W.W.[82]

[80] Vol. i. p. 382.

[81] Philological Museum, edit. Camb. 1832, vol. i. p. 382.

[82] Memoirs, ii. 68-9.

49. On the same: Letters to Earl Lonsdale.

MY LORD,

Many thanks for your obliging letter. I shall be much gratified if you happen to like my translation, and thankful for any remarks with which you may honour me. I have made so much progress with the second book, that I defer sending the former till that is finished. It takes in many places a high tone of passion, which I would gladly succeed in rendering. When I read Virgil in the original I am moved; but not so much so by the translation; and I cannot but think this owing to a defect in the diction, which I have endeavoured to supply, with what success you will easily be enabled to judge.

Ever, my Lord, Most faithfully your obliged friend and servant, WM. WORDSWORTH.[83]

Feb. 5 [1829].

MY LORD,

I am truly obliged by your friendly and frank communication. May I beg that you would add to the favour, by marking with a pencil some of the passages that are faulty, in your view of the case? We seem pretty much of opinion upon the subject of rhyme. Pentameters, where the sense has a close of some sort at every two lines, may be rendered in regularly closed couplets; but hexameters (especially the Virgilian, that run the lines into each other for a great length) cannot. I have long been persuaded that Milton formed his blank verse upon the model of the Georgics and the Aeneid, and I am so much struck with this resemblance, that I should have attempted Virgil in blank verse, had I not been persuaded that no ancient author can be with advantage so rendered. Their religion, their warfare, their course of action and feeling, are too remote from modern interest to allow it. We require every possible help and attraction of sound, in our language, to smooth the way for the admission of things so remote from our present concerns. My own notion of translation is, that it cannot be too literal, provided three faults be avoided: baldness, in which I include all that takes from dignity; and strangeness or uncouthness, including harshness; and lastly, attempts to convey meanings which, as they cannot be given but by languid circumlocutions, cannot in fact be said to be given at all. I will trouble you with an instance in which I fear this fault exists. Virgil, describing Aeneas's voyage, third book, verse 551, says—

'Hinc sinus Herculei, si vera est fama. Tarenti Cernitur.'

[83] Memoirs, ii. 69.

I render it thus:

'Hence we behold the bay that bears the name Of proud Tarentum, proud to share the fame Of Hercules, though by a dubious claim.'

I was unable to get the meaning with tolerable harmony into fewer words, which are more than to a modern reader, perhaps, it is worth.

I feel much at a loss, without the assistance of the marks which I have requested, to take an exact measure of your Lordship's feelings with regard to the diction. To save you the trouble of reference, I will transcribe two passages from Dryden; first, the celebrated appearance of Hector's ghost to Aeneas. Aeneas thus addresses him:

'O light of Trojans and support of Troy, Thy father's champion, and thy country s joy, O long expected by thy friends, from whence Art thou returned, so late for our defence? Do we behold thee, wearied as we are With length of labours and with toils of war? After so many funerals of thy own, Art thou restored to thy declining town?'

This I think not an unfavourable specimen of Dryden's way of treating the solemnly pathetic passages. Yet, surely, here is nothing of the cadence of the original, and little of its spirit. The second verse is not in the original, and ought not to have been in Dryden; for it anticipates the beautiful hemistich,

'Sat patriae Priamoque datum.'

By the by, there is the same sort of anticipation in a spirited and harmonious couplet preceding:

'Such as he was when by Pelides slain Thessalian coursers dragged him o'er the plain.'

This introduction of Pelides here is not in Virgil, because it would have prevented the effect of

'Redit exuvias indutus Achillei.'

There is a striking solemnity in the answer of Pantheus to Aeneas:

'Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus Dardaniae: fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium, et ingens Gloria Teucrorum,' &c.

Dryden thus gives it:

'Then Pantheus, with a groan, Troy is no more, and Ilium was a town. The fatal day, the appointed hour is come When wrathful Jove's irrevocable doom Transfers the Trojan state to Grecian hands. The fire consumes the town, the foe commands.'

My own translation runs thus; and I quote it because it occurred to my mind immediately on reading your Lordship's observations:

'Tis come, the final hour, Th' inevitable close of Dardan power Hath come! we have been Trojans, Ilium was, And the great name of Troy; now all things pass To Argos. So wills angry Jupiter. Amid a burning town the Grecians domineer.'

I cannot say that 'we have been,' and 'Ilium was,' are as sonorous sounds as 'fuimus,' and 'fuit;' but these latter must have been as familiar to the Romans as the former to ourselves. I should much like to know if your Lordship disapproves of my translation here. I have one word to say upon ornament. It was my wish and labour that my translation should have far more of the genuine ornaments of Virgil than my predecessors. Dryden has been very careless of these, and profuse of his own, which seem to me very rarely to harmonise with those of Virgil; as, for example, describing Hector's appearance in the passage above alluded to,

'A bloody shroud, he seemed, and bath'd in tears. I wept to see the visionary man.'

Again,

'And all the wounds he for his country bore Now streamed afresh, and with new purple ran.'

I feel it, however, to be too probable that my translation is deficient in ornament, because I must unavoidably have lost many of Virgil's, and have never without reluctance attempted a compensation of my own. Had I taken the liberties of my predecessors, Dryden especially, I could have translated nine books with the labour that three have cost me. The third book, being of a humbler character than either of the former, I have treated with rather less scrupulous apprehension, and have interwoven a little of my own; and, with permission, I will send it, ere long, for the benefit of your Lordship's observations, which really will be of great service to me if I proceed. Had I begun the work fifteen years ago, I should have finished it with pleasure; at present, I fear it will take more time than I either can or ought to spare. I do not think of going beyond the fourth book.

As to the MS., be so kind as to forward it at your leisure to me, at Sir George Beaumont's, Coleorton Hall, near Ashby, whither I am going in about ten days. May I trouble your Lordship with our respectful compliments to Lady Lonsdale?

Believe [me] ever Your Lordship's faithful And obliged friend and servant, WM. WORDSWORTH.[84]

[84] Memoirs, ii. 69-74.

50. Tour on the Continent, 1820.

LETTERS TO THE EARL OF LONSDALE.

Lucerne, Aug. 19. 1820. MY LORD,

You did me the honour of expressing a wish to hear from me during my continental tour; accordingly, I have great pleasure in writing from this place, where we arrived three days ago. Our route has lain through Brussels, Namur, along the banks of the Meuse, to Liege; thence to Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, and along the Rhine to Mayence, to Frankfort, Heidelberg (a noble situation, at the point where the Neckar issues from steep lofty hills into the plain of the Rhine), Carlsruhe, and through the Black Forest to Schaffhausen; thence to Zurich, Berne, Thun, Interlachen. Here our Alpine tour might be said to commence, which has produced much pleasure thus far, and nothing that deserves the name of difficulty, even for the ladies. From the Valley of Lauterbrunnen we crossed the Wengern Alp to Grindelwald, and then over the grand Sheideck to Meyringen. This journey led us over high ground, and for fifteen leagues along the base of the loftiest Alps, which reared their bare or snow-clad ridges and pikes, in a clear atmosphere, with fleecy clouds now and then settling upon and gathering round them. We heard and saw several avalanches; they are announced by a sound like thunder, but more metallic and musical. This warning naturally makes one look about, and we had the gratification of seeing one falling, in the shape and appearance of a torrent or cascade of foaming water, down the deep-worn crevices of the steep or perpendicular granite mountains. Nothing can be more awful than the sound of these cataracts of ice and snow thus descending, unless it be the silence which succeeds. The elevations from which we beheld these operations of Nature, and saw such an immense range of primitive mountains stretching to the east and west, were covered with rich pasturage and beautiful flowers, among which was abundance of the monkshood, a flower which I had never seen but in the trim borders of our gardens, and which here grew not so much in patches as in little woods or forests, towering above the other plants. At this season the herdsmen are with their cattle in still higher regions than those which we have trod, the herbage where we travelled being reserved till they descend in the autumn. We have visited the Abbey of Engelberg, not many leagues from the borders of the Lake of Lucerne. The tradition is, that the site of the abbey was appointed by angels, singing from a lofty mountain that rises from the plain of the valley, and which, from having been thus honoured, is called Engelberg, or the Hill of the Angels. It is a glorious position for such beings, and I should have thought myself repaid for the trouble of so long a journey by the impression made upon my mind, when I first came in view of the vale in which the convent is placed, and of the mountains that enclose it. The light of the sun had left the valley, and the deep shadows spread over it heightened the splendour of the evening light, and spread upon the surrounding mountains, some of which had their summits covered with pure snow; others were half hidden by vapours rolling round them; and the Rock of Engelberg could not have been seen under more fortunate circumstances, for masses of cloud glowing with the reflection of the rays of the setting sun were hovering round it, like choirs of spirits preparing to settle upon its venerable head.

To-day we quit this place to ascend the mountain Righi. We shall be detained in this neighbourhood till our passports are returned from Berne, signed by the Austrian minister, which we find absolutely necessary to enable us to proceed into the Milanese. At the end of five weeks at the latest, we hope to reach Geneva, returning by the Simplon Pass. There I might have the pleasure of hearing from your Lordship; and may I beg that you would not omit to mention our Westmoreland politics? The diet of Switzerland is now sitting in this place. Yesterday I had a long conversation with the Bavarian envoy, whose views of the state of Europe appear to me very just. This letter must unavoidably prove dull to your Lordship, but when I have the pleasure of seeing you, I hope to make some little amends, though I feel this is a very superficial way of viewing a country, even with reference merely to the beauties of Nature. We have not met with many English; there is scarcely a third part as many in the country as there was last year. A brother of Lord Grey is in the house where we now are, and Lord Ashburton left yesterday. I must conclude abruptly, with kindest remembrances to Lady Lonsdale and Lady Mary. Believe me, my Lord, most faithfully

Your Lordship's WM. WORDSWORTH.

Paris, Oct. 7 [1820], 45 Rue Charlot, Boulevards du Temple.

MY LORD,

I had the honour of writing to your Lordship from Lucerne, 19th of August, giving an account of our movements. We have visited, since, those parts of Switzerland usually deemed most worthy of notice, and the Italian lakes, having stopped four days at Milan, and as many at Geneva. With the exception of a couple of days on the Lake of Geneva, the weather has been most favourable, though frequently during the last fortnight extremely cold. We have had no detention from illness, nor any bad accident, for which we feel more grateful, on account of some of our fellow travellers, who accidentally joined us for a few days. Of these, one, an American gentleman, was drowned in the Lake of Zurich, by the upsetting of a boat in a storm, two or three days after he parted with us; and two others, near the summit of Mount Jura, and in the middle of a tempestuous night, were precipitated, they scarcely knew how far, along with one of those frightful and ponderous vehicles, a continental diligence. We have been in Paris since Sunday last, and think of staying about a fortnight longer, as scarcely less will suffice for even a hasty view of the town and neighbourhood. We took Fontainebleau in our way, and intend giving a day to Versailles. The day we entered Paris we passed a well-drest young man and woman, dragging a harrow through a field, like cattle; nevertheless, working in the fields on the sabbath day does not appear to be general in France. On the same day a wretched-looking person begged of us, as the carriage was climbing a hill. Nothing could exceed his transport in receiving a pair of old pantaloons which were handed out of the carriage. This poor mendicant, the postilion told us, was an ancien Cure. The churches seem generally falling into decay in the country. We passed one which had been recently repaired. I have noticed, however, several young persons, men as well as women, earnestly employed in their devotions, in different churches, both in Paris and elsewhere. Nothing which I have seen in this city has interested me at all like the Jardin des Plantes, with the living animals, and the Museum of Natural History which it includes. Scarcely could I refrain from tears of admiration at the sight of this apparently boundless exhibition of the wonders of the creation. The statues and pictures of the Louvre affect me feebly in comparison. The exterior of Paris is much changed since I last visited it in 1792. I miss many ancient buildings, particularly the Temple, where the poor king and his family were so long confined. That memorable spot, where the Jacobin Club was held, has also disappeared. Nor are the additional buildings always improvements; the Pont des Arts, in particular, injures the view from the Pont Neuf greatly; but in these things public convenience is the main point.

I say nothing of public affairs, for I have little opportunity of knowing anything about them. In respect to the business of our Queen, we deem ourselves truly fortunate in having been out of the country at a time when an inquiry, at which all Europe seems scandalised, was going on.

I have purposely deferred congratulating your Lordship on the marriage of Lady Mary with Lord Frederick Bentinck, which I hear has been celebrated. My wishes for her happiness are most earnest.

With respectful compliments and congratulations to Lady Lonsdale, in which Mrs. Wordsworth begs leave to join,

I have the honour to be, My Lord, Your Lordship's Obliged and faithful friend and servant, WM. WORDSWORTH.[85]

[85] Memoirs, ii. 90-104.

51. Shakespeare's Cliff at Dover.

How strange that the description of Dover Cliff, in King Lear, should ever have been supposed to have been meant for a reality! I know nothing that more forcibly shows the little reflection with which even men of sense read poetry. The cliff cannot be more than 400 feet high; and yet, 'how truly,' exclaims the historian of Dover, 'has Shakespeare described the precipice!' How much better would the historian have done, had he given us its actual elevation![86]

[86] Memoirs, ii. 116.

52. Of Affairs on the Continent, 1828.

LETTER TO A NEPHEW.

Rydal Mount, Nov. 27. 1828.

MY DEAR C——,

It gives me much pleasure to learn that your residence in France has answered so well. As I had recommended the step, I felt more especially anxious to be informed of the result. I have only to regret that you did not tell me whether the interests of a foreign country and a brilliant metropolis had encroached more upon the time due to academical studies than was proper.

As to the revolution which Mr. D—— calculates upon, I agree with him that a great change must take place, but not altogether, or even mainly, from the causes which he looks to, if I be right in conjecturing that he expects that the religionists who have at present such influence over the king's mind will be predominant. The extremes to which they wish to carry things are not sufficiently in the spirit of the age to suit their purpose. The French monarchy must undergo a great change, or it will fall altogether. A constitution of government so disproportioned cannot endure. A monarchy, without a powerful aristocracy or nobility graduating into a gentry, and so downwards, cannot long subsist. This is wanting in France, and must continue to be wanting till the restrictions imposed on the disposal of property by will, through the Code Napoleon, are done away with: and it may be observed, by the by, that there is a bareness, some would call it a simplicity, in that code which unfits it for a complex state of society like that of France, so that evasions and stretchings of its provisions are already found necessary, to a degree which will ere long convince the French people of the necessity of disencumbering themselves of it. But to return. My apprehension is, that for the cause assigned, the French monarchy may fall before an aristocracy can be raised to give it necessary support. The great monarchies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, having not yet been subject to popular revolutions, are still able to maintain themselves, through the old feudal forces and qualities, with something, not much, of the feudal virtues. This cannot be in France; popular inclinations are much too strong—thanks, I will say so far, to the Revolution. How is a government fit for her condition to be supported, but by religion, and a spirit of honour, or refined conscience? Now religion, in a widely extended country plentifully peopled, cannot be preserved from abuse of priestly influence, and from superstition and fanaticism, nor honour be an operating principle upon a large scale, except through property—that is, such accumulations of it, graduated as I have mentioned above, through the community. Thus and thus only can be had exemption from temptation to low habits of mind, leisure for solid education, and dislike to innovation, from a sense in the several classes how much they have to lose; for circumstances often make men wiser, or at least more discreet, when their individual levity or presumption would dispose them to be much otherwise. To what extent that constitution of character which is produced by property makes up for the decay of chivalrous loyalty and strengthens governments, may be seen by comparing the officers of the English army with those of Prussia, &c. How far superior are ours as gentlemen! so much so that British officers can scarcely associate with those of the Continent, not from pride, but instinctive aversion to their low propensities. But I cannot proceed, and ought, my dear C——, to crave your indulgence for so long a prose.

When you see Frere, pray give him my kind regards, and say that he shall hear from me the first frank I can procure. Farewell, with kindest love from all,

Yours, very affectionately, W.W.[87]

[87] Memoirs, ii. 129-131.

53. Style: Francis Edgeworth's 'Dramatic Fragment:' Criticisms. I should say [to your young friend] style is in Poetry of incalculable importance. He seems, however, aware of it, for his diction is obviously studied. Now the great difficulty is to determine what constitutes a good style. In estimating this we are all subject to delusion, not improbably I am so, when it appears to me that the metaphor in the first speech of his dramatic scene is too much drawn out. It does not pass off as rapidly as metaphors ought to do, I think, in dramatic writing. I am well aware that our early dramatists abound with these continuities of imagery, but to me they appear laboured and unnatural, at least unsuited to that species of composition, of which action and motion are the essentials. 'While with the ashes of a light that was,' and the two following lines, are in the best style of dramatic writing. To every opinion thus given always add, I pray you, 'in my judgment,' though I may not, to save trouble or to avoid a charge of false modesty, express it. 'This over-pressure of a heavy pleasure,' &c., is admirable; and, indeed, it would be tedious to praise all that pleases me. Shelley's 'Witch of Atlas' I never saw; therefore the stanza referring to Narcissus and her was read by me to some disadvantage. One observation I am about to make will at least prove I am no flatterer, and will therefore give a qualified value to my praise.

'There was nought there that morn But thrice three antient hills alone.'

Here the word 'alone,' being used instead of only, makes an absurdity like that noticed in the Spectator—'Enter a king and three fidlers solus.'[88]

54. Of the 'Icon Basilike,' &c. LETTER TO SOUTHEY.

MY DEAR S——,

I am ashamed not to have done your message about the Icon to my brother.[89]

[88] Extract of Letter to Professor Hamilton, 12th Feb. 1829, here first printed. G. [F9] This refers to Dr. Wordsworth's volume on the authorship of Icon Basilike. London, 1824.

I have no excuse, but that at that time both my body and my memory were run off their legs. I am very glad you thought the answer[90] appeared to you triumphant, for it had struck me as in the main point, knowledge of the subject, and spirit in the writing, and accuracy in the logic, as one of the best controversial tracts I ever had.

I am glad you have been so busy; I wish I could say so much of myself. I have written this last month, however, about 600 verses, with tolerable success.

Many thanks for the review: your article is excellent. I only wish that you had said more of the deserts of government in respect to Ireland; since I do sincerely believe that no government in Europe has shown better dispositions to its subjects than the English have done to the Irish, and that no country has improved so much during the same period. You have adverted to this part of the subject, but not spoken so forcibly as I could have wished. There is another point might be insisted upon more expressly than you have done—the danger, not to say the absurdity, of Roman Catholic legislation for the property of a Protestant church, so inadequately represented in Parliament as ours is. The Convocation is gone; clergymen are excluded from the House of Commons; and the Bishops are at the beck of Ministers. I boldly ask what real property of the country is so inadequately represented: it is a mere mockery.

Most affectionately yours, W.W.[91]

[90] This alludes to Dr. Wordsworth's second publication, entitled 'King Charles the First the Author of Icon Basilike.' London, 1828.

[91] Memoirs, ii. 132-3.

55. Of the Roman Catholic Question.

LETTER TO G. HUNTLY GORDON, ESQ.

Rydal Mount, Thursday Night, Feb. 26. 1829.

You ask for my opinion on the Roman Catholic Question.

I dare scarcely trust my pen to the notice of the question which the Duke of Wellington tells us is about to be settled. One thing no rational person will deny, that the experiment is hazardous. Equally obvious is it that the timidity, supineness, and other unworthy qualities of the government for many years past have produced the danger, the extent of which they now affirm imposes a necessity of granting all that the Romanists demand. Now, it is rather too much that the country should be called upon to take the measure of this danger from the very men who may almost be said to have created it. Danger is a relative thing, and the first requisite for judging of what we have to dread from the physical force of the Roman Catholics is to be in sympathy with the Protestants. Had our Ministers been so, could they have suffered themselves to be bearded by the Catholic Association for so many years?

C——, if I may take leave to say it, loses sight of things in names, when he says that they should not be admitted as Roman Catholics, but simply as British subjects. The question before us is, Can Protestantism and Popery be coordinate powers in the constitution of a free country, and at the same time Christian belief be in that country a vital principle of action?

I fear not. Heaven grant I may be deceived!

W.W.[92]

[92] Memoirs, ii. 134.

56. Of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill.

LETTER TO THE EARL OF LONSDALE.

Rydal Mount, Wednesday.

MY LORD,

* * * * *

There is one point also delicate to touch upon and hazardous to deal with, but of prime importance in this crisis. The question, as under the conduct of the present Ministers, is closely connecting itself with religion. Now after all, if we are to be preserved from utter confusion, it is religion and morals, and conscience, which must do the work. The religious part of the community, especially those attached to the Church of England, must and do feel that neither the Church as an establishment, nor its points of Faith as a church, nor Christianity itself as governed by Scripture, ought to be left long, if it can be prevented, in the hands which manage our affairs.

But I am running into unpardonable length. I took up the pen principally to express a hope that your Lordship may have continued to see the question in the light which affords the only chance of preserving the nation from several generations perhaps of confusion, and crime, and wretchedness.

Excuse the liberty I have taken, And believe me most faithfully, Your Lordship's Much obliged, W. WORDSWORTH.[93]

[93] Memoirs, ii. 135.

57. Of Ireland and the Poor Laws, &c.

LETTER TO G. HUNTLY GORDON, ESQ.

Rydal Mount, Dec. 1. 1829.

MY DEAR SIR,

You must not go to Ireland without applying to me, as the guide-books for the most part are sorry things, and mislead by their exaggerations. If I were a younger man, and could prevail upon an able artist to accompany me, there are few things I should like better than giving a month or six weeks to explore the county of Kerry only. A judicious topographical work on that district would be really useful, both for the lovers of Nature and the observers of manners. As to the Giant's Causeway and the coast of Antrim, you cannot go wrong; there the interests obtrude themselves on every one's notice.

The subject of the Poor Laws was never out of my sight whilst I was in Ireland; it seems to me next to impossible to introduce a general system of such laws, principally for two reasons: the vast numbers that would have equal claims for relief, and the non-existence of a class capable of looking with effect to their administration. Much is done at present in many places (Derry, for example) by voluntary contributions; but the narrow-minded escape from the burthen, which falls unreasonably upon the charitable; so that assessments in the best-disposed places are to be wished for, could they be effected without producing a greater evil.

The great difficulty that is complained of in the well-managed places is the floating poor, who cannot be excluded, I am told, by any existing law from quartering themselves where they like. Open begging is not practised in many places, but there is no law by which the poor can be prevented from returning to a place which they may have quitted voluntarily, or from which they have been expelled (as I was told). Were it not for this obstacle compulsory local regulations might, I think, be applied in many districts with good effect.

It would be unfair to myself to quit this momentous subject without adding that I am a zealous friend to the great principle of the Poor Laws, as tending, if judiciously applied, much more to elevate than to depress the character of the labouring classes. I have never seen this truth developed as it ought to be in parliament.

The day I dined with Lord F.L. Gower at his official residence in the Phoenix Park, I met there with an intelligent gentleman, Mr. Page, who was travelling in Ireland expressly to collect information upon this subject, which, no doubt, he means to publish. If you should hear of this pamphlet when it comes out procure it, for I am persuaded it will prove well worth reading. Farewell.

Faithfully yours, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.[94]

58. Of the Earl of Lonsdale: Virgil: Book-buying: Gifts of Books: Commentaries.

TWO LETTERS TO THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON WRANGHAM.

Rydal Mount, Feb. 19. 1819.

DEAR WRANGHAM,

I received your kind letter last night, for which you will accept my thanks. I write upon the spur of that mark of your regard, or my aversion to letter-writing might get the better of me.

I find it difficult to speak publicly of good men while alive, especially if they are persons who have power. The world ascribes the eulogy to interested motives, or to an adulatory spirit, which I detest. But of LORD LONSDALE, I will say to you, that I do not think there exists in England a man of any rank more anxiously desirous to discharge his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call him. His thought and exertions are constantly directed to that object; and the more he is known the more is he beloved, and respected, and admired.

[94] Memoirs, ii. 155-6.

I ought to have thanked you before for your version of VIRGIL'S ECLOGUES, which reached me at last. I have lately compared it line for line with the original, and think it very well done. I was particularly pleased with the skill you have shown in managing the contest between the shepherds in the third Pastoral, where you have included in a succession of couplets the sense of Virgil's paired hexameters. I think I mentioned to you that these poems of Virgil have always delighted me much; there is frequently either an elegance or a happiness which no translation can hope to equal. In point of fidelity your translation is very good indeed.

You astonish me with the account of your books; and I should have been still more astonished if you had told me you had read a third (shall I say a tenth part?) of them. My reading powers were never very good, and now they are much diminished, especially by candle-light; and as to buying books, I can affirm that in new books I have not spent five shillings for the last five years, i.e., in Reviews, Magazines, Pamphlets, &c. &c.; so that there would be an end of Mr. Longman, and Mr. Cadell, &c. &c., if nobody had more power or inclination to buy than myself. And as to old books, my dealings in that way, for want of means, have been very trifling. Nevertheless, small and paltry as my collection is, I have not read a fifth part of it. I should, however, like to see your army.

'Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp, When Agrican, with fill his northern powers, Besieged Albracca, as romances tell.'

Not that I accuse you of romancing; I verily believe that you have all the books you speak of. Dear Wrangham, are you and I ever like to meet in this world again? Yours is a corner of the earth; mine is not so. I never heard of anybody going to Bridlington; but all the world comes to the Lakes. Farewell. Excuse this wretched scrawl; it is like all that proceeds from, my miserable pen.

* * * * *

Ever faithfully yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.

DEAR WRANGHAM,

You are very good in sending one letter after another to inquire after a person so undeserving of attentions of this kind as myself. Dr. Johnson, I think, observes, or rather is made to observe by some of his biographers, that no man delights to give what he is accustomed to sell. 'For example: you, Mr. Thrale, would rather part with anything in this way than your porter.' Now, though I have never been much of a salesman in matters of literature (the whole of my returns—I do not say net profits, but returns—from the writing trade, not amounting to seven score pounds), yet, somehow or other, I manufacture a letter, and part with it as reluctantly as if it were really a thing of price. But, to drop the comparison, I have so much to do with writing, in the way of labour and profession, that it is difficult to me to conceive how anybody can take up a pen but from constraint. My writing-desk is to me a place of punishment; and, as my penmanship sufficiently testifies. I always bend over it with some degree of impatience. All this is said that you may know the real cause of my silence, and not ascribe it in any degree to slight or forgetfulness on my part, or an insensibility to your worth and the value of your friendship.... As to my occupations, they look little at the present age; but I live in hope of leaving something behind me that by some minds will be valued.

I see no new books except by the merest accident. Of course your poem, which I should have been pleased to read, has not found its way to me. You inquire about old books: you might almost as well have asked for my teeth as for any of mine. The only modern books that I read are those of Travels, or such as relate to matters of fact; and the only modern books that I care for; but as to old ones, I am like yourself—scarcely anything comes amiss to me. The little time I have to spare—the very little, I may say—all goes that way. If, however, in the line of your profession you want any bulky old Commentaries on the Scriptures (such as not twelve strong men of these degenerate days will venture—I do not say to read, but to lift), I can, perhaps, as a special favour, accommodate you.

I and mine will be happy to see you and yours here or anywhere; but I am sorry the time you talk of is so distant: a year and a half is a long time looking forward, though looking back ten times as much is as brief as a dream. My writing is wholly illegible—at least I fear so; I had better, therefore, release you.

Believe me, my dear Wrangham, Your affectionate friend, W. WORDSWORTH.[95]

59. Poems of Edward Moxon.

LETTER TO MOXON.

(Postmark) Dec. 8. 1826.

DEAR SIR,

It is some time since I received your little volume, for which I now return you my thanks, and also for the obliging letter that accompanied it.

Your poem I have read with no inconsiderable pleasure; it is full of natural sentiments and pleasing pictures: among the minor pieces, the last pleased me much the best, and especially the latter part of it. This little volume, with what I saw of yourself during a short interview, interest me in your welfare; and the more so, as I always feel some apprehension for the destiny of those who in youth addict themselves to the composition of verse. It is a very seducing employment, and, though begun in disinterested love of the Muses, is too apt to connect itself with self-love, and the disquieting passions which follow in the train of that our natural infirmity. Fix your eye upon acquiring independence by honourable business, and let the Muses come after rather than go before. Such lines as the latter of this couplet,

'Where lovely woman, chaste as heaven above. Shines in the golden virtues of her love,'

and many other passages in your poem, give proof of no common-place sensibility. I am therefore the more earnest that you should guard yourself against this temptation.

Excuse this freedom; and believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully,

Your obliged servant, WM. WORDSWORTH.[96]

[95] Memoirs, ii. 205-9.

[96] Ibid. ii. 211-12.

60. Of Hamilton's 'It haunts me yet' and Miss Hamilton's 'Boys' School.'

LETTER TO W.R. HAMILTON, ESQ., OBSERVATORY, NEAR DUBLIN.

Rydal Mount, near Kendal, Sept. 24. 1827.

MY DEAR SIR,

You will have no pain to suffer from my sincerity. With a safe conscience I can assure you that in my judgment your verses are animated with true poetic spirit, as they are evidently the product of strong feeling. The sixth and seventh stanzas affected me much, even to the dimming of my eye and faltering of my voice while I was reading them aloud. Having said this, I have said enough; now for the per contra.

You will not, I am sure, be hurt, when I tell you that the workmanship (what else could be expected from so young a writer?) is not what it ought to be; even in those two affecting stanzas it is not perfect:

'Some touch of human sympathy find way, And whisper that though Truth's and Science' ray With such serene effulgence o'er thee shone.'

Sympathy might whisper, but a 'touch of sympathy' could not. 'Truth's and Science' ray,' for the ray of truth and science, is not only extremely harsh, but a 'ray shone' is, if not absolutely a pleonasm, a great awkwardness: 'a ray fell' or 'shot' may be said, and a sun or a moon or a candle shone, but not a ray. I much regret that I did not receive these verses while you were here, that I might have given you, viva voce, a comment upon them, which would be tedious by letter, and after all very imperfect. If I have the pleasure of seeing you again, I will beg permission to dissect these verses, or any other you may be inclined to show me; but I am certain that without conference with me, or any benefit drawn from my practice in metrical composition, your own high powers of mind will lead you to the main conclusions.

You will be brought to acknowledge that the logical faculty has infinitely more to do with poetry than the young and the inexperienced, whether writer or critic, ever dreams of. Indeed, as the materials upon which that faculty is exorcised in poetry are so subtle, so plastic, so complex, the application of it requires an adroitness which can proceed from nothing but practice, a discernment which emotion is so far from bestowing that at first it is ever in the way of it. Here I must stop: only let me advert to two lines:

'But shall despondence therefore blench my brow, Or pining sorrow sickly ardor o'er.'

These are two of the worst lines in mere expression. 'Blench' is perhaps miswritten for 'blanch;' if not, I don't understand the word. Blench signifies to flinch. If 'blanch' be the word, the next ought to be 'hair.' You cannot here use brow for the hair upon it, because a white brow or forehead is a beautiful characteristic of youth. 'Sickly ardor o'er' was at first reading to me unintelligible. I took 'sickly' to be an adjective joined with 'ardor,' whereas you mean it as a portion of a verb, from Shakspeare, 'Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' But the separation of the parts or decomposition of the word, as here done, is not to be endured.

Let me now come to your sister's verses, for which I thank you. They are surprisingly vigorous for a female pen, but occasionally too rugged, and especially for such a subject; they have also the same faults in expression as your own, but not, I think, in quite an equal degree. Much is to be hoped from feelings so strong, and from a mind thus disposed. I should have entered into particulars with these also, had I seen you after they came into my hands. Your sister is, no doubt, aware that in her poem she has trodden the same ground as Gray, in his 'Ode upon a distant Prospect of Eton College.' What he has been contented to treat in the abstract, she has represented in particular, and with admirable spirit. But again, my dear Sir, let me exhort you (and do you exhort your sister) to deal little with modern writers, but fix your attention almost exclusively upon those who have stood the test of time. You have not leisure to allow of your being tempted to turn aside from the right course by deceitful lights. My household desire to be remembered to you in no formal way. Seldom have I parted, never I was going to say, with one whom after so short an acquaintance, I lost sight of with more regret. I trust we shall meet again, if not [sentence cut off with the autograph]. Postscript. Pray do not forget to remember me to Mr. Otway. I was much pleased with him and with your fellow-traveller Mr. Nimmo, as I should have been, no doubt, with the young Irishman, had not our conversation taken so serious a turn. The passage in Tacitus which Milton's line so strongly resembles is not in the 'Agricola,' nor can I find it, but it exists somewhere.

W. WORDSWORTH.[97]

61. Of Collins, Dyer, Thomson, &c.

LETTER TO REV. ALEXANDER DYCE.

Rydal Mount, Kendal, Jan. 12. 1829.

DEAR SIR,

I regret to hear of the indisposition from which you have been suffering.

That you are convinced[98] gives me great pleasure, as I hope that every other editor of Collins will follow your example. You are at perfect liberty to declare that you have rejected Bell's copy in consequence of my opinion of it; and I feel much satisfaction in being the instrument of rescuing the memory of Collins from this disgrace. I have always felt some concern that Mr. Home, who lived several years after Bell's publication, did not testify more regard for his deceased friend's memory by protesting against this imposition. Mr. Mackenzie is still living; and I shall shortly have his opinion upon the question; and if it be at all interesting, I shall take the liberty of sending it to you.

[97] Memoirs, ii. 212-14, with important additions from the original. G.

[98] i.e. convinced by what Wordsworth had remarked to me, that those portions of Collins's 'Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlanders,' which first appeared in Bell's edition of that Ode, were forgeries. A.D.

Dyer is another of our minor poets—minor as to quantity—of whom one would wish to know more. Particulars about him might still be collected, I should think, in South Wales, his native country, and where in early life he practised as a painter. I have often heard Sir George Beaumont express a curiosity about his pictures, and a wish to see any specimen of his pencil that might survive. If you are a rambler, perhaps you may, at some time or other, be led into Carmarthenshire, and might bear in mind what I have just said of this excellent author.

I had once a hope to have learned some unknown particulars of Thomson, about Jedburgh, but I was disappointed. Had I succeeded, I meant to publish a short life of him, prefixed to a volume containing 'The Seasons,' 'The Castle of Indolence,' his minor pieces in rhyme, and a few extracts from his plays, and his 'Liberty;' and I feel still inclined to do something of the kind. These three writers, Thomson, Collins, and Dyer, had more poetic imagination than any of their contemporaries, unless we reckon Chatterton as of that age. I do not name Pope, for he stands alone, as a man most highly gifted; but unluckily he took the plain when the heights were within his reach.

Excuse this long letter, and believe me,

Sincerely yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.[99]

[99] Memoirs, ii. 214-16.

62. Verses and Counsels.

LETTER TO PROFESSOR HAMILTON, OBSERVATORY, DUBLIN.

Rydal Mount, July 24. 1820.

MY DEAR SIR,

I have been very long in your debt. An inflammation in my eyes cut me off from writing and reading, so that I deem it still prudent to employ an Amanuensis; but I had a more decisive reason for putting off payment, nothing less than the hope that I might discharge my debt in person: it seems better, however, to consult you beforehand. I wish to make a Tour in Ireland, and perhaps along with my daughter, but I am ignorant of so many points, as where to begin, whether it be safe at this rioting period, what is best worth seeing, what mode of travelling will furnish the greatest advantages at the least expense. Dublin of course—the Wicklow mountains—Killarney Lakes—and I think the ruins not far from Limerick would be among my objects, and return by the North; but I can form no conjecture as to the time requisite for this, and whether it would be best to take the steamboat from Liverpool to Cork, beginning there, or to go from Whitehaven to Dublin. To start from Whitehaven by steam to Dublin would suit me as being nearer this place and a shorter voyage; besides my son is settled near Whitehaven, and I could conveniently embark from his abode.

I have read with great pleasure the 'Sketches in Ireland' which Mr. Otway was kind enough to present to me; but many interesting things he speaks of in the West will be quite out of my reach. In short I am as unprepared with Tourists' information as any man can be, and sensible as I am of the very great value of your time, I cannot refrain from begging you to take pity upon my ignorance and to give me some information, keeping in mind the possibility of my having a female companion.

It is time to thank you for the verses you so obligingly sent me.

Your sister's have abundance of spirit and feeling; all that they want is what appears in itself of little moment, and yet is of incalculably great,—that is, workmanship,—the art by which the thoughts are made to melt into each other, and to fall into light and shadow, regulated by distinct preconception of the best general effect they are capable of producing. This may seem very vague to you, but by conversation I think I could make it appear otherwise. It is enough for the present to say that I was much gratified, and beg you would thank your sister for favouring me with the sight of compositions so distinctly marked with that quality which is the subject of them ['Genius']. Your own verses are to me very interesting, and affect me much as evidences of high and pure-mindedness, from which humble-mindedness is inseparable. I like to see and think of you among the stars, and between death and immortality, where three of these poems place you. The 'Dream of Chivalry' is also interesting in another way; but it would be insincere not to say that something of a style more terse, and a harmony more accurately balanced, must be acquired before the bodily form of your verses will be quite worthy of their living soul. You are probably aware of this, tho' perhaps not in an equal degree with myself; nor is it desirable you should, for it might tempt you to labour, which would divert you from subjects of infinitely greater importance.

Many thanks for your interesting account of Mr. Edgeworth. I heartily concur with you in the wish that neither Plato nor any other profane author may lead him from the truths of the Gospel, without which our existence is an insupportable mystery to the thinking mind.

Looking for a reply at your early convenience,

I remain, my dear Sir, faithfully, your obliged WM. WORDSWORTH.[100]

[100] Memoirs, ii. 216-17.

63. 'Annuals' and publishing Roguery.

LETTER TO C. HUNTLY GORDON, ESQ. Rydal Mount, July 29. 1829.

MY DEAR SIR,

I hope you have enjoyed yourself in the country, as we have been doing among our shady woods, and green hills, and invigorated streams. The summer is passing on, and I have not left home, and perhaps shall not; for it is far more from duty than inclination that I quit my dear and beautiful home; and duty pulls two ways. On the one side my mind stands in need of being fed by new objects for meditation and reflection, the more so because diseased eyes have cut me off so much from reading; and, on the other hand, I am obliged to look at the expense of distant travelling, as I am not able to take so much out of my body by walking as heretofore.

I have not got my MS. back from the ——,[101] whose managers have, between them, used me shamefully; but my complaint is principally of the editor, for with the proprietor I have had little direct connection. If you think it worth while, you shall, at some future day, see such parts of the correspondence as I have preserved. Mr. Southey is pretty much in the same predicament with them, though he has kept silence for the present.... I am properly served for having had any connection with such things. My only excuse is, that they offered me a very liberal sum, and that I have laboured hard through a long life, without more pecuniary emolument than a lawyer gets for two special retainers, or a public performer sometimes for two or three songs. Farewell; pray let me hear from 3-011 at your early convenience,

And believe me faithfully your Much obliged WM. WORDSWORTH.[102]

[101] An Annual, to which Wordsworth had been induced to become a contributor.

[102] Memoirs, ii. 217-18.

64. Works of George Peele.

LETTER TO REV. ALEXANDER DYCE.

Rydal Mount, Kendal, Oct. 16. 1829.

MY DEAR SIR,

On my return from Ireland, where I have been travelling a few weeks, I found your present of George Peele's works, and the obliging letter accompanying it; for both of which I offer my cordial thanks.

English literature is greatly indebted to your labours; and I have much pleasure in this occasion of testifying my respect for the sound judgment and conscientious diligence with which you discharge your duty as an editor. Peele's works were well deserving of the care you have bestowed upon them; and, as I did not previously possess a copy of any part of them, the beautiful book which you have sent me was very acceptable.

By accident, I learned lately that you had made a Book of Extracts, which I had long wished for opportunity and industry to execute myself. I am happy it has fallen into so much better hands. I allude to your Selections from the Poetry of English Ladies. I had only a glance at your work; but I will take this opportunity of saying, that should a second edition be called for, I should be pleased with the honour of being consulted by you about it. There is one poetess to whose writings I am especially partial, the Countess of Winchelsea. I have perused her poems frequently, and should be happy to name such passages as I think most characteristic of her genius, and most fit to be selected.

I know not what to say about my intended edition of a portion of Thomson. There appears to be some indelicacy in one poet treating another in that way. The example is not good, though I think there are few to whom the process might be more advantageously applied than to Thomson. Yet, so sensible am I of the objection, that I should not have entertained the thought, but for the expectation held out to me by an acquaintance, that valuable materials for a new Life of Thomson might be procured. In this I was disappointed.

With much respect, I remain, dear Sir, Sincerely yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.[103]

[103] Memoirs, ii. 219-220.

65. Of Lady Winchelsea, Tickell, &c.: Sonnets, &c.

LETTER TO REV. ALEXANDER DYCE.

Rydal Mount, Kendal, May 10. 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,

My last was, for want of room, concluded so abruptly, that I avail myself of an opportunity of sending you a few additional words free of postage, upon the same subject.

I observed that Lady Winchelsea was unfortunate in her models—Pindarics and Fables; nor does it appear from her Aristomenes that she would have been more successful than her contemporaries, if she had cultivated tragedy. She had sensibility sufficient for the tender parts of dramatic writing, but in the stormy and tumultuous she would probably have failed altogether. She seems to have made it a moral and religious duty to control her feelings lest they should mislead her. Of love, as a passion, she is afraid, no doubt from a conscious inability to soften it down into friendship. I have often applied two lines of her drama (p. 318) to her affections:

'Love's soft bands, His gentle cords of hyacinths and roses, Wove in the dewy Spring when storms are silent.'

By the by, in the next page are two impassioned lines spoken to a person fainting:

'Then let me hug and press thee into life, And lend thee motion from my beating heart.'

From the style and versification of this, so much her longest work, I conjecture that Lady Winchelsea had but a slender acquaintance with the drama of the earlier part of the preceding century. Yet her style in rhyme is often admirable, chaste, tender, and vigorous, and entirely free from sparkle, antithesis, and that overculture, which reminds one, by its broad glare, its stiffness, and heaviness, of the double daisies of the garden, compared with their modest and sensitive kindred of the fields. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I think there is a good deal of resemblance in her style and versification to that of Tickell, to whom Dr. Johnson justly assigns a high place among the minor poets, and of whom Goldsmith rightly observes, that there is a strain of ballad-thinking through all his poetry, and it is very attractive. Pope, in that production of his boyhood, the 'Ode to Solitude,' and in his 'Essay on Criticism,' has furnished proofs that at one period of his life he felt the charm of a sober and subdued style, which he afterwards abandoned for one that is, to my taste at least, too pointed and ambitious, and for a versification too timidly balanced.

If a second edition of your 'Specimens' should be called for, you might add from Helen Maria Williams the 'Sonnet to the Moon,' and that to 'Twilight;' and a few more from Charlotte Smith, particularly,

'I love thee, mournful, sober-suited Night.'

At the close of a sonnet of Miss Seward are two fine verses:

'Come, that I may not hear the winds of night. Nor count the heavy eave-drops as they fall.'

You have well characterised the poetic powers of this lady; but, after all, her verses please me, with all their faults, better than those of Mrs. Barbauld, who, with much higher powers of mind, was spoiled as a poetess by being a dissenter, and concerned with a dissenting academy. One of the most pleasing passages in her poetry is the close of the lines upon 'Life,' written, I believe, when she was not less than eighty years of age:

'Life, we have been long together,' &c.[104]

You have given a specimen of that ever-to-be-pitied victim of Swift, 'Vanessa.' I have somewhere a short piece of hers upon her passion for Swift, which well deserves to be added. But I am becoming tedious, which you will ascribe to a well-meant endeavour to make you some return for your obliging attentions.

I remain, dear Sir, faithfully yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.[105]

[104] It was on hearing these lines repeated by his friend, Mr. H.C. Robinson, that Wordsworth exclaimed, 'Well! I am not given to envy other people their good things; but I do wish I had written that.' He much admired Mrs. Barbauld's Essays, and sent a copy of them, with a laudatory letter upon them, to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[105] Memoirs, ii. 220-22.

66. Hamilton's 'Spirit of Beauty:' Verbal Criticism: Female Authorship: Words.

Where there is so much sincerity of feeling in a matter so dignified as the renunciation of poetry for science, one feels that an apology is necessary for verbal criticism. I will therefore content myself with observing that 'joying' for joy or joyance is not to my taste. Indeed I object to such liberties upon principle. We should soon have no language at all if the unscrupulous coinage of the present day were allowed to pass, and become a precedent for the future. One of the first duties of a Writer is to ask himself whether his thought, feeling, or image cannot be expressed by existing words or phrases, before he goes about creating new terms, even when they are justified by the analogies of the language. 'The cataract's steep flow' is both harsh and inaccurate: 'thou hast seen me bend over the cataract' would express one idea in simplicity and all that was required. Had it been necessary to be more particular, 'steep flow' are not the words that ought to have been used. I remember Campbell says in a composition that is overrun with faulty language, 'And dark as winter was the flow of Iser rolling rapidly;' that is, 'flowing rapidly.' The expression ought to have been 'stream' or 'current...' These may appear to you frigid criticisms, but depend upon it no writings will live in which these rules are disregarded....

Female authorship is to be shunned as bringing in its train more and heavier evils than have presented themselves to your sister's ingenuous mind. No true friend I am sure will endeavour to shake her resolution to remain in her own quiet and healthful obscurity. This is not said with a view to discourage her from writing, nor have the remarks made above any aim of the kind; they are rather intended to assist her in writing with more permanent satisfaction to herself. She will probably write less in proportion as she subjects her feelings to logical forms, but the range of her sensibilities so far from being narrowed will extend as she improves in the habit of looking at things thro' a steady light of words; and, to speak a little metaphysically, words are not a mere vehicle, but they are powers either to kill or animate.[106]

[106] Extract of letter to Professor Hamilton, Dublin, Dec. 23d, 1829.

67. His 'Play:' Hone: Eyesight failing, &c.

TO CHARLES LAMB, ESQ. Jan. 10. 1830. MY DEAR LAMB,

A whole twelvemonth have I been a letter in your debt, for which fault I have been sufficiently punished by self-reproach.

I liked your Play marvellously, having no objection to it but one, which strikes me as applicable to a large majority of plays, those of Shakspeare himself not entirely excepted—I mean a little degradation of character for a more dramatic turn of plot. Your present of Hone's book was very acceptable; and so much so, that your part of the book is the cause why I did not write long ago. I wished to enter a little minutely into notice of the dramatic extracts, and, on account of the smallness of the print, deferred doing so till longer days would allow me to read without candle-light, which I have long since given up. But, alas! when the days lengthened, my eyesight departed, and for many months I could not read three minutes at a time. You will be sorry to hear that this infirmity still hangs about me, and almost cuts me off from reading altogether. But how are you, and how is your dear sister? I long much, as we all do, to know.

For ourselves, this last year, owing to my sister's dangerous illness, the effects of which are not yet got over, has been an anxious one and melancholy. But no more of this. My sister has probably told everything about the family; so that I may conclude with less scruple, by assuring you of my sincere and faithful affection for you and your dear sister.

WM. WORDSWORTH.[107]

68. Summer: Mr. Quillinan: Draining, &c.

LETTER TO G. HUNTLY GORDON, ESQ.

Rydal Mount, April 6. 1830.

MY DEAR MR. GORDON,

You are kind in noticing with thanks my rambling notes.[108]

We have had here a few days of delicious summer weather.

[107] Memoirs, ii. 223.

[108] On a proposed tour.

It appeared with the suddenness of a pantomimic trick, stayed longer than we had a right to expect, and was as rapidly succeeded by high wind, bitter cold, and winter snow, over hill and dale.

I am not surprised that you are so well pleased with Mr. Quillinan. The more you see of him the better you will like him. You ask what are my employments. According to Dr. Johnson they are such as entitle me to high commendation, for I am not only making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, but a dozen. In plain language, I am draining a bit of spungy ground.[109] In the field where this goes on I am making a green terrace that commands a beautiful view of our two lakes, Rydal and Windermere, and more than two miles of intervening vale with the stream visible by glimpses flowing through it. I shall have great pleasure in showing you this among the other returns which I hope one day to make for your kindness.

Adieu, yours, W.W.[110]

69. Works of Webster, &c.: Elder Poets: Dr. Darwin: 'Excursion:' Collins, &c.

LETTER TO REV. ALEXANDER DYCE.

[No date, but Postmark, 1830.]

I am truly obliged, my dear Sir, by your valuable present of Webster's Dramatic Works and the 'Specimens.'[111] Your publisher was right in insisting upon the whole of Webster, otherwise the book might have been superseded, either by an entire edition separately given to the world, or in some corpus of the dramatic writers. The poetic genius of England, with the exception of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and a very few more, is to be sought in her drama. How it grieves one that there is so little probability of those valuable authors being read except by the curious! I questioned my friend Charles Lamb whether it would answer for some person of real taste to undertake abridging the plays that are not likely to be read as wholes, and telling such parts of the story in brief abstract as were ill managed in the drama. He thought it would not. I, however, am inclined to think it would.

[109] In the field to the S.W. below the garden at Rydal.

[110] Memoirs, ii. 224.

[111] Specimens of British Poetesses. A.D.

The account of your indisposition gives me much concern. It pleases me, however, to see that, though you may suffer, your industry does not relax; and I hope that your pursuits are rather friendly than injurious to your health.

You are quite correct in your notice of my obligation to Dr. Darwin.[112] In the first edition of the poem it was acknowledged in a note, which slipped out of its place in the last, along with some others. In putting together that edition, I was obliged to cut up several copies; and, as several of the poems also changed their places, some confusion and omission, and, in one instance, a repetition, was the consequence. Nothing, however, so bad as in the edition of 1820, where a long poem, 'The Lament of Mary Queen of Scots,' was by mistake altogether omitted. Another unpleasantness arose from the same cause; for, in some instances, notwithstanding repeated charges to the printer, you have only two Spenserian stanzas in a page (I speak now of the last edition) instead of three; and there is the same irregularity in printing other forms of stanza.

You must indeed have been fond of that ponderous quarto, 'The Excursion,' to lug it about as you did.[113] In the edition of 1827 it was diligently revised, and the sense in several instances got into less room; yet still it is a long poem for these feeble and fastidious times. You would honour me much by accepting a copy of my poetical works; but I think it better to defer offering it to you till a new edition is called for, which will be ere long, as I understand the present is getting low.

[112] In Mr. W.'s lines 'To Enterprise.' A.D.

[113] I had mentioned to Mr. W. that, when I had a curacy in Cornwall, I used frequently to carry 'The Excursion' down to the sea-shore, and read it there. A.D.

A word or two about Collins. You know what importance I attach to following strictly the last copy of the text of an author; and I do not blame you for printing in the 'Ode to Evening' 'brawling' spring; but surely the epithet is most unsuitable to the time, the very worst, I think, that could have been chosen.

I now come to Lady Winchelsea. First, however, let me say a few words upon one or two other authoresses of your 'Specimens.' British poetesses make but a poor figure in the 'Poems by Eminent Ladies.'[114]

[114] Two volumes, 1755. A.D.

But observing how injudicious that selection is in the case of Lady Winchelsea, and of Mrs. Aphra Behn (from whose attempts they are miserably copious), I have thought something better might have been chosen by more competent persons who had access to the volumes of the several writers. In selecting from Mrs. Pilkington, I regret that you omitted (look at p. 255) 'Sorrow,' or at least that you did not abridge it. The first and third paragraph are very affecting. See also 'Expostulation,' p. 258: it reminds me strongly of one of the Penitential Hymns of Burns. The few lines upon St. John the Baptist, by Mrs. Killigrew (vol. ii. p. 6), are pleasing. A beautiful Elegy of Miss Warton (sister to the poets of that name) upon the death of her father, has escaped your notice; nor can I refer you to it. Has the Duchess of Newcastle written much verse? her Life of her Lord, and the extracts in your book, and in the 'Eminent Ladies,' are all that I have seen of hers. The 'Mirth and Melancholy' has so many fine strokes of imagination, that I cannot but think there must be merit in many parts of her writings. How beautiful those lines, from 'I dwell in groves,' to the conclusion, 'Yet better loved, the more that I am known,' excepting the four verses after 'Walk up the hills.' And surely the latter verse of the couplet,

'The tolling bell which for the dead rings out; A mill where rushing waters run about;'

is very noticeable: no person could have hit upon that union of images without being possessed of true poetic feeling. Could you tell me anything of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu more than is to be learned from Pope's letters and her own? She seems to have been destined for something much higher and better than she became. A parallel between her genius and character and that of Lady Winchelsea her contemporary (though somewhat prior to her) would be well worth drawing.

And now at last for the poems of Lady Winchelsea. I will transcribe a note from a blank leaf of my own edition, written by me before I saw the scanty notice of her in Walpole. (By the by, that book has always disappointed me when I have consulted it upon any particular occasion.) The note runs thus: 'The "Fragment," p. 280, seems to prove that she was attached to James II., as does p. 42, and that she suffered by the Revolution. The most celebrated of these poems, but far from the best, is "The Spleen." "The Petition for an absolute Retreat," and the "Nocturnal Reverie," are of much superior merit. See also for favourable specimens, p. 156; "On the Death of Mr. Thynne," p. 263; and p. 280, "Fragment." The Fable of "Love, Death, and Reputation," p. 29, is ingeniously told.' Thus far my own note. I will now be more particular. P. 3, 'Our Vanity,' &c., and p. 163 are noticeable as giving some account from herself of her authorship. See also p. 148, where she alludes to 'The Spleen.' She was unlucky in her models, Pindaric Odes and French Fables. But see p. 70, 'The Blindness of Elymas,' for proof that she could write with powers of a high order when her own individual character and personal feelings were not concerned. For less striking proofs of this power, see p. 4, 'All is Vanity,' omitting verses 5 and 6, and reading 'clouds that are lost and gone,' &c. There is merit in the two next stanzas; and the last stanza towards the close contains a fine reproof for the ostentation of Louis XIV., and one magnificent verse,

'Spent the astonished hours, forgetful to adore.'

But my paper is nearly out. As far as 'For my garments,' p. 36, the poem is charming; it then falls off; revives at p. 39, 'Give me there;' p. 41, &c., reminds me of Dyer's 'Grongar Hill;' it revives p. 47, towards the bottom, and concludes with sentiments worthy of the writer, though not quite so happily expressed as other parts of the poem. See pages 82, 92, 'Whilst in the Muses' paths I stray;' p. 113. 'The Cautious Lovers,' p. 118, has little poetic merit, but is worth reading as characteristic of the author. P. 143, 'Deep lines of honour,' &c., to 'maturer age.' P. 151, if shortened, would be striking; p. 154, characteristic; p. 159, from 'Meanwhile, ye living parents,' to the close, omitting 'Nor could we hope,' and the five following verses; p. 217, last paragraph; p. 259, that you have;[115] pp. 262, 263; p. 280, Was Lady W. a R. Catholic? p. 290, 'And to the clouds proclaim thy fall;' p. 291, omit 'When scatter'd glow-worms,' and the next couplet. I have no more room. Pray, excuse this vile scrawl.

Ever faithfully yours, W.W.

P.S. I have inconsiderately sent your letter to my daughter (now absent), without copying the address. I knew the letter would interest her. I shall direct to your publisher.[116]

Rydal Mount.

[115] Mr. W. means, that I have inserted that poem in my 'Specimens.' A.D.

[116] Memoirs, ii. 225-30.

70. French Revolution, 1830.

LETTERS TO G. HUNTLY GORDON, ESQ.

MY DEAR MR. GORDON,

* * * * *

I cannot but deeply regret that the late King of France and his ministers should have been so infatuated. Their stupidity, not to say their crimes, has given an impulse to the revolutionary and democratic spirit throughout Europe which is premature, and from which much immediate evil may be apprehended, whatever things may settle into at last. Whereas had the Government conformed to the increasing knowledge of the people, and not surrendered itself to the counsels of the priests and the bigoted Royalists, things might have been kept in an even course, to the mutual improvement and benefit of both governed and governors.

In France incompatible things are aimed at—a monarchy and democracy to be united without an intervening aristocracy to constitute a graduated scale of power and influence. I cannot conceive how an hereditary monarchy can exist without an hereditary peerage in a country so large as France, nor how either can maintain their ground if the law of the Napoleon Code, compelling equal division of property by will, be not repealed. And I understand that a vast majority of the French are decidedly adverse to the repeal of that law, which, I cannot but think, will ere long be found injurious both to France and, in its collateral effects, to the rest of Europe.

Ever, dear Mr. Gordon, Cordially and faithfully yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.

MY DEAR MR. GORDON,

Thanks for your hint about Rhenish: strength from wine is good, from water still better.

* * * * *

One is glad to see tyranny baffled and foolishness put to shame; but the French King and his ministers will be unfairly judged by all those who take not into consideration the difficulties of their position. It is not to be doubted that there has long existed a determination, and that plans have been laid, to destroy the Government which the French received, as they felt, at the hands of the Allies, and their pride could not bear. Moreover, the Constitution, had it been their own choice, would by this time have lost favour in the eyes of the French, as not sufficiently democratic for the high notion that people entertain of their fitness to govern themselves; but, for my own part, I'd rather fill the office of a parish beadle than sit on the throne where the Duke of Orleans has suffered himself to be placed.

The heat is gone, and but that we have too much rain again the country would be enchanting.

With a thousand thanks, I remain ever yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.[117]

71. Nonsense: Rotten Boroughs: Sonnets: Pegasus: Kenelm Digby: Tennysons.

LETTERS TO PROFESSOR HAMILTON.

Trinity Lodge, Cambridge, November 26. 1830.

MY DEAR MR. HAMILTON,

I reached this place nine days ago, where I should have found your letter of the 23d ult., but that it had been forwarded to Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire, where we stopped a week on our road. I am truly glad to find that your good spirits put you upon writing what you call nonsense, and so much of it; but I assure you it all passed with me for very agreeable sense, or something better, and continues to do so even in this learned spot; which you will not be surprised to hear, when I tell you that at a dinner-party the other day, I heard a Head of a House, a clergyman also, gravely declare, that the rotten boroughs, as they are called, should instantly be abolished without compensation to their owners; that slavery should be destroyed with like disregard of the claims (for rights he would allow none) of the proprietors, and a multitude of extravagances of the same sort. Therefore say I, Vive la Bagatelle; motley is your only wear.

[117] Memoirs, ii. 230-1.

You tell me kindly that you have often asked yourself where is Mr. Wordsworth, and the question has readily been solved for you. He is at Cambridge: a great mistake! So late as the 5th of November, I will tell you where I was, a solitary equestrian entering the romantic little town of Ashford in the Waters, on the edge of Wilds of Derbyshire, at the close of day, when guns were beginning to be left [let?] off and squibs to be fired on every side. So that I thought it prudent to dismount and lead my horse through the place, and so on to Bakewell, two miles farther. You must know how I happened to be riding through these wild regions. It was my wish that Dora should have the benefit of her pony while at Cambridge, and very valiantly and economically I determined, unused as I am to horsemanship, to ride the creature myself. I sent James with it to Lancaster; there mounted; stopped a day at Manchester, a week at Coleorton, and so reached the end of my journey safe and sound, not, however, without encountering two days of tempestuous rain. Thirty-seven miles did I ride in one day through the worse of these storms. And what was my resource? guess again: writing verses to the memory of my departed friend Sir George Beaumont, whose house I had left the day before. While buffetting the other storm I composed a Sonnet upon the splendid domain at Chatsworth, which I had seen in the morning, as contrasted with the secluded habitations of the narrow dells in the Park; and as I passed through the tame and manufacture-disfigured country of Lancashire I was reminded by the faded leaves, of Spring, and threw off a few stanzas of an ode to May.

But too much of self and my own performances upon my steed—a descendant no doubt of Pegasus, though his owner and present rider knew nothing of it. Now for a word about Professor Airey. I have seen him twice; but I did not communicate your message. It was at dinner and at an evening party, and I thought it best not to speak of it till I saw him, which I mean to do, upon a morning call.

There is a great deal of intellectual activity within the walls of this College, and in the University at large; but conversation turns mainly upon the state of the country and the late change in the administration. The fires have extended to within 8 miles of this place; from which I saw one of the worst, if not absolutely the worst, indicated by a redness in the sky—a few nights ago.

I am glad when I fall in with a member of Parliament, as it puts me upon writing to my friends, which I am always disposed to defer, without such a determining advantage. At present we have two members, Mr. Cavendish, one of the representatives of the University, and Lord Morpeth, under the Master's roof. We have also here Lady Blanche, wife of Mr. Cavendish, and sister of Lord Morpeth. She is a great admirer of Mrs. Hemans' poetry. There is an interesting person in this University for a day or two, whom I have not yet seen—Kenelm Digby, author of the 'Broadstone of Honor,' a book of chivalry, which I think was put into your hands at Rydal Mount. We have also a respectable show of blossom in poetry. Two brothers of the name of Tennison, in particular, are not a little promising. Of science I can give you no account; though perhaps I may pick up something for a future letter, which may be long in coming for reasons before mentioned. Mrs. W. and my daughter, of whom you inquire, are both well; the latter rides as often as weather and regard for the age of her pony will allow. She has resumed her German labours, and is not easily drawn from what she takes to. Therefore I hope Miss Hamilton will not find fault if she does not write for some time, as she will readily conceive that with this passion upon her, and many engagements, she will be rather averse to writing. In fact she owes a long letter to her brother in Germany, who, by the bye, tells us that he will not cease to look out for the Book of Kant you wished for. Farewell, with a thousand kind remembrances to yourself and sister, and the rest of your amiable family, in which Mrs. W. and Dora join.

Believe me most faithfully yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.[118]

[118] Here first printed. G.

72. Verses: 'Reform Bill:' Francis Edgeworth: Eagles: 'Yarrow Revisited.'

Rydal Mount, Oct. 27 [1831].

MY DEAR MR. HAMILTON,

A day or two before my return from Scotland arrived your letter and verses; for both of which I thank you, as they exhibit your mind under those varied phases which I have great pleasure in contemplating. My reply is earlier than it would have been, but for the opportunity of a frank from one of the Members for the University of Oxford—a friend of Mr. Southey's and mine, who by way of recreating himself after the fatigues of the last Session, had taken a trip to see the Manchester railway, and kindly and most unexpectedly came on to give a day apiece to Southey and me. He is, like myself, in poor heart at the aspect of public affairs. In his opinion the Ministers when they brought in the Bill neither expected nor wished it to be carried. All they wanted was an opportunity of saying to the people, 'Behold what great things we would have done for you had it been in our power: we must now content ourselves with the best we can get.' But, to return to your letter. To speak frankly, you appear to be at least three-fourths gone in love; therefore, think about the last quarter in the journey. The picture you give of the lady makes one wish to see her more familiarly than I had an opportunity of doing, were it only to ascertain whether, as you astronomers have in your observatories magnifying glasses for the stars, you do not carry about with you also, when you descend to common life, coloured glasses and Claude Loraine mirrors for throwing upon objects that interest you enough for the purpose, such lights and hues as may be most to the taste of the intellectual vision. In a former letter you mention Francis Edgeworth. He is a person not to be forgotten. If you be in communication with him pray present him my very kind respects, and say that he was not unfrequently in my thoughts during my late poetic rambles; and particularly when I saw the objects which called forth a Sonnet that I shall send you. He was struck with my mention of a sound in the eagle's notes, much and frequently resembling the yelping and barking of a dog, and quoted a passage in Eschylus where the eagle is called the flying hound of the air, and he suggested that Eschylus might not only allude by that term to his being a bird of chase or prey, but also to this barking voice, which I do not recollect ever hearing noticed. The other day I was forcibly reminded of the circumstances under which the pair of eagles were seen that I described in the letter to Mr. Edgeworth, his brother. It was the promontory of Fairhead, on the coast of Antrim, and no spectacle could be grander. At Dunally Castle, a ruin seated at the tip of one of the horns of the bay of Oban, I saw the other day one of these noble creatures cooped up among the ruins, and was incited to give vent to my feelings as you shall now see:

'Dishonoured Rock and Ruin! that by law Tyrannic, keep the Bird of Jove imbarred, Like a lone criminal whose life is spared. Vexed is he and screams loud:—The last I saw Was on the wing, and struck my soul with awe, Now wheeling low, then with a consort paired, From a bold headland their loved aery's guard, Flying, above Atlantic waves,—to draw Light from the fountain of the setting sun. Such was this prisoner once; and, when his plumes The sea-blast ruffles as the storm comes on, In spirit, for a moment he resumes His rank 'mong free-born creatures that live free; His power, his beauty, and his majesty.'

You will naturally wish to hear something of Sir Walter Scott, and particularly of his health. I found him a good deal changed within the last three or four years, in consequence of some shocks of the apoplectic kind; but his friends say that he is very much better, and the last accounts, up to the time of his going on board, were still more favourable. He himself thinks his age much against him, but he has only completed his 60th year. But a friend of mine was here the other day, who has rallied, and is himself again, after a much severer shock, and at an age several years more advanced. So that I trust the world and his friends may be hopeful, with good reason, that the life and faculties of this man, who has during the last six and twenty years diffused more innocent pleasure than ever fell to the lot of any human being to do in his own life-time, may be spared. Voltaire, no doubt, was full as extensively known, and filled a larger space probably in the eye of Europe; for he was a great theatrical writer, which Scott has not proved himself to be, and miscellaneous to that degree, that there was something for all classes of readers: but the pleasure afforded by his writings, with the exception of some of his Tragedies and minor Poems, was not pure, and in this Scott is greatly his superior.

As Dora has told your sister, Sir W. was our guide to Yarrow. The pleasure of that day induced me to add a third to the two poems upon Yarrow, 'Yarrow Revisited.' It is in the same measure, and as much in the same spirit as matter of fact would allow. You are artist enough to know that it is next to impossible entirely to harmonise things that rest upon their poetic credibility, and are idealised by distance of time and space, with those that rest upon the evidence of the hour, and have about them the thorny points of actual life. I am interrupted by a stranger, and a gleam of fine weather reminds me also of taking advantage of it the moment I am at liberty, for we have had a week of incessant rain.

[Ever faithfully yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.][119]

[119] Memoirs, ii. 241-2. Given completely (instead of the brief extract) from the original. The autograph, &c. cut away. G.

73. Tour in Scotland.

LETTER TO LADY FREDERICK BENTINCK.

Rydal Mount, Nov. 9.

MY DEAR LADY FREDERICK,

* * * * *

You are quite right, dear Lady F., in congratulating me on my late ramble in Scotland. I set off with a severe inflammation in one of my eyes, which was removed by being so much in the open air; and for more than a month I scarcely saw a newspaper, or heard of their contents. During this time we almost forgot, my daughter and I, the deplorable state of the country. My spirits rallied, and, with exercise—for I often walked scarcely less than twenty miles a day—and the employment of composing verses, amid scenery the most beautiful, and at a season when the foliage was most rich and varied, the time flew away delightfully; and when we came back into the world again, it seemed as if I had waked from a dream, that never was to return. We travelled in an open carriage with one horse, driven by Dora; and while we were in the Highlands I walked most of the way by the side of the carriage, which left us leisure to observe the beautiful appearances. The rainbows and coloured mists floating about the hills were more like enchantment than anything I ever saw, even among the Alps. There was in particular, the day we made the tour of Loch Lomond in the steamboat, a fragment of a rainbow, so broad, so splendid, so glorious, with its reflection in the calm water, it astonished every one on board, a party of foreigners especially, who could not refrain from expressing their pleasure in a more lively manner than we are accustomed to do. My object in going to Scotland so late in the season was to see Sir Walter Scott before his departure. We stayed with him three days, and he quitted Abbotsford the day after we left it. His health has undoubtedly been much shattered, by successive shocks of apoplexy, but his friends say he is so much recovered, that they entertain good hopes of his life and faculties being spared. Mr. Lockhart tells me that he derived benefit by a change of his treatment made by his London physicians, and that he embarked in good spirits.

As to public affairs, I have no hope but in the goodness of Almighty God. The Lords have recovered much of the credit they had lost by their conduct in the Roman Catholic question. As an Englishman I am deeply grateful for the stand which they have made, but I cannot help fearing that they may be seduced or intimidated. Our misfortune is, that the disapprovers of this monstrous bill give way to a belief that nothing can prevent its being passed; and therefore they submit.

As to the cholera, I cannot say it appals me much; it may be in the order of Providence to employ this scourge for bringing the nation to its senses; though history tells us in the case of the plague at Athens, and other like visitations, that men are never so wicked and depraved as when afflictions of that kind are upon them. So that, after all, one must come round to our only support, submission to the will of God, and faith in the ultimate goodness of His dispensations.

I am sorry you did not mention your son, in whose health and welfare, and progress in his studies, I am always much interested. Pray remember me kindly to Lady Caroline. All here join with me in presenting their kindest remembrances to yourself; and believe me, dear Lady Frederick,

Faithfully and affectionately yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.[120]

[120] Memoirs, ii. 242-4.

74. Sir Walter Scott.

EXTRACT OF LETTER TO MRS. HEMANS.

Rydal Mount, Aug. 20. 1833.

The visit which occasioned the poem ['Yarrow Revisited'] addressed to Sir Walter Scott, that you mention in terms so flattering, was a very melancholy one. My daughter was with me. We arrived at his house on Monday noon, and left it at the same time on Thursday, the very day before he quitted Abbotsford for London, on his way to Naples. On the morning of our departure he composed a few lines for Dora's Album, and wrote them in it. We prize this memorial very much, and the more so as an affecting testimony of his regard at a time when, as the verses prove, his health of body and powers of mind were much impaired and shaken. You will recollect the little green book which you were kind enough to write in on its first page.

Let me hope that your health will improve, so that you may be enabled to proceed with the sacred poetry with which you are engaged. Be assured that I shall duly appreciate the mark of honour you design for me in connection with so interesting a work.[121]

[121] Memoirs, ii. 244.

75. Of Advices that he would write more in Prose.

LETTER TO REV. J.K. MILLER, VICAR OF WALKERINGHAM.

Rydal Mount, Kendal, Dec. 17. 1831.

MY DEAR SIR,

You have imputed my silence, I trust, to some cause neither disagreeable to yourself nor unworthy of me. Your letter of the 26th of Nov. had been misdirected to Penrith, where the postmaster detained it some time, expecting probably that I should come to that place, which I have often occasion to visit. When it reached me I was engaged in assisting my wife to make out some of my mangled and almost illegible MSS., which inevitably involved me in endeavours to correct and improve them. My eyes are subject to frequent inflammations, of which I had an attack (and am still suffering from it) while that was going on. You would nevertheless have heard from me almost as soon as I received your letter, could I have replied to it in terms in any degree accordant to my wishes. Your exhortations troubled me in a way you cannot be in the least aware of; for I have been repeatedly urged by some of my most valued friends, and at times by my own conscience, to undertake the task you have set before me. But I will deal frankly with you. A conviction of my incompetence to do justice to the momentous subject has kept me, and I fear will keep me, silent. My sixty-second year will soon be completed, and though I have been favoured thus far in health and strength beyond most men of my age, yet I feel its effects upon my spirits; they sink under a pressure of apprehension to which, at an earlier period of my life, they would probably have been superior. There is yet another obstacle: I am no ready master of prose writing, having been little practised in the art. This last consideration will not weigh with you; nor would it have done with myself a few years ago; but the bare mention of it will serve to show that years have deprived me of courage, in the sense the word bears when applied by Chaucer to the animation of birds in spring time.

What I have already said precludes the necessity of otherwise confirming your assumption that I am opposed to the spirit you so justly characterise.[122] To your opinions upon this subject, my judgment (if I may borrow your own word) 'responds.' Providence is now trying this empire through her political institutions. Sound minds find their expediency in principles; unsound, their principles in expediency. On the proportion of these minds to each other the issue depends. From calculations of partial expediency in opposition to general principles, whether those calculations be governed by fear or presumption, nothing but mischief is to be looked for; but, in the present stage of our affairs, the class that does the most harm consists of well-intentioned men, who, being ignorant of human nature, think that they may help the thorough-paced reformers and revolutionists to a certain point, then stop, and that the machine will stop with them. After all, the question is, fundamentally, one of piety and morals; of piety, as disposing men who are anxious for social improvement to wait patiently for God's good time; and of morals, as guarding them from doing evil that good may come, or thinking that any ends can be so good as to justify wrong means for attaining them. In fact, means, in the concerns of this life, are infinitely more important than ends, which are to be valued mainly according to the qualities and virtues requisite for their attainment; and the best test of an end being good is the purity of the means, which, by the laws of God and our nature, must be employed in order to secure it. Even the interests of eternity become distorted the moment they are looked at through the medium of impure means. Scarcely had I written this, when I was told by a person in the Treasury, that it is intended to carry the Reform Bill by a new creation of peers. If this be done, the constitution of England will be destroyed, and the present Lord Chancellor, after having contributed to murder it, may consistently enough pronounce, in his place, its eloge funebre!

[122] As revolutionary.

I turn with pleasure to the sonnets you have addressed to me and if I did not read them with unqualified satisfaction it was only from consciousness that I was unworthy of the enconiums they bestowed upon me.

Among the papers I have lately been arranging are passages that would prove as forcibly as anything of mine that has been published, you were not mistaken in your supposition that it is the habit of my mind inseparably to connect loftiness of imagination with that humility of mind which is best taught in Scripture.

Hoping that you will be indulgent to my silence, which has been, from various causes, protracted contrary to my wish,

Believe me to be, dear Sir, Very faithfully yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.[123]

[123] Memoirs, ii. 252-4.

76. Of Poetry and Prose: Milton and Shakspeare: Reform, &c.

LETTER TO PROFESSOR HAMILTON, DUBLIN.

Nov. 22. 1831.

MY DEAR MR. HAMILTON,

You send me showers of verses, which I receive with much pleasure, as do we all; yet have we fears that this employment may seduce you from the path of Science, which you seem destined to tread with so much honour to yourself and profit to others. Again and again I must repeat, that the composition of verse is infinitely more of an art than men are prepared to believe; and absolute success in it depends upon innumerable minutiae, which it grieves me you should stoop to acquire a knowledge of. Milton talks of 'pouring easy his unpremeditated verse.' It would be harsh, untrue, and odious, to say there is anything like cant in this; but it is not true to the letter, and tends to mislead. I could point out to you five hundred passages in Milton upon which labour has been bestowed, and twice five hundred more to which additional labour would have been serviceable. Not that I regret the absence of such labour, because no poem contains more proofs of skill acquired by practice. These observations are not called out by any defects or imperfections in your last pieces especially: they are equal to the former ones in effect, have many beauties, and are not inferior in execution; but again I do venture to submit to your consideration, whether the poetical parts of your nature would not find a field more favourable to their exercise in the regions of prose: not because those regions are humbler, but because they may be gracefully and profitably trod with footsteps less careful and in measures less elaborate. And now I have done with the subject, and have only to add, that when you write verses you would not fail, from time to time, to let me have a sight of them; provided you will allow me to defer criticism on your diction and versification till we meet. My eyes are so often useless both for reading and writing, that I cannot tax the eyes and pens of others with writing down observations which to indifferent persons must be tedious.

Upon the whole, I am not sorry that your project of going to London at present is dropped. It would have grieved me had you been unfurnished with an introduction from me to Mr. Coleridge; yet I know not how I could have given you one—he is often so very unwell. A few weeks ago he had had two attacks of cholera, and appears to be so much broken down that unless I were assured he was something in his better way I could not disturb him by the introduction of any one. His most intimate friend is Mr. Green, a man of science and a distinguished surgeon. If to him you could procure an introduction he would let you know the state of Coleridge's health; and to Mr. Green, whom I once saw, you might use my name with a view to further your wish, if it were at all needful.

Shakspeare's sonnets (excuse this leap) are not upon the Italian model, which Milton's are; they are merely quatrains with a couplet tacked to the end; and if they depended much upon the versification they would unavoidably be heavy.

One word upon Reform in Parliament, a subject to which, somewhat reluctantly, you allude. You are a Reformer! Are you an approver of the Bill as rejected by the Lords? or, to use Lord Grey's words, anything 'as efficient?'—he means, if he means anything, for producing change. Then I earnestly entreat you to devote hours and hours to the study of human nature, in books, in life, and in your own mind; and beg and pray that you would mix with society, not in Ireland and Scotland only, but in England; a fount of destiny which, if once poisoned, away goes all hope of quiet progress in well doing. The constitution of England, which seems about to be destroyed, offers to my mind the sublimest contemplation which the history of society and government have ever presented to it; and for this cause especially, that its principles have the character of preconceived ideas, archetypes of the pure intellect, while they are, in fact, the results of a humble-minded experience. Think about this, apply it to what we are threatened with, and farewell.

WM. WORDSWORTH.[124]

77. Of the Reform Bill.

EXTRACT OF LETTER TO LORD LONSDALE.

Rydal Mount, Feb. 17. 1832.

MY LORD,

* * * * *

If, after all, I should be asked how I would myself vote, if it had been my fortune to have a seat in the House of Lords, I must say that I should oppose the second reading, though with my eyes open to the great hazard of doing so. My support, however, would be found in standing by a great principle; for, without being unbecomingly personal, I may state to your Lordship, that it has ever been the habit of my mind to trust that expediency will come out of fidelity to principles, rather than to seek my principles of action in calculations of expediency.

[124] Memoirs, ii. 255-7, with important additions from the original. G.

With this observation I conclude, trusting your Lordship will excuse my having detained you so long.

I have the honour to be, most faithfully, Your much obliged, WM. WORDSWORTH.[125]

78. Of Political Affairs.

EXTRACT OF LETTER TO LADY FREDERICK BENTINCK.

You were not mistaken in supposing that the state of public affairs has troubled me much. I cannot see how the government is to be carried on, but by such sacrifices to the democracy as will, sooner or later, upset everything. Whoever governs, it will be by out-bidding for popular favour those who went before them. Sir Robert Peel was obliged to give way in his government to the spirit of Reform, as it is falsely called; these men are going beyond him; and if ever he shall come back, it will only, I fear, be to carry on the movement, in a shape somewhat less objectionable than it will take from the Whigs. In the mean while the Radicals or Republicans are cunningly content to have this work done ostensibly by the Whigs, while in fact they themselves are the Whigs' masters, as the Whigs well know; but they hope to be preserved from destruction by throwing themselves back upon the Tories when measures shall be urged upon them by their masters which they may think too desperate. What I am most afraid of is, alterations in the constituency, and in the duration of Parliament, which will bring it more and more under the dominion of the lower and lowest classes. On this account I fear the proposed Corporation Reform, as a step towards household suffrage, vote by ballot, &c. As to a union of the Tories and Whigs in Parliament, I see no prospect of it whatever. To the great Whig lords may be truly applied the expression in Macbeth,