In spite of all their fervor, I have come to regard reading the Romantic poets as something akin to slogging through the great mystics. You have to keep going on--no matter how the author drones through fifty pages of needless verbosity--you will, in the end, find the jewel that you had hoped to discover in picking up the book. Such is the case with the letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes.

Though one jewel (a description of Shakespeare) comes early--

"'A star' you call him. If he was a star, all the other stage scribblers can hardly be considered a constellation of brass buttons."

--others are buried deep within. Yet with Beddoes, the mining is half the fun. Try staying awake, much less interested in the prose works of certain other Romantics.

Thomas Beddoes was a rather death-obsessed author who unfortunately never figured out that it only takes one point of light to dispel the deepest darkness. Yet for all that, I find a very human persona that is not the least bit inaccessible in his letters. In fact he is, to me at least, very engaging.

Do yourself a favor: pick up a copy of Beddoes' letters and make the acquaintance of this wonderful and tragic man.