1814._
"Dear Hogg,--I am truly obliged to you for the
solicitude which you express concerning the treatment
'Roderick' may experience in the _Edinburgh Review_,
and truly gratified by it, notwithstanding my perfect
indifference as to the object in question. But you
little know me, if you imagine that any thoughts of
fear or favour would make me abstain from speaking
publicly of Jeffrey as I think, and as he deserves. I
despise his commendation, and I defy his malice. _He_
crush the 'Excursion!!!'[33] Tell him that he might as
easily crush Skiddaw. For myself, _popularity_ is not
the mark I shoot at; if it were, I should not write
such poems as 'Roderick;' and Jeffrey can no more stand
in my way to _fame_, than Tom Thumb could stand in my
way in the street.
"He knows that he has dealt unfairly and maliciously by
me; he knows that the world knows it, that his very
friends know it, and that if he attacks 'Roderick' as
he did 'Madoc' and 'Kehama,' it will be universally
imputed to personal ill-will. On the other hand, he
cannot commend this poem without the most flagrant
inconsistency. This would be confessing that he has
wronged me in the former instances; for no man will
pretend to say that 'Madoc' does not bear marks of the
same hand as 'Roderick;' it has the same character of
language, thought, and feeling; it is of the same ore
and mint; and if the one poem be bad, the other cannot
possibly be otherwise.
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