A Volume of Verse in Two Volumes 2d edition &c--
You see thro' my wicked intention of curtailing this Epistolet by the above device of large margin. But in truth the idea of letterising has been oppressive to me of late above your candour to give me credit for. There is Southey, whom I ought to have thank'd a fortnight ago for a present of the Church Book. I have never had courage to buckle myself in earnest even to acknowledge it by six words. And yet I am accounted by some people a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kittens neck off, or disturb a congregation, &c.-- your business is done. I know things (thoughts or things, thoughts are things) of myself which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient. I once * * *, and set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved out under a moss of sea weeds, a pretty little feeler.--Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a mean one, I once told!-- I stink in the midst of respect.
I am much hypt; the fact is, my head is heavy, but there is hope, or if not, I am better than a poor shell fish--not morally when I set the whelp upon it, but have more blood and spirits; things may turn up, and I may creep again into a decent opinion of myself. Vanity will return with sunshine. Till when, pardon my neglects and impute it to the wintry solstice.
[The motto eventually adopted for Barton's _Poetic Vigils_ was from Vaughan's _Silex Scintillans:_--
Dear night! this world's defeat; The stop to busie fools; care's check and curb; The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb!]
DEAR B.B.--I hasten to say that if my opinion can strengthen you in your choice, it is decisive for your acceptance of what has been so handsomely offered. I can see nothing injurious to your most honourable sense. Think that you are called to a poetical Ministry--nothing worse--the Minister is worthy of the hire.
The only objection I feel is founded on a fear that the acceptance may be a temptation to you to let fall the bone (hard as it is) which is in your mouth and must afford tolerable pickings, for the shadow of independence. You cannot propose to become independent on what the low state of interest could afford you from such a principal as you mention; and the most graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be, that it left you free to your voluntary functions. That is the less _light_ part of the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in _darker_, because of the ambiguity of the word light, which Donne in his admirable poem on the Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously illustrated in his invocation