56 PRÆTERITA-I

to finish my volume;-the second, that the adaptation of materials for my story out of Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues* and Manfred, is an extremely perfect type of the inter-woven temper of my mind, at the beginning of days just as much as at their end-which has always made foolish scientific readers doubt my books because there was love of beauty in them, and foolish æsthetic readers doubt my books because there was love of science in them;-the third, that the extremely reasonable method of final judgment, upon which I found my claim to the sensible reader’s respect for these dipartite writings, cannot be better illustrated than by this proof, that, even at seven years old, no tale, however seductive, could “affect” Harry, until he had seen-in the clouds, or elsewhere

“something like it.”

Of the six poems which follow, the first is on the Steam-engine, beginning,

“When furious up from mines the water pours,

And clears from rusty moisture all the ores;”¹

and the last on the Rainbow, “in blank verse,” as being

* The original passage is as follows, vol. vi., edition of 1821, p. 138:-

“Dr. Franklin mentions a remarkable appearance which occurred to Mr. Wilke, a considerable electrician. On the 20th of July, 1758, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he observed a great quantity of dust rising from the ground, and covering a field, and part of the town in which he then was. There was no wind, and the dust moved gently towards the east, where there appeared a great black cloud, which electrified his apparatus positively to a very high degree. This cloud went towards the west, the dust followed it, and continued to rise higher and higher, till it composed a thick pillar, in the form of a sugar-loaf, and at length it seemed to be in contact with the cloud. At some distance from this, there came another great cloud, with a long stream of smaller ones, which electrified his apparatus negatively; and when they came near the positive cloud, a flash of lightning was seen to dart through the cloud of dust, upon which the negative clouds spread very much, and dissolved in rain, which presently cleared the atmosphere.”

¹ [For the rest of this “poem,” perhaps the author’s first piece, see Vol. II pp. 254-255 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]