To William Ginty¹

My dear Bill

For the last few days my thoughts have had rather a vagrant kind of life, and I now lift the pen in the hope that you will prove a rallying point – a kind of temporary bivouac² for the gipsey tribe. Your last arrived³ in due time – your remarks on my style are just. I do write from impulse, or at least the feeling exists anterior to the writing. Why should I write from invention? I am not yet a hireling scribe – I write to please myself, cheered by the hope that what pleases me will please you – for the present I neither seek nor care for the approbation of anyone else. On this subject however I would say a few words: men, Bill, are inheritors of common feelings – these may differ in degree, but there are the same in kind and though external circumstances may conspire to create diversity in this respect, still man is man, and retains much of his originality unto the end of his existence – thus, the poet who is skilful enough to rouse the passion or win the tear of an individual, will in all probability find that his power extends to the multitude – someone sings:–

‘Poetic fire, like vesta's pure and bright,

Should draw from Nature's sun its holy light

With Nature should the musing poet roam,

And steal instruction from her classic tome;

When 'neath her guidance, least inclined to err –

The ablest painter when he copies her’.⁴

Now Bill, if men had not a common nature this advice would be a mere ‘tinkling cymbal’⁵ if each individual stood isolated from the rest of mankind and possessed of feelings peculiar to himself, what would be natural to me might be un-natural to the rest of the world – how are we to copy Nature but by studying our individual relation to her? How are we to know the feelings of mankind in general but by a reference to our own? – this then is my guide. When I write as I feel, I expect that you will feel what I write. But I don’t think you ever intended to dispute this. You say writing from feeling might injure the ‘professional literati’ and I agree with you. Southey⁶ and Scott⁷ published each a work at the same time⁸ – Southey’s feelings lay in favour of an Epic. Scott produced ‘A Lay’ – a year after their publication Southey in writing to a friend mentions that up to that time the profits of his poem amounted to the sum of three pounds fifteen shillings, while Scott's Lay had realized upwards of one thousand pounds! Southey may have copied Nature truly, but unfortunately for his exchequer, he struck a chord which found no response in the heart of the Community.

It would not however be just to judge of a man's merit by the reception of his works. Witness Milton.⁹ Ten pounds for the copyright of John Milton’s works! Is not ‘the physiognomy of a world verging towards dissolution, reduced now to spasms and death-throes pictured in that one fact’!¹⁰ Who will judge of Milton by such a standard? Not I by Heaven!

RI MS JT/2/13a/22

LT Transcript Only