God bless you, Southey! We shall be at Aberystwith[56] this day week. When will you come out to meet us? There you must direct your letter. Hucks' compliments. I anticipate much accession of republicanism from Lovell. I have positively done nothing but dream of the system of no property every step of the way since I left you, till last Sunday. Heigho!
ROBERT SOUTHEY, No. 8 Westcott Buildings, Bath.
10 o'clock, Thursday morning, September 18, 1794.
Well, my dear Southey! I am at last arrived at Jesus. My God! how tumultuous are the movements of my heart. Since I quitted this room what and how important events have been evolved! America! Southey! Miss Fricker! Yes, Southey, you are right. Even Love is the creature of strong motive. I certainly love her. I _think_ of her incessantly and with unspeakable tenderness,--with that inward melting away of soul that symptomatizes it.
Pantisocracy! Oh, I shall have such a scheme of it! My head, my heart, are all alive. I have drawn up my arguments in battle array; they shall have the _tactician_ excellence of the mathematician with the enthusiasm of the poet. The head shall be the mass; the heart the fiery spirit that fills, informs, and agitates the whole. Harwood--pish! I say nothing of him.
SHAD GOES WITH US. HE IS MY BROTHER! I am longing to be with you. Make Edith my sister. Surely, Southey, we shall be _frendotatoi meta frendous_--most friendly where all are friends. She must, therefore, be more emphatically my sister.
Brookes and Berdmore, as I suspected, have spread my opinions in mangled forms at Cambridge. Caldwell, the most pantisocratic of aristocrats, has been laughing at me. Up I arose, terrible in reasoning. He fled from me, because "he could not answer for his own sanity, sitting so near a madman of genius." He told me that the strength of my imagination had intoxicated my reason, and that the acuteness of my reason had given a directing influence to my imagination. Four months ago the remark would not have been more elegant than just. Now it is nothing.
I like your sonnets exceedingly--the best of any I have yet seen.[57] "Though to the eye fair is the extended vale" should be "to the eye though fair the extended vale." I by no means disapprove of discord introduced to produce _effect_, nor is my ear so fastidious as to be angry with it where it could not have been avoided without weakening the sense. But discord for discord's sake is rather too licentious.