him his name and two much better legacies in an estate of five thousand a year in Kent, and another of nearly double the value in Hampshire; but it seems he forgot some ceremony—passing a fine, I think they call it—with regard to the Hampshire property, which Mr. Baverstock has claimed in right of his mother, together with the mesne rents, and is likely to be successful. Before I quite drop the subject of novels, I must tell you that I am reading ‘Guy Mannering’ with great pleasure. I have not finished it nearly, so that I speak of it now as any one would do that had read no further than the second volume of the ‘Mysteries of Udolpho,’ and that would be much better than one who had finished it. I do not think that Walter Scott did write ‘Guy Mannering;’ it is not nearly so like him as ‘Waverley’ was, and the motto is from ‘The Lay.’
I am quite happy that you are of my opinion with regard to Scripture heroes; I always think myself so safe when you agree with me. It was, however, natural in Mr. Haydon to wish to draw the bow of Ulysses and try the subject which has engaged all the great masters. Mr. Eustace, I think it is, who has objected to the exaggerated expression of meekness which distinguishes the Christ of the Italian painters. In those which I have seen I should rather complain of the entire absence of the expression of power—power latent, dormant, in repose, but still power—still that power which could without exertion, with unaltered calmness, heal the sick and raise the dead. It would be less absurd to paint a sleeping Hercules without the appearance of strength, than to delineate our Saviour without the expression of power. No one can so well supply this defect as Mr. Haydon, and he is very likely to have done it.
Always most affectionately yours,
M. R. M.