at his mother's house at Liverpool by Mr. Fortunatus Wright. My compliments to Mr. Ellis kindly, and I hope he recovers apace. I beg I may have a line at your leisure, and am, Dear Sir, your most humble servant,
N. B.—I am glad you are a Poet if you will, and hope to see more of your work.
O.S.—Gan gael ohonof gyfle i sybergymmeryd gyda'm gwenllaw gynffon awr rhwng fy mhregeth a'm ciniaw, dyma i chwi hyn o mending neu sarrit. You seem disposed to be a proselyte to the doctrine of a possibility at least, of accommodating our language to an epic poem. This is more than I care to insist upon as yet; but I am confident it is not impracticable. For our language, I am certain, is not inferior for copiousness, pithiness, and significancy, to any other, ancient or modern, that I havo any knowledge of. Where then lies the mighty difficulty of writing such a poem in it? Truly, I cannot see, unless it be in finding a man of genius, that sufficiently understands it, to undertake such a work. That, indeed, is a real difficulty; but all others that I can think of, or ever heard alleged, are but mere bugbears. Our metres, it is true, are but short; not above nine or ten sylables to a line at the longest; mostly seven or eight; but what then? Is it not possible to alter that length, and so remove the inconvenience? or else to join two metres, a longer and a shorter, together? Twenty—four metres, surely, are plenty enough to pick out of. But you will say, "Any innovation in our poetry will not be suffered, much less generally received and imitated." Why so, I pray? Was there not a time when Epic poetry, nay, all poetry, was but a new thing amongst the Greeks and Romans, especially the latter? And how ancient is the date. of Epic poetry amongst our neighbours, the English and French? Not many centuries, I ween! You will say, "We had a poetry amongst us before either of them was a people, or their languages were even formed to what they now are, and therefore we ought not for shame to become imitators of such novices in poetry!" I own we were poets before they were a settled people; so we were Christians too, what then?
