He sometimes spoke,with a certain zeal,of my starting a Periodical:
Why not lift up some kind of war-flag against the obese platitudes,and sickly superstitious aperies and impostures of the time?But Ihad to answer,"Who will join it,my friend?"He seemed to say,"I,for one;"and there was occasionally a transient temptation in the thought,but transient only.No fighting regiment,with the smallest attempt towards drill,co-operation,commissariat,or the like unspeakable advantages,could be raised in Sterling's time or mine;which truly,to honest fighters,is a rather grievous want.Agrievous,but not quite a fatal one.For,failing this,failing all things and all men,there remains the solitary battle (and were it by the poorest weapon,the tongue only,or were it even by wise abstinence and silence and without any weapon),such as each man for himself can wage while he has life:an indubitable and infinitely comfortable fact for every man!Said battle shaped itself for Sterling,as we have long since seen,chiefly in the poetic form,in the singing or hymning rather than the speaking form;and in that he was cheerfully assiduous according to his light.The unfortunate _Strafford_is far on towards completion;a _Coeur-de-Lion_,of which we shall hear farther,"_Coeur-de-Lion_,greatly the best of all his Poems,"unluckily not completed,and still unpublished,already hangs in the wind.