Jonathan Wild is assuredly the best of all the fictions in which a villain is throughout the prominent character. But how impossible it is by any force of genius to create a sustained attractive interest for such a groundwork, and how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the more than painful interest, the [Greek: mis_eton], of utter depravity,--Fielding himself felt and endeavoured to mitigate and remedy by the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and too quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral reflection, like the chorus in the Greek tragedy,--admirable specimens as these chapters are of profound irony and philosophic satire. Chap. VI. Book 2, on Hats,[Footnote 1]--brief as it is, exceeds any thing even in Swift's Lilliput, or Tale of the Tub. How forcibly it applies to the Whigs, Tories, and Radicals of our own times. Whether the transposition of Fielding's scorching wit (as B. III. c. xiv.) to the mouth of his hero be objectionable on the ground of incredulus odi', or is to be admired as answering the author's purpose by unrealizing the story, in order to give a deeper reality to the truths intended,--I must leave doubtful, yet myself inclining to the latter judgment. 27th Feb. 1832. [Footnote 1: Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.] [Footnote 2: 'In which our hero makes a speech well worthy to be celebrated; and the behaviour of one of the gang, perhaps more unnatural than any other part of this history.'] BARRY CORNWALL.[1] Barry Cornwall is a poet, 'me saltem judice'; and in that sense of the term, in which I apply it to C. Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the authors of which I should yet not feel impelled so to designate. The faults of these poems are no less things of hope, than the beauties; both are just what they ought to be,--that is, now. If B.C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him, that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledges, so a poet cannot be a great poet, but as being likewise inclusively an historian and naturalist, in the light, as well as the life, of philosophy: all other men's worlds are his chaos. Hints 'obiter' are:-- not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce into effeminacy. Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerisms. To be jealous of fragmentary composition,--as epicurism of genius, and apple-pie made all of quinces. 'Item', that dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and passion,--not thought or passion disguised in the dress of poetry. Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similies, figures, &c. They will all find their place, sooner or later, each as the luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is language,--'ergo' processive,--'ergo' every the smallest star must be seen singly.