I have sent you some loose sheets which Charles Lloyd and I printed together, intending to make a volume, but I gave it up and cancelled them.[143] Item, Joan of Arc, with only the passage of my writing cut out for the printers, as I am printing it in my second edition, with very great alterations and an addition of four hundred lines, so as to make it a complete and independent poem, entitled, "The Progress of Liberty," or "The Visions of the Maid of Orleans." Item, a sheet of sonnets[144] collected by me for the use of a few friends, who paid the printing. There you will see my opinion of sonnets. Item, Poem by C. Lloyd[145] on the death of one of your "slobberers," a very venerable old lady, and a Quaker. The book is dressed like a rich Quaker, in costly raiment but unornamented. The loss of her almost killed my poor young friend; for he doted on her from his infancy. Item, a poem of mine on Burns[146] which was printed to be dispersed among friends. It was addressed to Charles Lamb. Item, (Shall I give it thee, blasphemer? No! I won't, but) to thy Stella I do present the poems of my youth for a keepsake. Of this parcel I do entreat thy acceptance. I have another Joan of Arc, so you have a _right_ to the one enclosed. Postscript. Item, a humorous "Droll" on S. Ireland, of which I have likewise another. Item, a strange poem written by an astrologer here, who _was_ a man of fine genius, which, at intervals, he still discovers. But, ah me! Madness smote with her hand and stamped with her feet and swore that he should be hers, and hers he is. He is a man of fluent eloquence and general knowledge, gentle in his manners, warm in his affections; but unfortunately he has received a few rays of supernatural light through a crack in his upper story. I _express_ myself unfeelingly; but indeed my heart always aches when I think of him. Item, some verses of Robert Southey to a college cat.[147] And, finally, the following lines by thy affectionate friend,
WHO ABANDONED HIMSELF TO A CAUSELESS AND INDOLENT MELANCHOLY.[148]
Hence that fantastic wantonness of woe, O youth to partial Fortune vainly dear! To plunder'd Want's half-sheltered hovel go, Go, and some hunger-bitten infant hear Moan haply in a dying mother's ear.