Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 4).djvu/43

Rh but Simonides, that flatterer of the Sicilian tyrants, and at the same time the most natural and tender of lyric poets.

What pleasure would it have given me if the wings of imagination could have divided the space which divides us, and I could have been of your party. I have seen nothing so beautiful as Virginia Water in its kind. And my thoughts for ever cling to Windsor Forest, and the copses of Marlow, like the clouds which hang upon the woods of the mountains, low trailing, and though they pass away, leave their best dew when they themselves have faded. You tell me that you have finished Nightmare Abbey. I hope that you have given the enemy no quarter. Remember, it is a sacred war. We have found an excellent quotation in Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour. I will transcribe it, as I do not think you have these plays at Marlow.

"Matthew. Oh, it's your only fine humour, sir. Your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir. I am melancholy myself divers times, sir; and then do I no more but take pen and paper presently, and overflow you half a score or a dozen of sonnets at a sitting.

"Ed. Knowell. Sure he utters them by the gross.

"Stephen. Truly, sir; and I love such things out of measure.

"Ed. Knowell. I' faith, better than in measure, I'll undertake.