We walked out on the turf terrace, on th_The Prose Works of William Wordsworth For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.

Most exquisitely did the lake and opposite bank look. Thence he led me

home under Loughrigg, through lovely spots I had never seen before. His

conversation was on critical subjects, arising out of his attempts to

alter his poems. He said he considered 'The White Doe' as, in

conception, the highest work he had ever produced. The mere physical

action was all unsuccessful; but the true action of the poem was

spiritual--the subduing of the will, and all inferior passions, to the

perfect purifying and spiritualising of the intellectual nature; while

the Doe, by connection with Emily, is raised as it were from its mere

animal nature into something mysterious and saint-like. He said he

should devote much labour to perfecting the execution of it in the mere

business parts, in which, from anxiety 'to get on' with the more

important parts, he was sensible that imperfections had crept in, which

gave the style a feebleness of character.

He talked of Milton, and observed how he sometimes indulged himself, in

the 'Paradise Lost,' in lines which, if not in time, you could hardly

call verse, instancing,

'And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old;'

and then noticed the sweet-flowing lines which followed, and with regard

to which he had no doubt the unmusical line before had been inserted.

'Paradise Regained' he thought the most perfect in _execution_ of

anything written by Milton; that and the 'Merchant of Venice,' in

language, he thought were almost faultless: with the exception of some

little straining in some of the speeches about the caskets, he said,

they were perfect, the genuine English expressions of the ideas of

their own great minds. Thomson he spoke of as a real poet, though it

appeared less in his 'Seasons' than in his other poems. He had wanted

some judicious adviser to correct his taste; but every person he had to

deal with only served to injure it. He had, however, a true love and

feeling for Nature, and a greater share of poetical imagination, as

distinguished from dramatic, than any man between Milton and him. As he

stood looking at Ambleside, seen across the valley, embosomed in wood,

and separated from us at sufficient distance, he quoted from Thomson's

'Hymn on Solitude,' and suggested the addition, or rather insertion, of

a line at the close, where he speaks of glancing at London from Norwood.

The line, he said, should have given something of a more favourable

impression:

'Ambition---- [242] and pleasure vain.'

_October 14th, Foxhow_.--We have had a delightful day to-day. The

weather being fine, Wordsworth agreed to go with us into Easedale; so we

got three ponies, for Mary and Madge, and Fred and Alley, alternately,

and walked from Grasmere, he _trudging_[243] before, with his green

gauze shade over his eyes, and in his plaid jacket and waistcoat. First,

he turned aside at a little farm-house, and took us into a swelling

field, to look down on the tumbling stream which bounded it, and which

we saw precipitated at a distance, in a broad white sheet, from the

mountain. A beautiful water-break of the same stream was before us at

our feet, and he noticed the connection which it formed in the landscape

with the distant waterfall. Then, as he mused for an instant, he said,

'I have often thought what a solemn thing it would be, if we could have

brought to our mind, at once, all the scenes of distress and misery,

which any spot, however beautiful and calm before us, has been witness

to since the beginning. That water-break, with the glassy, quiet pool

beneath it, that looks so lovely, and presents no images to the mind but

of peace,--there, I remember, the only son of his father, a poor man,

who lived yonder, was drowned. He missed him, came to search, and saw

his body dead in the pool.' We pursued our way up the stream, not a very

easy way for the horses, near to the waterfall before mentioned, and so

gradually up to the Tarn. Oh, what a scene! The day one of the softest

and brightest in autumn; the lights various; the mountains in the

richest colouring, fern covering them with reddish gold in great part;

here and there, trees in every variety of autumn foliage; and the rock

itself of a kind of lilac tint; the outlines of the mountains very fine;

the Tarn, which might almost be called a lake for size and abundance of

water, with no culture, or trees, or habitation around it, here and

there a great rock stretching into it like a promontory, and high

mountains surrounding it on three sides, on two of them almost

precipitate; on the fourth side, it is more open, and on this the

stream, crossed by four great stepping-stones, runs out of it, and

descends into Grasmere vale and lake. He pointed out the precipitous

mountain at the head of the Tarn, and told us an incident of his sister

and himself coming from Langdale, which lies on the other side. He

having for some reason parted, she encountered a fog, and was

bewildered. At last, she sat down and waited; in a short time it began

to clear; she could see that a valley was before her. In time, she saw

the backs of cattle feeding, which emerged from the darkness, and at

last the Tarn; and then found she had stopped providentially, and was

sitting nearly on the edge of the precipice. Our return was somewhat

more perilous for the riders than the ascent; but we accomplished it

safely, and, in our return, turned in Butterlip How, a circular, soft,

green hill, surrounded with oak trees, at the head of Grasmere. It is

about twenty acres, and belongs to a London banker, purchased, as I

suppose, with a view to building on it. It is a lovely spot for a house,

with delicious views of the lake and church, Easedale, Helm Crag, &c. I

have seen no place, I think, on which I should so much like to build my

retreat.

[242] I cannot fill the blank. J.T.C.

[243] I used the word _trudging_ at the time; it denoted to me his bold

way of walking. J.T.C.

_October 16th_.--Since church, we have taken our last walk with

Wordsworth. M. was mounted on Dora W.'s pony. He led us up on Loughrigg,

round to the Tarn, by the back of Loughrigg to the foot of Grasmere

Lake, and so home by this side of Rydal; the weather warm and fine, and

a lovely walk it was. The views of the mountains, Langdale Way, the Tarn

itself and its banks, and the views on Grasmere and Rydal Waters, are

almost beyond anything I have seen, even in this country.

He and Mrs. W. came this evening to bid us farewell. We parted with

great, I believe mutual, regret; certainly they have been kind to us in

a way and degree which seemed unequivocally to testify good liking to

us, and them it is impossible not to love. The more I have seen of

Wordsworth, the more I admire him as a poet and as a man. He has the

finest and most discriminating feeling for the beauties of Nature that I

ever witnessed; he expresses himself in glowing and yet manly language

about them. There is much simplicity in his character, much _naÔvetÈ_,

but it is all generous and highly moral.[244]

[244] _Memoirs_, ii. 300-15.

* * * * *

(_c_) RECOLLECTIONS OF TOUR IN ITALY, BY H.C. ROBINSON.

Oct. 18. 1850.

MY DEAR SIR,

I feel quite ashamed, I assure you, of sending you the Itinerary of my

journey with Mr. Wordsworth, so poorly accompanied as it must be, and

the more, because Mr. Wordsworth seems to have thought that I might be

able to make a contribution to your work worth your acceptance. At the

same time, I am much relieved by recollecting that he himself cared

nothing for the connection which a place might have with a great poet,

unless an acquaintance with it served to illustrate his works. He made

this remark in the Church of St. Onofrio at Rome, where Tasso lies

buried. The place which, on this account, interested him more than any

other on the journey was _Vaucluse_, while he cared nothing for Arezzo,

which claims to be the place of Petrarch's birth. Indeed, a priest on

the spot, on another visit, said it is not certain that he was born

there, much less in the house marked with his name. Mr. W. was not

without the _esprit de corps_, even before his official dignity, and

took great interest in Savona, on account of Chiabrera, as appears in

the 'Musings near Aquapendente,' perhaps the most beautiful of these

Memorials of the Italian tour--'alas too few!' As he himself repeatedly

said of the journey, 'It is too late.' 'I have matter for volumes,' he

said once, 'had I but youth to work it up.' It is remarkable how in this

admirable poem meditation predominates over observation. It often

happened that objects of universal attraction served chiefly to bring

back to his mind absent objects dear to him. When we were on that noble

spot, the Amphitheatre at Nismes, I observed his eyes fixed in a

direction where there was the least to be seen; and, looking that way, I

beheld two very young children at play with flowers; and I overheard him

say to himself, 'Oh! you darlings, I wish I could put you in my pocket

and carry you to Rydal Mount.'

It was Mr. Theed, the sculptor, who informed us of the pine tree being

the gift of Sir George Beaumont. This incident occurred within a few

minutes after our walking up the Pincian Hill. And this was the very

first observation Mr. W. made at Rome.

It was a remark justly made on the Memorials of the Swiss Journey in

1820, that Mr. W. left unnoticed the great objects which have given rise

to innumerable common-place verses and huge piles of bad prose, and

which every body talks about, while he dwelt on impressions peculiar to

himself. As a reproach, nothing can be more idle and unmeaning. I

expected it would be so with these latter poems, and so I found it.

There are not more than two others which bring anything to my mind.

The most important of these is the 'Cuckoo at Laverna.' I recollect

perfectly well that I heard the cuckoo at Laverna twice before he heard

it; and that it absolutely fretted him that my ear was first favoured;

and that he exclaimed with delight, 'I hear it! I hear it!' It was at

Laverna, too, that he led me to expect that he had found a subject on

which he would write; and that was the love which birds bore to St.

Francis. He repeated to me a short time afterwards a few lines, which I

do not recollect among those he has written on St. Francis in this poem.

On the journey, one night only I heard him in bed composing verses, and

on the following day I offered to be his amanuensis; but I was not

patient enough, I fear, and he did not employ me a second time. He made

inquiries for St. Francis's biography, as if he would dub him his

Leib-heiliger (body-saint), as Goethe (saying that every one must have

one) declared St. Philip Neri to be his.

The painter monk at Camaldoli also interested him, but he heard my

account only in addition to a _very poor_ exhibition of professional

talent; but he would not allow the pictures to be so very poor, as

every nun ought to be beautiful when she takes the veil.

I recollect, too, the pleasure he expressed when I said to him, 'You are

now sitting in Dante's chair.' It faces the south transept of the

cathedral at Florence.

I have been often asked whether Mr. W. wrote anything on the journey,

and my answer has always been, 'Little or nothing.' Seeds were cast into

the earth, and they took root slowly. This reminds me that I once was

privy to the conception of a sonnet, with a distinctness which did not

once occur on the longer Italian journey. This was when I accompanied

him into the Isle of Man. We had been drinking tea with Mr. and Mrs.

Cookson, and left them when the weather was dull. Very soon after

leaving them we passed the church tower of Bala Sala. The upper part of

the tower had a sort of frieze of yellow lichens. Mr. W. pointed it out

to me, and said, 'It's a perpetual sunshine.' I thought no more of it,

till I read the beautiful sonnet,

'Broken in fortune, but in mind entire;'[245]

and then I exclaimed, I was present at the conception of this sonnet, at

least of the combination of thought out of which it arose.

I beg to subscribe myself, with sincere esteem,

Faithfully yours,

H.C. ROBINSON.[246]

[245] See _Memoirs_, ii. 246.

[246] _Ibid._ ii. 329-32.

* * * * *

(_d_) REMINISCENCES OF WORDSWORTH.

BY LADY RICHARDSON, AND MRS. DAVY, OF THE OAKS, AMBLESIDE.

(1.) LADY RICHARDSON.

Lancrigg, Easedale, August 26. 1841.

Wordsworth made some striking remarks on Goethe in a walk on the terrace

yesterday. He thinks that the German poet is greatly overrated, both in

this country and his own. He said, 'He does not seem to me to be a great

poet in either of the classes of poets. At the head of the first class I

would place Homer and Shakspeare, whose universal minds are able to

reach every variety of thought and feeling without bringing their own

individuality before the reader. They infuse, they breathe life into

every object they approach, but you never find _themselves_. At the head

of the second class, those whom you can trace individually in all they

write, I would place Spenser and Milton. In all that Spenser writes you

can trace the gentle affectionate spirit of the man; in all that Milton

writes you find the exalted sustained being that he was. Now in what

Goethe writes, who aims to be of the first class, the _universal_, you

find the man himself, the artificial man, where he should not be found;

so consider him a very artificial writer, aiming to be universal, and

yet constantly exposing his individuality, which his character was not

of a kind to dignify. He had not sufficiently clear moral perceptions to

make him anything but an artificial writer.

Tuesday, the 2d of May, Wordsworth and Miss F. came early to walk about

and dine. He was in a very happy kindly mood. We took a walk on the

terrace, and he went as usual to his favourite points. On our return he

was struck with the berries on the holly tree, and said, 'Why should not

you and I go and pull some berries from the other side of the tree,

which is not seen from the window? and then we can go and plant them in

the rocky ground behind the house.' We pulled the berries, and set forth

with our tool. I made the holes, and the Poet put in the berries. He was

as earnest and eager about it, as if it had been a matter of importance;

and as he put the seeds in, he every now and then muttered, in his low

solemn tone, that beautiful verse from Burns's 'Vision:'

'And wear thou this, she solemn said,

And bound the holly round my head.

The polished leaves and berries red

Did rustling play;

And like a passing thought she fled

In light away.'

He clambered to the highest rocks in the 'Tom Intake,' and put in the

berries in such situations as Nature sometimes does with such true and

beautiful effect. He said, 'I like to do this for posterity. Some people

are selfish enough to say, What has posterity done for me? but the past

does much for us.'

(II.) ADDITIONAL SENT TO THE PRESENT EDITOR BY LADY RICHARDSON.

_August 28th_, 1841.--Mr. Wordsworth, Miss Fenwick, and Mrs. Hill came

to dine, and it rained on the whole day, but happily the Poet talked on

from two to eight without being weary, as we certainly were not. After

dinner, when we came to the drawing-room, the conversation turned on the

treatment of Wordsworth by the reviews of the day. I had never heard him

open out on it before, and was much struck with the manner in which he

did it; from his present elevation looking calmly back on the past, and

at the same time feeling that an irreparable injury had been done to him

at the time when life and hope were young. As nearly as I can I shall

record his words as they were spoken. He said:

'At the time I resolved to dedicate myself to poetry and separate myself

from the ordinary lucrative professions, it would certainly have been a

great object to me to have reaped the profits I should have done from my

writings but for the stupidity of Mr. Gifford and the impertinence of

Mr. Jeffrey. It would have enabled me to purchase many books which I

could not obtain, and I should have gone to Italy earlier, which I never

could afford to do until I was sixty-five, when Moxon gave me a thousand

pounds for my writings. This was the only kind of injury Mr. Jeffrey did

me, for I immediately perceived that his mind was of that kind that his

individual opinion on poetry was of no consequence to me whatever, that

it was only by the influence his periodical exercised at the time in

preventing my poems being read and sold that he could injure me; for

feeling that my writings were founded on what was true and spiritual in

human nature, I knew the time would come when they must be known, and I

never therefore felt his opinion of the slightest value, except in

preventing the young of that generation from receiving impressions which

might have been of use to them through life. I say this, I hope not in a

boasting spirit, but I am now daily surprised by receiving letters from

various places at home and abroad expressive of gratitude to me from

persons I never saw or heard of. As this occurs now, I may fairly

conclude that it might have been so when the poems appeared, but for the

tyranny exercised over public opinion by the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly

Reviews_.'

_December_ 1841.--Wordsworth and Miss Fenwick spent the shortest day of

the year with us; he brought with him his Epitaph on Southey, and as we

sat round the fire after dinner, my mother asked him to read it to us,

which he did in his usual impressive manner. He asked our impression of

it. My mother ventured to tell him of one word, or rather two, which she

thought might be altered with advantage. They were these:

'Wide was his range, but ne'er in human breast

Did private feeling find a holier nest.'

'Holier nest' were the words she objected to, as not being a correct

union of ideas. He took the suggestion most kindly, and said it had been

much discussed in his own mind and in his family circle, but that he saw

the force of what she said, and that he was aware many others would see

it also. He said there was yet time to change it, and that he should

consult Judge Coleridge whether the line, as he once had it,

'Did private feeling meet in holier rest,'

would not be more appropriate to the simplicity of an epitaph where you

con every word, and where every word is expected to bear an exact

meaning. We all thought this was an improvement. During tea he talked

with great animation of the separation of feeling between the rich and

poor in this country; the reason of this he thinks is the greater

freedom we enjoy; that the line of demarcation not being so clearly laid

down in this country by the law as in others, people fancy they must

make it for themselves. He considers Christianity the only cure for this

state of things. He spoke of his own desire to carry out the feeling of

brotherhood with regard to servants, which he all along endeavoured to

do. He doubted whether he might not have had better servants on a

different system; but he thought it right to endeavour to inspire your

domestics with a feeling of common interest. My mother said she entirely

agreed with him, but she had always found it most difficult.

(III.) LADY RICHARDSON (CONTINUED).

_November_ 1843.--Wordsworth holds the critical power very low,

infinitely lower than the inventive; and he said to-day that if the

quantity of time considered in writing critiques on the works of others

were given to original composition, of whatever kind it might be, it

would be much better employed; it would make a man find out sooner his

own level, and it would do infinitely less mischief. A false or

malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of others; a stupid

invention, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless.

_December_ 22_d_, 1843.--The shortest day is past, and it was a very

pleasant one to us, for Wordsworth and Miss Fenwick offered to spend it

with us. They came early, and, although it was misty and dingy, he

proposed to walk up Easedale. We went by the terrace, and through the

little gate on the Fell, round by Brimmer Head, having diverged a little

up from Easedale, nearly as far as the ruined cottage. He said, when he

and his sister wandered there so much, that cottage was inhabited by a

man of the name of Benson, a waller, its last inhabitant. He said on the

terrace, 'This is a striking anniversary to me; for this day forty-four

years ago, my sister and I took up our abode at Grasmere, and three days

after we found out this walk, which long remained our favourite haunt.'

There is always something very touching in his way of speaking of his

sister; the tones of his voice become more gentle and solemn, and he

ceases to have that flow of expression which is so remarkable in him on

all other subjects. It is as if the sadness connected with her present

condition was too much for him to dwell upon in connection with the

past, although habit and the 'omnipotence of circumstance' have made its

daily presence less oppressive to his spirits. He said that his sister

spoke constantly of their early days, but more of the years they spent

together in other parts of England than those at Grasmere. As we

proceeded on our walk he happened to speak of the frequent unhappiness

of married persons, and the low and wretched principles on which the

greater number of marriages were formed. He said that unless there was a

strong foundation of love and respect, the 'unavoidable breaks and

cataracts' of domestic life must soon end in mutual aversion, for that

married life ought not to be in theory, and assuredly it never was in

practice, a system of mere submission on either side, but it should be a

system of mutual cooperation for the good of each. If the wife is always

expected to conceal her difference of opinion from her husband, she

ceases to be an equal, and the man loses the advantage which the

marriage tie is intended to provide for him in a civilised and

Christian country. He then went on to say, that, although he never saw

an amiable single woman without wishing that she were married, from his

strong feeling of the happiness of a well-assorted marriage, yet he was

far from thinking that marriage always improved people. It certainly did

not, unless it was a congenial marriage.[247]

(IV.) Mrs. DAVY.

'The Oaks, Ambleside, Monday, Jan. 22. 1844.

While Mrs. Quillinan was sitting with us to-day, Henry Fletcher ran in

to say that he had reserved his summons for Oxford (he had been in

suspense about rooms as an exhibitioner at Balliol), and must be off

within an hour. His young cousins and I went down with him to wait for

the mail in the marketplace. We found Mr. Wordsworth walking about

before the post-office door in very charming mood. His spirits were

excited by the bright morning sunshine, and he entered at once on a full

flow of discourse. He looked very benevolently on Henry as he mounted on

the top of the coach, and seemed quite disposed to give an old man's

blessing to the young man entering on an untried field, and then (nowise

interrupted by the hurrying to and fro of ostlers with their smoking

horses, or passengers with their carpet bags) he launched into a

dissertation, in which there was, I thought, a remarkable union of his

powerful diction, and his practical, thoughtful good sense, on the

subject of college habits, and of his utter distrust of all attempts to

nurse virtue by an avoidance of temptation. He expressed also his entire

want of confidence (from experience he said) of highly-wrought religious

expression in youth. The safest training for the mind in religion he

considered to be a contemplating of the character and personal history

of Christ. 'Work it,' he said, 'into your thoughts, into your

imagination, make it a real presence in the mind.' I was rejoiced to

hear this plain, loving confession of a Christian faith from Wordsworth.

I never heard one more earnest, more as if it came out of a devoutly

believing heart.

[247] The close of Lady Richardson's 'Reminiscences' here in the

_Memoirs_ is not given, as being more fully introduced under December

1841, p. 438. The repetition of the same sentiments in 1843, however, is

noticeable. For a vivid and sweetly toned paper on Wordsworth by Lady

Richardson--based on the _Memoirs_--see _Sharpe's London Magazine_ for

March 1853, pp. 148-55. G.

The Oaks, March 5. 1844.

On our way to Lancrigg to-day, we called at Foxhow. We met Mr.

Wordsworth there, and asked him to go with us. It was a beautiful day,

one of his very own 'mild days' of this month. He kindly consented, and

walked with us to meet the carriage at Pelter Bridge. On our drive, he

mentioned, with marked pleasure, a dedication written by Mr. Keble, and

sent to him for his approval, and for his permission to have it prefixed

to Mr. Keble's new volumes of Latin Lectures on Poetry delivered at

Oxford. Mr. Wordsworth said that he had never seen any estimate of his

poetical powers, or more especially of his aims in poetry, that appeared

to him so discriminating and so satisfactory. He considers praise a

perilous and a difficult thing. On this subject he often quotes his

lamented friend, Sir George Beaumont, whom, in his intercourse with men

of genius, literary aspirants, he describes as admirable in the modesty

which he inculcated and practised on this head.

The Oaks, Ambleside, July 11. 1844.

Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth at dinner, along with our family party. Mr. and

Mrs. Price (from Rugby), two aunts of Mrs. P.'s, and her brother, Mr.

Rose, a young clergyman (a devout admirer of Wordsworth), joined us at

tea. A circle was made as large as our little parlour could hold. Mr.

Price sat next to Mr. Wordsworth, and by design or fortunate accident,

introduced some remark on the powers and the discourse of Coleridge. Mr.

Wordsworth entered heartily and largely on the subject. He said that the

liveliest and truest image he could give of Coleridge's talk was 'that

of a majestic river, the sound or sight of whose course you caught at

intervals, which was sometimes concealed by forests, sometimes lost in

sand, then came flashing out broad and distinct, then again took a turn

which your eye could not follow, yet you knew and felt that it was the

same river: so,' he said, 'there was always a train, a stream, in

Coleridge's discourse, always a connection between its parts in his own

mind, though one not always perceptible to the minds of others.' Mr.

Wordsworth went on to say, that in his opinion Coleridge had been spoilt

as a poet by going to Germany. The bent of his mind, which was at all

times very much to metaphysical theology, had there been fixed in that

direction. 'If it had not been so,' said Wordsworth, 'he would have

been the greatest, the most abiding poet of his age. His very faults

would have made him popular (meaning his sententiousness and laboured

strain), while he had enough of the essentials of a poet to make him

deservedly popular in a higher sense.'

* * * * *

Mr. Price soon after mentioned a statement of Coleridge's respecting

himself, recorded in his 'Table Talk,' namely, that a visit to the

battle-field of Marathon would raise in him no kindling emotion, and

asked Mr. Wordsworth whether this was true as a token of his mind. At

first Mr. Wordsworth said, 'Oh! that was a mere bravado, for the sake of

astonishing his hearers!' but then, correcting himself, he added, 'And

yet it might in some sense be true, for Coleridge was not under the

influence of external objects. He had extraordinary powers of summoning

up an image or series of images in his own mind, and he might mean that

his idea of Marathon was so vivid, that no visible observation could

make it more so.' 'A remarkable instance of this,' added Mr. Wordsworth,

'is his poem, said to be "composed in the Vale of Chamouni." Now he

never was at Chamouni, or near it, in his life.' Mr. Wordsworth next

gave a somewhat humorous account of the rise and progress of the

'Ancient Mariner.' 'It arose,' he said, 'out of the want of five pounds

which Coleridge and I needed to make a tour together in Devonshire. We

agreed to write jointly a poem, the subject of which Coleridge took from

a dream which a friend of his had once dreamt concerning a person

suffering under a dire curse from the commission of some crime.' 'I,'

said Wordsworth, 'supplied the crime, the shooting of the albatross,

from an incident I had met with in one of Shelvocke's voyages. We tried

the poem conjointly for a day or two, but we pulled different ways, and

only a few lines of it are mine.' From Coleridge, the discourse then

turned to Scotland. Mr. Wordsworth, in his best manner, with earnest

thoughts given out in noble diction, gave his reasons for thinking that

as a poet Scott would not live. 'I don't like,' he said, 'to say all

this, or to take to pieces some of the best reputed passages of Scott's

verse, especially in presence of my wife, because she thinks me too

fastidious; but as a poet Scott _cannot_ live, for he has never in

verse written anything addressed to the immortal part of man. In making

amusing stories in verse, he will be superseded by some newer versifier;

what he writes in the way of natural description is merely rhyming

nonsense.' As a prose writer, Mr. Wordsworth admitted that Scott had

touched a higher vein, because there he had really dealt with feeling

and passion. As historical novels, professing to give the manners of a

past time, he did not attach much value to those works of Scott's so

called, because that he held to be an attempt in which success was

impossible. This led to some remarks on historical writing, from which

it appeared that Mr. Wordsworth has small value for anything but

contemporary history. He laments that Dr. Arnold should have spent so

much of his time and powers in gathering up and putting into imaginary

shape the scattered fragments of the history of Rome.[248]

These scraps of Wordsworth's large, thoughtful, earnest discourse, seem

very meagre as I note them down, and in themselves perhaps hardly worth

preserving and yet this is an evening which those who spent it in his

company will long remember. His venerable head; his simple, natural, and

graceful attitude in his arm-chair; his respectful attention to the

slightest remarks or suggestions of others in relation to what was

spoken of; his kindly benevolence of expression as he looked round now

and then on the circle in our little parlour, all bent to 'devour up his

discourse,' filled up and enlarged the meaning which I fear is but ill

conveyed in the words as they are now set down.

(V.) LADY RICHARDSON: WORDSWORTH'S BIRTH-DAY.

On Tuesday, April the 7th, 1844, my mother[249] and I left Lancrigg to

begin our Yorkshire journey. We arrived at Rydal Mount about three

o'clock, and found the tables all tastefully decorated on the esplanade

in front of the house. The Poet was standing looking at them with a very

pleased expression of face; he received us very kindly, and very soon

the children began to arrive. The Grasmere boys and girls came first,

and took their places on the benches placed round the gravelled part of

the esplanade; their eyes fixed with wonder and admiration on the tables

covered with oranges, gingerbread, and painted eggs, ornamented with

daffodils, laurels, and moss, gracefully intermixed. The plot soon began

to thicken, and the scene soon became very animated. Neighbours, old and

young, of all degrees, ascended to the Mount to keep the Poet's

seventy-fourth birthday, and every face looked friendly and happy. Each

child brought its own mug, and held it out to be filled with tea, in

which ceremony all assisted. Large baskets of currant cakes were handed

round and liberally dispensed; and as each detachment of children had

satisfied themselves with tea and cake, they were moved off, to play at

hide and seek among the evergreens on the grassy part of the Mount. The

day was not bright, but it was soft, and not cold, and the scene, viewed

from the upper windows of the house, was quite beautiful, and one I

should have been very sorry not to have witnessed. It was innocent and

gay, and perfectly natural. Miss F----, the donor of the fÍte, looked

very happy, and so did all the Poet's household. The children, who

amounted altogether to above 300, gave three cheers to Mr. Wordsworth

and Miss F----. After some singing and dancing, and after the division

of eggs, gingerbread, and oranges had taken place, we all began to

disperse. We spent the night at the Oaks, and set off on our journey the

following morning. The gay scene at the Mount often comes before me, as

a pleasant dream. It is perhaps the only part of the island where such a

reunion of all classes could have taken place without any connection of

landlord and tenant, or any clerical relation, or school direction.

Wordsworth, while looking at the gambols on the Mount, expressed his

conviction that if such meetings could oftener take place between people

of different condition, a much more friendly feeling would be created

than now exists in this country between the rich and poor.

[248] But see _Memorials of Italy_, 'Sonnets on Roman Historians.'

[249] Mrs. Fletcher.

* * * * *

_July 12th,_ 1844.--Wordsworth spoke much during the evening of his

early intercourse with Coleridge, on some one observing that it was

difficult to carry away a distinct impression from Coleridge's

conversation, delightful as every one felt his outpourings to be.

Wordsworth agreed, but said he was occasionally very happy in clothing

an idea in words; and he mentioned one which was recorded in his

sister's journal during a tour they all made together in Scotland. They

passed a steam engine, and Wordsworth made some observation to the

effect that it was scarcely possible to divest oneself of the impression

on seeing it that it had life and volition. 'Yes,' replied Coleridge,

'it is a giant with one idea.'

* * * * *

He discoursed at great length on Scott's works. His poetry he considered

of that kind which will always he in demand, and that the supply will

always meet it, suited to the age. He does not consider that it in any

way goes below the surface of things; it does not reach to any

intellectual or spiritual emotion; it is altogether superficial, and he

felt it himself to be so. His descriptions are not true to Nature; they

are addressed to the ear, not to the mind. He was a master of bodily

movements in his battle-scenes; but very little productive power was

exerted in popular creations.

DUDDON EXCURSION

On Friday, the 6th September 1844, I set off to breakfast at Rydal

Mount, it being the day fixed by Mr. Wordsworth for our long-projected

excursion to the Valley of the Duddon.

* * * * *

The rain fell in torrents, and it became doubtful whether we should set

off or not; but as it was a thunder-shower, we waited till it was over,

and then Wordsworth, Mr. Quillinan, Miss Hutchinson, and I, set forth in

our carriage to Coniston, where we were to find the Rydal Mount carriage

awaiting us with Mr. Hutchinson. Wordsworth talked very agreeably on the

way to Coniston, and repeated several verses of his own, which he seemed

pleased that Serjeant Talfourd had repeated to him the day before. He

mentioned a singular instance of T. Campbell's inaccuracy of memory in

having actually printed as his own a poem of Wordsworth's, 'The

Complaint:' he repeated it beautifully as we were going up the hill to

Coniston. On reaching the inn in the village of Coniston, the rain again

fell in torrents. At length, the carriages were ordered to the door with

the intention of our returning home; but just as they were ready the sun

broke out, and we turned the horse's head towards Ulpha Kirk. The right

bank of Coniston was all new to me after we passed the village, and Old

Man of Coniston. The scenery ceases to be bold and rugged, but is very

pleasing, the road passing through hazel copses, the openings showing

nice little cornfields and comfortable detached farms, with old

uncropped trees standing near them; some very fine specimens of old ash

trees, which I longed to transport to Easedale, where they have been so

cruelly lopped. The opening towards the sea, as we went on, was very

pleasing; but the first striking view of the Duddon was looking down

upon it soon after we passed Broughton, where you turn to the right, and

very soon after perceive the peculiar beauty of the valley, although it

does not take its wild and dreamlike beauty till you pass Ulpha Kirk. We

reversed the order of the sonnets, and saw the river first, 'in radiant

progress tow'rd the deep,' instead of tracing this 'child of the clouds'

from its cradle in the lofty waste. We reached the Kirk of Ulpha between

five and six. The appearance of the little farm-house inn at once made

anything approaching to a dinner an impossibility had we wished it ever

so much; but in due time we had tea and boiled ham, with two eggs

apiece, and were much invigorated by this our first Duddonian meal. The

hostess was evidently surprised that we thought of remaining all night,

so humbly did she think of the accommodation she had to offer. She

remembered Mr. Wordsworth sleeping there fifteen years ago, because it

was just after the birth of her daughter, a nice comely girl who

attended us at tea. Mr. Quillinan showed great good nature and

unselfishness in the arrangements he made, and the care he took of the

admirable horse, which I saw him feeding out of a tub, a manger being

too great a refinement for Ulpha.

* * * * *

After tea, although it was getting dark, we went to the churchyard,

which commands a beautiful view towards Seathwaite, and we then walked

in that direction, through a lane where the walls were more richly

covered by moss and fern than any I ever saw before. A beautiful

dark-coloured tributary to the Duddon comes down from the moors on the

left hand, about a mile from Ulpha; and soon after we had passed the

small bridge over this stream, Mr. Wordsworth recollected a well which

he had discovered some thirty or forty years before. We went off the

road in search of it, through a shadowy, embowered path; and as it was

almost dark we should probably have failed in finding it, had we not

met a very tiny boy, with a can of water in his hand, who looked at us

in speechless amazement, when the Poet said, 'Is there a well here, my

little lad?' We found the well, and then joined the road again by

another path, leaving the child to ponder whether we were creatures of

earth or air.

* * * * *

Saturday morning was cloudy but soft, and lovely in its hazy effects.

When I went out about seven, I saw Wordsworth going a few steps, and

then moving on, and stopping again, in a very abstracted manner; so I

kept back. But when he saw me, he advanced, and took me again to the

churchyard to see the morning effects, which were very lovely. He said

he had not slept well, that the recollection of former days and people

had crowded upon him, and, 'most of all, my dear sister; and when I

thought of her state, and of those who had passed away, Coleridge, and

Southey, and many others, while I am left with all my many infirmities,

if not sins, in full consciousness, how could I sleep? and then I took

to the alteration of sonnets, and that made the matter worse still.'

Then suddenly stopping before a little bunch of harebell, which, along

with some parsley fern, grew out of the wall near us, he exclaimed, 'How

perfectly beautiful that is!

"Would that the little flowers that grow could live,

Conscious of half the pleasure that they give."'

He then expatiated on the inexhaustible beauty of the arrangements of

Nature, its power of combining in the most secret recesses, and that it

must be for some purpose of beneficence that such operations existed.

After breakfast, we got into the cart of the inn, which had a seat swung

into it, upon which a bolster was put, in honour, I presume, of the Poet

Laureate. In this we jogged on to Seathwaite, getting out to ascend a

craggy eminence on the right, which Mrs. Wordsworth admired: the view

from it is very striking. You see from it all the peculiarities of the

vale, the ravine where the Duddon 'deserts the haunts of men,' 'the

spots of stationary sunshine,' and the homesteads which are scattered

here and there, both on the heights and in the lower ground near

protecting rocks and craggy steeps. Seathwaite I had a perfect

recollection of; and the way we approached it twenty years ago, from

Coniston over Walna Scar, is the way Mr. Wordsworth still recommends as

the most beautiful. We went on some distance beyond the chapel, and

every new turning and opening among the hills allured us on, till at

last the Poet was obliged to exercise the word of command, that we

should proceed no further. The return is always a flat thing, so I shall

not detail it, except that we reached our respective homes in good time;

and I hope I shall never cease to think with gratitude and pleasure of

the kindness of my honoured guide through the lovely scenes he has

rescued from obscurity, although it happily still remains an unvitiated

region, 'which stands in no need of the veil of twilight to soften or

disguise its features: as it glistens in the morning's sun it fills the

spectator's heart with gladsomeness.'

_November 21_.--My mother and I called at Rydal last Saturday, to see

the Wordsworths after their autumnal excursion. We found him only at

home, looking in great vigour and much the better for this little change

of scene and circumstance. He spoke with much interest of a

communication he had had from a benevolent surgeon at Manchester, an

admirer of his, who thinks that a great proportion of the blindness in

this country might be prevented by attention to the diseases of the eye

in childhood. He spoke of two very interesting blind ladies he had seen

at Leamington, one of whom had been at Rydal Mount a short time before

her 'total eclipse,' and now derived the greatest comfort from the

recollection of these beautiful scenes, almost the last she looked on.

He spoke of his own pleasure in returning to them, and of the effect of

the first view from 'Orrest Head,' the point mentioned in his

'unfortunate[250] sonnet, which has,' he said, 'you are aware, exposed

me to the most unlooked for accusations. They actually accuse me of

desiring to interfere with the innocent enjoyments of the poor, by

preventing this district becoming accessible to them by a railway. Now I

deny that it is to that class that this kind of scenery is either the

most improving or the most attractive. For the very poor the great God

of Nature has mercifully spread out His Bible everywhere; the common

sunshine, green fields, the blue sky, the shining river, are everywhere

to be met with in this country; and it is only an individual here and

there among the uneducated classes who feels very deeply the poetry of

lakes and mountains; and such persons would rather wander about where

they like, than rush through the country in a railway. It is not,

therefore, the poor, as a class, that would benefit morally or mentally

by a railway conveyance; while to the educated classes, to whom such

scenes as these give enjoyment of the purest kind, the effect would be

almost entirely destroyed.'

[250] See the Sonnet and Letters on the Furness Railway (vol. ii. p.

321). G.

_Wednesday, 20th Nov_.--A most remarkable halo was seen round the moon

soon after five o'clock to-day; the colours of the rainbow were most

brilliant, and the circle was entire for about five minutes.

Thursday, Mr. Wordsworth dined here with the Balls, Davys, and Mr.

Jefferies. Mr. W. spoke with much delight of the moon the day before,

and said his servant, whom he called 'dear James,' called his attention

to it.

* * * * *

_Wednesday, Dec. 18th_.--The Wordsworths and Quillinans sat two hours

with us. He said he thought [Dr. Arnold] was mistaken in the philosophy

of his view of the danger of Milton's Satan being represented without

horns and hoofs; that Milton's conception was as true as it was grand;

that making sin ugly was a common-place notion compared with making it

beautiful outwardly, and inwardly a hell. It assumed every form of

ambition and worldliness, the form in which sin attacks the highest

natures.

* * * * *

This day, Sunday, the 9th of February, the snow is again falling fast,

but very gently. Yesterday, the 8th, was a beautiful day. We had a very

pleasant visit of above an hour from Wordsworth and his wife. He was in

excellent spirits, and repeated with a solemn beauty, quite peculiar to

himself, a sonnet he had lately composed on 'Young England;' and his

indignant burst 'Where then is _old_, our dear old England?' was one of

the finest bursts of Nature and Art combined I have ever heard. My dear

mother's face, too, while he was repeating it, was a fine addition to

the picture; and I could not help feeling they were both noble specimens

of 'dear old England.' Mrs. Wordsworth, too, is a goodly type of another

class of old England, more thoroughly English perhaps than either of the

others, but they made an admirable trio; and Mrs. Wordsworth's face

expressed more admiration of her husband in his bardic mood than I ever

saw before. He discussed mesmerism very agreeably, stating strongly his

detestation of clairvoyance; not only on the presumption of its being

altogether false, but supposing it, for argument sake, to be true, then

he thinks it would be an engine of enormous evil, putting it in the

power of any malicious person to blast the character of another, and

shaking to the very foundations the belief in individual responsibility.

He is not disposed to reject without examination the assertions with

regard to the curative powers of mesmerism. He spoke to-day with

pleasure of having heard that Mr. Lockhart had been struck by his lines

from a MSS. poem, printed in his Railway-Sonnet pamphlet.

* * * * *

_February 24th_.--Snow still on the ground. It has never been quite

clear of snow since the 27th January. Partial thaws have allowed us to

peep out into the world of Ambleside and Rydal; and last Saturday we

drank tea at Foxhow, and met the Wordsworths and Miss F----. He is very

happy to have his friend home again, and was in a very agreeable mood.

He repeated his sonnet on the 'Pennsylvanians,' and again that on 'Young

England,' which I admire so much.

* * * * *

_March 6th_.--Wordsworth, whom we met yesterday at dinner at the Oaks,

expressed his dislike to monuments in churches; partly from the

absurdity and falsehood of the epitaphs which sometimes belonged to

them, and partly from their injuring the architectural beauties of the

edifice, as they grievously did in Westminster Abbey and many other

cathedrals. He made an exception in favour of those old knightly

monuments, which he admitted added to the solemnity of the scene, and

were in keeping with the buildings; and he added, 'I must also except

another monument which once made a deep impression on my mind. It was in

a small church near St. Alban's; and I once left London in the

afternoon, so as to sleep at St. Alban's the first night, and have a few

hours of evening light to visit this church. It was before the invention

of railways, and I determined that I would always do the same; but, the

year after, railways existed, and I have never been able to carry out my

project again: all wandering is now over. Well, I went to this small

country church; and just opposite the door at which you enter, the

figure of the great Lord Bacon, in pure white, was the first thing that

presented itself. I went there to see his tomb, but I did not expect to

see himself; and it impressed me deeply. There he was, a man whose fame

extends over the whole civilised world, sitting calmly, age after age,

in white robes of pure alabaster, in this small country church, seldom

visited except by some stray traveller, he having desired to be interred

in this spot, to lie near his mother.'

On referring to Mallet's Life of Bacon, I see he mentions that he was

privately buried at St. Michael's church, near St. Alban's; and it adds,

'The spot that contains his remains lay obscure and undistinguished,

till the gratitude of a private man, formerly his servant' (Sir Thomas

Meautys), 'erected a monument to his name and memory.' This makes it

probable that the likeness is a correct one.

_November 8th_, 1845.--On our way to take an early dinner at Foxhow

yesterday, we met the Poet at the foot of his own hill, and he engaged

us to go to tea to the Mount on our way home to hear their adventures,

he and his Mary having just returned from a six weeks' wander among

their friends. During their absence we always feel that the road between

Grasmere and Ambleside is wanting in something, beautiful as it is. We

reached the Mount before six, and found dear Mrs. Wordsworth much

restored by her tour. She has enjoyed the visit to her kith and kin in

Herefordshire extremely, and we had a nice comfortable chat round the

fire and the tea-table. After tea, in speaking of the misfortune it was

when a young man did not seem more inclined to one profession than

another, Wordsworth said that he had always some feeling of indulgence

for men at that age who felt such a difficulty. He had himself passed

through it, and had incurred the strictures of his friends and relations

on this subject. He said that after he had finished his college course,

he was in great doubt as to what his future employment should be. He did

not feel himself good enough for the Church, he felt that his mind was

not properly disciplined for that holy office, and that the struggle

between his conscience and his impulses would have made life a torture.

He also shrank from the law, although Southey often told him that he was

well fitted for the higher parts of the profession. He had studied

military history with great interest, and the strategy of war; and he

always fancied that he had talents for command; and he at one time

thought of a military life, but then he was without connections, and he

felt if he were ordered to the West Indies his talents would not save

him from the yellow fever, and he gave that up. At this time he had only

a hundred a year. Upon this he lived, and travelled, and married, for it

was not until the late Lord Lonsdale came into possession that the money

which was due to them was restored. He mentioned this to show how

difficult it often was to judge of what was passing in a young man's

mind, but he thought that for the generality of men, it was much better

that they should be early led to the exercise of a profession of their

own choice.

_December_ 1846.--Henry Fletcher and I dined at the Mount on the 21st of

this month. The party consisted of Mr. Crabb Robinson (their Christmas

guest), Mrs. Arnold, Miss Martineau, and ourselves. My mother's cold was

too bad to allow her to go, which I regretted, as it was, like all their

little meetings, most sociable and agreeable. Wordsworth was much

pleased with a little notice of his new edition in the _Examiner_; he

thought it very well done. He expressed himself very sweetly at dinner

on the pleasant terms of neighbourly kindness we enjoyed in the valleys.

It will be pleasant in after times to remember his words, and still more

his manner when he said this, it was done with such perfect simplicity

and equality of feeling, without the slightest reference to self, and I

am sure without thinking of himself at the time as more than one of the

little circle whose friendly feeling he was commending.

* * * * *

_October_ 1846.--Wordsworth dined with us one day last week, and was in

much greater vigour than I have seen him all this summer.

* * * * *

He mentioned incidentally that the spelling of our language was very

much fixed in the time of Charles the Second, and that the attempts

which had been made since, and are being made in the present day, were

not likely to succeed. He entered his protest as usual against

[Carlyle's] style, and said that since Johnson no writer had done so

much to vitiate the English language. He considers Lord Chesterfield the

last good English writer before Johnson. Then came the Scotch

historians, who did infinite mischief to style, with the exception of

Smollett, who wrote good pure English. He quite agreed to the saying

that all great poets wrote good prose; he said there was not one

exception. He does not think Burns's prose equal to his verse, but this

he attributes to his writing his letters in English words, while in his

verse he was not trammelled in this way, but let his numbers have their

own way.

_Lancrigg, November_.--Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth took an early dinner with

us on the 26th of this month. He was very vigorous, and spoke of his

majority at Glasgow, also of his reception at Oxford. He told us of an

application he had just had from a Glasgow publisher that he should

write a sonnet in praise of Fergusson and Allan Ramsay, to prefix to a

new edition of those Poets which was about to appear. He intended to

reply, that Burns's lines to Fergusson would be a much more appropriate

tribute than anything he could write; and he went on to say that Burns

owed much to Fergusson, and that he had taken the plan of many of his

poems from Fergusson, and the measure also. He did not think this at all

detracted from the merit of Burns, for he considered it a much higher

effort of genius to excel in degree, than to strike out what may be

called an original poem. He spoke highly of the purity of language of

the Scotch poets of an earlier period, Gavin Douglass and others, and

said that they greatly excelled the English poets, after Chaucer, which

he attributed to the distractions of England during the wars of York and

Lancaster.

_December 25th_, 1846.--My mother and I called at Rydal Mount yesterday

early, to wish our dear friends the blessings of the season. Mrs. W. met

us at the door most kindly, and we found him before his good fire in the

dining-room, with a flock of robins feasting at the window. He had an

old tattered book in his hand; and as soon as he had given us a cordial

greeting, he said, in a most animated manner, 'I must read to you what

Mary and I have this moment finished. It is a passage in the Life of

Thomas Elwood.' He then read to us the following extract:

'Some little time before I went to Alesbury prison, I was desired by my

quondam master, Milton, to take an house for him in the neighbourhood

where I dwell, that he might get out of the city, for the safety of

himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I

took a pretty box for him in Giles-Chalford, a mile from me, of which I

gave him notice; and intended to have waited on him, and seen him well

settled in it, but was prevented by that imprisonment.

'But now being released, and returned home, I soon made a visit to him,

to welcome him into the country.

'After some common discourses had passed between us, he called for a

manuscript of his, which being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me

take it home with me and read it at my leisure; and when I had so done,

return it to him with my judgment thereupon.

'When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that

excellent poem which he entituled 'Paradise Lost.' After I had with the

best attention read it through, I made him another visit, and returned

him his book with due acknowledgment of the favour he had done me in

communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought

of it, which I modestly, but freely told him; and after some further

discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, "Thou hast said much here

of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" He made

me no answer, but sate some time in a muse; then brake off that

discourse, and fell upon another subject. After the sickness was over,

and the city well cleansed and become safely habitable again, he

returned thither; and when afterwards I went to wait on him there (which

I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions drew me to London), he

showed me his second poem, called "Paradise Regained;" and in a

pleasant tone said to me, "This is owing to you, for you put it into my

head by the question you put to me at Chalford, which before I had not

thought of." _But from this digression I return to the family I then

lived in.'_

Wordsworth was highly diverted with the _apology_ of the worthy Quaker,

for _the digression_, which has alone saved him from oblivion. He

offered to send us the old book, which came a few days after; and I

shall add another digression in favour of John Milton, to whom he

appears to have been introduced about the year 1661, by a Dr. Paget. It

is thus notified _apropos_ to Thomas Elwood feeling a desire for more

learning than he possessed, which having expressed to Isaac Pennington,

with whom he himself lived as tutor to his children, he says, 'Isaac

Pennington had an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a physician of

note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for

learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he had

written on various subjects and occasions. This person having filled a

public station in the former times, lived now a private and retired life

in London, and, having wholly lost his sight, kept always a man to read

to him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance,

whom in kindness he took to improve in his learning.

'He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who

introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington who recommended me, to both whom

he bore a good respect; and having inquired divers things of me, with

respect to my former progression in learning, he dismissed me to provide

myself of such accommodations as might be most suitable to my future

studies.

'I went, therefore, and took myself a lodging as near to his house,

which was then in Jewin-street, as conveniently I could, and from

thenceforward went every day in the afternoon (except on the first days

of the week), and sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him in such

books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to hear me read.'

(VI.) MRS. DAVY (CONTINUED).

The Oaks, Ambleside, Jan. 15. 1845.

We dined to-day at Rydal Mount. Mr. Wordsworth, during dinner, grave and

silent, till, on some remark having been made on the present condition

of the Church, he most unreservedly gave his own views; and gave

expression, as I have only once heard him give before, to his own

earnest, devout, humble feelings as a Christian. In the evening, being

led by some previous conversation to speak of St. Paul, he said, 'Oh,

what a character that is! how well we know him! How human, yet how

noble! How little outward sufferings moved him! It is not in speaking of

these that he calls himself wretched; it is when he speaks of the inward

conflict. Paul and David,' he said, 'may be called the two Shakspearian

characters in the Bible; both types, as it were, of human nature in its

strength and its weakness. Moses is grand, but then it is chiefly from

position, from the office he had entrusted to him. We do not know Moses

as a man, as a brother man.'

_April_ 7, 1846.--I went to the Mount to-day, to pay my respects to Mr.

Wordsworth on his birthday. I found him and dear Mrs. Wordsworth very

happy, in the arrival of their four grandsons. The two elder are to go

to Rossall next week. Some talk concerning schools led Mr. Wordsworth

into a discourse, which, in relation to himself, I thought very

interesting, on the dangers of emulation, as used in the way of help to

school progress. Mr. Wordsworth thinks that envy is too likely to go

along with this, and therefore would hold it to be unsafe. 'In my own

case,' he said, 'I never felt emulation with another man but once, and

that was accompanied by envy. It is a horrid feeling.' This 'once' was

in the study of Italian, which, he continued, 'I entered on at college

along with ----' (I forget the name he mentioned). 'I never engaged in

the proper studies of the university, so that in these I had no

temptation to envy any one; but I remember with pain that I _had_

envious feelings when my fellow-student in Italian got before me. I was

his superior in many departments of mind, but he was the better Italian

scholar, and I envied him. The annoyance this gave me made me feel that

emulation was dangerous for _me_, and it made me very thankful that as a

boy I never experienced it. I felt very early the force of the words,

"Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect," and as a

teacher, or friend, or counsellor of youth, I would hold forth no other

motive to exertion than this. There is, I think, none other held forth

in the gospels. No permission is given to emulation there.... There must

always be a danger of incurring the passion of vanity by emulation. If

we try to outstrip a fellow-creature, and succeed, we may naturally

enough be proud. The true lesson of humility is to strive after

conformity to that excellence which we never can surpass, never even by

a great distance attain to.' There was, in the whole manner as well as

matter of Mr. Wordsworth's discourse on this subject, a deep veneration

for the will of God concerning us, which I shall long remember with

interest and delight--I hope with profit. 'Oh! one other time,' he

added, smiling, 'one other time in my life I felt envy. It was when my

brother was nearly certain of success in a foot race with me. I tripped

up his heels. This _must_ have been envy.'

* * * * *

Lesketh How, Jan. 11. 1847.

In a morning visit by our fireside to-day from Mr. Wordsworth, something

led to the mention of Milton, whose poetry, he said, was earlier a

favourite with him than that of Shakspeare. Speaking of Milton's not

allowing his daughters to learn the meaning of the Greek they read to

him, or at least not exerting himself to teach it to them, he admitted

that this seemed to betoken a low estimate of the condition and purposes

of the female mind. 'And yet, where could he have picked up such

notions,' said Mr. W., 'in a country which had seen so many women of

learning and talent? But his opinion of what women ought to be, it may

be presumed, is given in the unfallen Eve, as contrasted with the right

condition of man before his Maker:

"He for God only, she for God in him."

Now that,' said Mr. Wordsworth, earnestly, '_is_ a low, a very low and a

very false estimate of woman's condition.' He was amused on my showing

him the (almost) contemporary notice of Milton by Wycherly, and, after

reading it, spoke a good deal of the obscurity of men of genius in or

near their own times. 'But the most singular thing,' he continued, 'is,

that in all the writings of Bacon there is not one allusion to

Shakspeare.'

Lasketh How, Jan. 10. 1849.

A long fireside visit from Mr. Wordsworth this morning, in highly

sociable spirits; speaking much of old days and old acquaintances. He

spoke with much regret of Scott's careless views about money, and said

that he had often spoken to him of the duty of economy, as a means to

insure literary independence. Scott's reply always was, 'Oh, I can make

as much as I please by writing.' 'This,' said Mr. W., 'was marvellous to

me, who had never written a line with a view to profit.' Speaking of his

own prose writing, he said, that but for Coleridge's irregularity of

purpose he should probably have left much more in that kind behind him.

When Coleridge was proposing to publish his 'Friend,' he (Mr.

Wordsworth) offered contributions. Coleridge expressed himself pleased

with the offer, but said, 'I must arrange my principles for the work,

and when that is done I shall be glad of your aid.' But this

'arrangement of principles' never took place. Mr. Wordsworth added, 'I

think my nephew, Dr. _Conversations and Personal Reminiscences_.

Wordsworth,[251] will, after my death, collect and publish all I have

written in prose.'

On this day, as I have heard him more than once before, Mr. Wordsworth,

in a way very earnest, and to me very impressive and remarkable,

disclaimed all value for, all concern about, posthumous fame.[252]

_(e)_ CONVERSATIONS AND REMINISCENCES RECORDED BY THE (NOW) BISHOP OF

LINCOLN, &c.

Remember, first read the ancient classical authors; _then_ come to

_us_; and you will be able to judge for yourself which of us is worth

reading.

The first book of Homer appears to be independent of the rest. The plan

of the _Odyssey_ is more methodical than that of the _Iliad_. The

character of Achilles seems to me one of the grandest ever conceived.

There is something awful in it, particularly in the circumstance of his

acting under an abiding foresight of his own death. One day, conversing

with Payne Knight and Uvedale Price concerning Homer, I expressed my

admiration of Nestor's speech, as eminently natural, where he tells the

Greek leaders that _they_ are mere children in comparison with the

heroes of _old_ whom _he_ had known[253]. 'But,' said Knight and Price,

'that passage is spurious.' However, I will not part with it. It is

interesting to compare the same characters (Ajax, for instance) as

treated by Homer, and then afterwards by the Greek dramatists, and to

mark the difference of handling. In the plays of Euripides, politics

come in as a disturbing force: Homer's characters act on physical

impulse. There is more _introversion_ in the dramatist: whence

Aristotle rightly calls him _tsagichhÙtatos_. The tower-scene, where

Helen comes into the presence of Priam and the old Trojans, displays one

of the most beautiful pictures anywhere to be seen. Priam's speech[254]

on that occasion is a striking proof of the courtesy and delicacy of the

Homeric age, or, at least, of Homer himself.

[251] On another occasion, I believe, he intimated a desire that his

works in Prose should be edited by his son-in-law, Mr. Quillinan.

(_Memoirs,_ ii. 466.)

[252] _Memoirs,_ ii. 437-66.

[253] _Iliad_, i. 260.

[254] _Ibid._ iii. 156.

Catullus translated literally from the Greek; succeeding Roman writers

did not so, because Greek had then become the fashionable, universal

language. They did not translate, but they paraphrased; the ideas

remaining the same, their dress different. Hence the attention of the

poets of the Augustan age was principally confined to the happy

selection of the most appropriate words and elaborate phrases; and hence

arises the difficulty of translating them.

The characteristics ascribed by Horace to Pindar in his ode, 'Pindarum

quisquis,' &c. are not found in his extant writings. Horace had many

lyrical effusions of the Theban bard which we have not. How graceful is

Horace's modesty in his 'Ego _apis_ Matinae More modoque,' as contrasted

with the Dircaean Swan! Horace is my great favourite: I love him dearly.

I admire Virgil's high moral tone: for instance, that sublime 'Aude,

hospes, contemnere opes,' &c. and 'his dantem jura Catonem!' What

courage and independence of spirit is there! There is nothing more

imaginative and awful than the passage,

'----Arcades ipsum

Credunt se vidisse Jovem,' &c.[255]

In describing the weight of sorrow and fear on Dido's mind, Virgil shows

great knowledge of human nature, especially in that exquisite touch of

feeling[256],

'Hoc visum nulli, _non ipsi effata sorori.'_

The ministry of Confession is provided to satisfy the natural desire for

some relief from the load of grief. Here, as in so many other respects,

the Church of Rome adapts herself with consummate skill to our nature,

and is strong by our weaknesses. Almost all her errors and corruptions

are abuses of what is good.

I think Buchanan's 'Maiae Calendae' equal in sentiment, if not in

elegance, to anything in Horace; but your brother Charles, to whom I

repeated it the other day, pointed out a false quantity in it[257].

Happily this had escaped me.

[255] _Aen_. viii. 352.

[256] _Ibid._ iv. 455.

[257] If I remember right, it is in the third line,

'Ludisque dicatae, jocisque;'

a strange blunder, for Buchanan must have read Horace's,

'Quid dedicatum poscit Apolliuem,'

a hundred times.

When I began to give myself up to the profession of a poet for life, I

was impressed with a conviction, that there were four English poets whom

I must have continually before me as examples--Chaucer, Shakspeare,

Spenser, and Milton. These I must study, and equal _if I could_; and I

need not think of the rest[258].

[258] This paragraph was communicated by Mr. H.C. Robinson.

I have been charged by some with disparaging Pope and Dryden. This is

not so. I have committed much of both to memory. As far as Pope goes, he

succeeds; but his Homer is not Homer, but Pope.

I cannot account for Shakspeare's low estimate of his own writings,

except from the sublimity, the superhumanity, of his genius. They were

infinitely below his conception of what they might have been, and ought

to have been.

The mind often does not think, when it thinks that it is thinking. If we

were to give our whole soul to anything, as the bee does to the flower,

I conceive there would be little difficulty in any intellectual

employment. Hence there is no excuse for obscurity in writing.

'Macbeth,' is the best conducted of Shakspeare's plays. The fault of

'Julius Caesar,' 'Hamlet,' and 'Lear,' is, that the interest is not, and

by the nature of the case could not be, sustained to their conclusion.

The death of Julius Caesar is too _overwhelming_ an incident for _any_

stage of the drama but the _last_. It is an incident to which the mind

clings, and from which it will not be torn away to share in other

sorrows. The same may be said of the madness of Lear. Again, the opening

of 'Hamlet' is full of exhausting interest. There is more mind in

'Hamlet' than in any other play, more knowledge of human nature. The

first act is incomparable.... There is too much of an every-day sick

room in the death-bed scene of Catherine, in 'Henry the Eighth'--too

much of leeches and apothecaries' vials.... 'Zanga' is a bad imitation

of 'Othello.' Garrick never ventured on Othello: he could not submit to

a blacked face. He rehearsed the part once. During the rehearsal Quin

entered, and, having listened for some time with attention, exclaimed,

'Well done, David! but where's the teakettle?' alluding to the print of

Hogarth, where a black boy follows his mistress with a teakettle in his

hand.... In stature Garrick was short.... A fact which conveys a high

notion of his powers is, that he was able to _act out_ the absurd

stage-costume of those days. He represented Coriolanus in the attire of

Cheapside. I remember hearing from Sir G. Beaumont, that while he was

venting, as Lear, the violent paroxysms of his rage in the awful tempest

scene, his wig happened to fall off. The accident did not produce the

slightest effect on the gravity of the house, so strongly had he

impregnated every breast with his own emotions.

Some of my friends (H.C. for instance) doubt whether poetry on

contemporary persons and events can be good. But I instance Spenser's

'Marriage,' and Milton's 'Lycidas.' True, the 'Persae' is one of the

worst of Aeschylus's plays; at least, in my opinion.

Milton is falsely represented by some as a democrat. He was an

aristocrat in the truest sense of the word. See the quotation from him

in my 'Convention of Cintra.'[259] Indeed, he spoke in very proud and

contemptuous terms, of the populace. 'Comus' is rich in beautiful and

sweet flowers, and in exuberant leaves of genius; but the ripe and

mellow fruit is in 'Samson Agonistes.' When he wrote that, his mind was

Hebraized. Indeed, his genius fed on the writings of the Hebrew

prophets. This arose, in some degree, from the temper of the times; the

Puritan lived in the Old Testament, almost to the exclusion of the New.

The works of the old English dramatists are the gardens of our language.

One of the noblest things in Milton is the description of that sweet,

quiet morning in the 'Paradise Regained,' after that terrible night of

howling wind and storm. The contrast is divine.[260]

[259] Page 174 (vol. i.), where Milton speaks of the evils suffered by a

nation,' unless men more than vulgar, bred up in the knowledge of

ancient and illustrious deeds, conduct its affairs.'

[260] _Paradise Regained_, iv. 431.

What a virulent democrat ---- is! A man ill at ease with his own

conscience is sure to quarrel with all government, order, and law.

The influence of Locke's Essay was not due to its own merits, which are

considerable; but to external circumstances. It came forth at a happy

opportunity, and coincided with the prevalent opinions of the time. The

Jesuit doctrines concerning the papal power in deposing kings, and

absolving subjects from their allegiance, had driven some Protestant

theologians to take refuge in the theory of the divine right of kings.

This theory was unpalatable to the world at large, and others invented

the more popular doctrine of a social contract, in its place; a doctrine

which history refutes. But Locke did what he could to accommodate this

principle to his own system.

The only basis on which property can rest is right derived from

prescription.

The best of Locke's works, as it seems to me, is that in which he

attempts the least--his _Conduct of the Understanding_.

In the Summer of 1827, speaking of some of his contemporaries,

Wordsworth said, T. Moore has great natural genius; but he is too lavish

of brilliant ornament. His poems smell of the perfumer's and milliner's

shops. He is not content with a ring and a bracelet, but he must have

rings in the ears, rings on the nose--rings everywhere.

Walter Scott is not a careful composer. He allows himself many

liberties, which betray a want of respect for his reader. For instance,

he is too fond of inversions; _i.e._ he often places the verb before the

substantive, and the accusative before the verb. W. Scott quoted, as

from me,

'The swan on _sweet_ St. Mary's lake

Floats double, swan and shadow,'

instead of _still_; thus obscuring my idea, and betraying his own

uncritical principles of composition.

Byron seems to me deficient in _feeling_. Professor Wilson, I think,

used to say that 'Beppo' was his best poem; because all his faults were

there brought to a height. I never read the 'English Bards' through. His

critical prognostications have, for the most part, proved erroneous.

Sir James Mackintosh said of me to M. de StaÎl, Wordsworth is not a

great poet, but he is the greatest man among poets.' Madame de StaÎl

complained of my style.

Now whatever may be the result of my experiment in the subjects which I

have chosen for poetical composition--be they vulgar or be they not,--I

can say without vanity, that I have bestowed great pains on my _style_,

full as much as any of my contemporaries have done on theirs. I yield to

none in _love for my art_. I, therefore, labour at it with reverence,

affection, and industry. My main endeavour as to style has been that my

poems should be written in pure intelligible English. Lord Byron has

spoken severely of my compositions. However faulty they may be, I do not

think that I ever could have prevailed upon myself to print such lines

as he has done; for instance,

'I stood at Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,

A palace and a prison on each hand.'

Some person ought to write a critical review, analysing Lord Byron's

language, in order to guard others against imitating him in these

respects.

Shelley is one of the best _artists_ of us all: I mean in workmanship of

style.

At Calgarth, dining with Mrs. and the Miss Watsons ... a very fine

portrait of the late Bishop in the dining-room.... Mr. Wordsworth there:

a very agreeable party. Walked home with him in the evening to Rydal. It

rained all the way. We met a poor woman in the road. She sobbed as she

passed us. Mr. Wordsworth was much affected with her condition: she was

swollen with dropsy, and slowly hobbling along with a stick, having been

driven from one lodging to another. It was a dark stormy night. Mr.

Wordsworth brought her back to the Lowwood Inn, where, by the landlord's

leave, she was housed in one of his barns.

One day I met Mr. M.T. Sadler at the late Archbishop's. Sadler did not

know me; and before dinner he began to launch forth in a critical

dissertation on contemporary English Poetry. 'Among living poets, your

Grace may know there is one called Wordsworth, whose writings the world

calls childish and puerile, but I think some of them wonderfully

pathetic.' 'Now, Mr. Sadler,' said the Archbishop, 'what a scrape you

are in! here is Mr. Wordsworth: but go down with him to dinner, and you

will find that, though a great poet, he does not belong to the "genus

irritabile."' This was very happy.

After returning one day from church at Addington, I took the liberty of

saying a few words on the sermon we had heard. It was a very homely

performance. 'I am rather surprised, my Lord Archbishop, that when your

Grace can have the choice of so many preachers in England, you do not

provide better for yourself.' 'Oh!' said he, 'I think I can bear bad

preaching better than most people, and I therefore keep it to myself.'

This seemed to me a very pleasing trait in the gentle and loveable

character of that admirable man.

Patriarchal usages have not quite deserted us of these valleys. This

morning (new year's day) you were awakened early by the minstrels

playing under the eaves, 'Honour to Mr. Wordsworth!' 'Honour to Mrs.

Wordsworth!' and so to each member of the household by name, servants

included, each at his own window. These customs bind us together as a

family, and are as beneficial as they are delightful. May they never

disappear!

In my Ode on the 'Intimations of Immortality in Childhood,' I do not

profess to give a literal representation of the state of the affections

and of the moral being in childhood. I record my own feelings at that

time--my absolute spirituality, my 'all-soulness,' if I may so speak. At

that time I could not believe that I should lie down quietly in the

grave, and that my body would moulder into dust.

Many of my poems have been influenced by my own circumstances when I was

writing them. 'The Warning' was composed on horseback, while I was

riding from Moresby in a snow-storm. Hence the simile in that poem,

'While thoughts press on and feelings overflow,

And quick words round him fall like _flakes of snow_.'

In the 'Ecclesiastical Sonnets,' the lines concerning the Monk (Sonnet

xxi.),

'Within his cell.

Round the decaying trunk of human pride.

At morn, and eve, and midnight's silent hour,

Do penitential cogitations cling:

Like ivy round some ancient elm they twine

In grisly folds and strictures serpentine;

Yet while they strangle, a fair growth they bring

For recompence--their own perennial bower;'--

were suggested to me by a beautiful tree clad as thus described, which

you may remember in Lady Fleming's park at Rydal, near the path to the

upper waterfall.

S----, in the work you mentioned to me, confounds _imagery_ and

_imagination_. Sensible objects really existing, and felt to exist, are

_imagery_; and they may form the materials of a descriptive poem, where

objects are delineated as they are. Imagination is a subjective term: it

deals with objects not as they are, but as they appear to the mind of

the poet.

The imagination is that intellectual lens through the medium of which

the poetical observer sees the objects of his observation, modified both

in form and colour; or it is that inventive dresser of dramatic

_tableaux_, by which the persons of the play are invested with new

drapery, or placed in new attitudes; or it is that chemical faculty by

which elements of the most different nature and distant origin are

blended together into one harmonious and homogeneous whole.

A beautiful instance of the modifying and _investive_ power of

imagination may be seen in that noble passage of Dyer's 'Ruins of

Rome,'[261] where the poet hears the voice of Time; and in Thomson's

description of the streets of Cairo, expecting the arrival of the

caravan which had perished in the storm,[262]

Read all Cowley; he is very valuable to a collector of English sound

sense.... Burns's 'Scots wha hae' is poor as a lyric composition.

Ariosto and Tasso are very absurdly depressed in order to elevate Dante.

Ariosto is not always sincere; Spenser always so.

I have tried to read Goethe. I never could succeed. Mr. ---- refers me

to his 'Iphigenia,' but I there recognise none of the dignified

simplicity, none of the health and vigour which the heroes and heroines

of antiquity possess in the writings of Homer. The lines of Lucretius

describing the immolation of Iphigenia are worth the whole of Goethe's

long poem. Again, there is a profligacy, an inhuman sensuality, in his

works which is utterly revolting. I am not intimately acquainted with

them generally. But I take up my ground on the first canto of 'Wilhelm

Meister;' and, as the attorney-general of human nature, I there indict

him for wantonly outraging the sympathies of humanity. Theologians tell

us of the degraded nature of man; and they tell us what is true. Yet man

is essentially a moral agent, and there is that immortal and

unextinguishable yearning for something pure and spiritual which will

plead against these poetical sensualists as long as man remains what he

is.

[261] 1. 37:

'The pilgrim oft,

At dead of night, 'mid his oraison, hears

Aghast the voice of TIME, disparting towers,' &c.

[262] Thomson's 'Summer,' 980:

'In Cairo's crowded streets,

The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,

And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'

Scientific men are often too fond of aiming to be men of the world.

They crave too much for titles, and stars, and ribbons. If Bacon had

dwelt only in the court of Nature, and cared less for that of James the

First, he would have been a greater man, and a happier one too.

I heard lately from young Mr. Watt a noble instance of magnanimity in an

eminent French chemist. He had made a discovery, which he was informed

would, if he took out a patent, realise a large fortune. 'No,' said he,

'I do not live to amass money, but to discover Truth; and as long as she

attends me in my investigations so long will I serve her and her only.'

Sir ---- I know from my own experience was ruined by prosperity. The age

of Leo X. would have shone with greater brilliance if it had had more

clouds to struggle with. The age of Louis XIV. was formed by the Port

Royal amid the storms and thunders of the League. Racine lived in a

court till it became necessary to his existence, as his miserable death

proved. Those petty courts of Germany have been injurious to its

literature. They who move in them are too prone to imagine themselves to

be the whole world, and compared with the whole world they are nothing

more than these little specks in the texture of this hearth-rug.

As I was riding Dora's pony from Rydal to Cambridge, I got off, as I

occasionally did, to walk. I fell in with a sweet-looking peasant girl

of nine or ten years old. She had been to carry her father's dinner, who

was working in the fields, and she was wheeling a little wheelbarrow, in

which she collected manure from the roads for her garden at home. After

some talk I gave her a penny, for which she thanked me in the sweetest

way imaginable. I wish I had asked her whether she could read, and

whether she went to school. But I could not help being struck with the

happy arrangement which Nature has made for the education of the heart,

an arrangement which it seems the object of the present age to

counteract instead of to cherish and confirm. I imagined the happy

delight of the father in seeing his child at a distance, and watching

her as she approached to perform her errand of love. I imagined the joy

of the mother in seeing her return. I am strongly of opinion (an opinion

you, perhaps, have seen expressed by me in a letter to Mr. Rose[263])

that this is the discipline which is more calculated by a thousand

degrees to make a virtuous and happy nation than the all-engrossing,

estranging, eleemosynary institutions for education, which perhaps

communicate more _knowledge_. In these institutions what the pupils gain

in _knowledge_ they often lose in _wisdom_. This is a distinction which

must never be lost sight of.

[263] See vol. i. pp. 340-8. G.

Education should never be wholly eleemosynary. But must the parent

suffer privations for the sake of the child? Yes; for these privations

endear the child to the parent, and the parent to the child; and

whatever education the parent may thus gain or lose for his child, he

has thus gained the noblest result of the most liberal education for

himself--the habit of self-denial.

Next to your principles, and affections, and health, value your

time.[264]

[264] _Memoirs_, ii. pp. 467-80.

* * * * *

(_f_) REMINISCENCES OF THE REV. R.P. GRAVES, M.A., FORMERLY OF

WINDERMERE, NOW OF DUBLIN.

I remember Mr. Wordsworth saying that, at a particular stage of his

mental progress, he used to be frequently so rapt into an unreal

transcendental world of ideas that the external world seemed no longer

to exist in relation to him, and he had to reconvince himself of its

existence _by clasping a tree_, or something that happened to be near

him. I could not help connecting this fact with that obscure passage in

his great Ode on the 'Intimations of Immortality,' in which he speaks of

'Those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things;

Fallings from us, vanishings:

Blank misgivings of a creature,

Moving about in worlds not realised,' &c.

I heard him once make the remark that it would be a good habit to watch

closely the first involuntary thoughts upon waking in the morning, as

indications of the real current of the moral being.

I was struck by what seemed to me a beautiful analogy, which I once

heard him draw, and which was new to me--that the individual characters

of mankind showed themselves distinctively in childhood and youth, as

those of trees in Spring; that of both, of trees in Summer and of human

kind in middle life, they were then alike to a great degree merged in a

dull uniformity; and that again, in Autumn and in declining age, there

appeared afresh all their original and inherent variety brought out into

view with deeper marking of character, with more vivid contrast, and

with greater accession of interest and beauty.

He thought the charm of _Robinson Crusoe_ mistakenly ascribed, as it

commonly is done, to its _naturalness_. Attaching a full value to the

singular yet easily imagined and most picturesque circumstances of the

adventurer's position, to the admirable painting of the scenes, and to

the knowledge displayed of the working of human feelings, he yet felt

sure that the intense interest created by the story arose chiefly from

the extraordinary energy and resource of the hero under his difficult

circumstances, from their being so far beyond what it was natural to

expect, or what would have been exhibited by the average of men; and

that similarly the high pleasure derived from his successes and good

fortunes arose from the peculiar source of these uncommon merits of his

character.

I have heard him pronounce that the Tragedy of _Othello_, Plato's

records of the last scenes of the career of Socrates, and Isaac Walton's

_Life of George Herbert_, were in his opinion the most pathetic of human

compositions.

In a walk one day, after stopping, according to his custom, to claim

admiration for some happy aspect of the landscape, or beautiful

_composition_ on a smaller scale of natural objects, caught by him at

the precisely best point of view in the midst of his conversation on

other subjects, he added, good-humouredly, that there were three

callings for success in which Nature had furnished him with

qualifications--the callings of poet, landscape-gardener, and critic of

pictures and works of art. On hearing this I could not but remember how

his qualifications for the second were proved by the surprising variety

of natural beauties he managed to display to their best advantage, from

the very circumscribed limits of the garden at Rydal Mount, 'an

invisible hand of art everywhere working' (to use his own exquisite

expression) 'in the very spirit of Nature,' and how many there were who

have owed the charm of their grounds and gardens to direction sought

from his well-known taste and feeling. As to works of art, his criticism

was not that of one versed in the history of the schools, but, always

proceeding upon first principles, the 'prima philosophia,' as he called

it; and it was, as it appeared to me, of the highest order.

He was a very great admirer of _Virgil_, not so much as a creative poet,

but as the most consummate master of language, that, perhaps, ever

existed. From him, and Horace, who was an especial favourite, and

Lucretius, he used to quote much.[265]

[265] _Memoirs_, ii. 467-83.

* * * * *

(_g_) ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.

The death of Coleridge was announced to us by his friend Wordsworth. It

was the Sunday evening after the event occurred that my brother and I

walked over to the Mount, where we found the Poet alone. One of the

first things we heard from him was the death of one who had been, he

said, his friend for more than thirty years. He then continued to speak

of him; called him the most _wonderful_ man that he had ever

known--wonderful for the originality of his mind, and the power he

possessed of throwing out in profusion grand central truths from which

might be evolved the most comprehensive systems. Wordsworth, as a poet,

regretted that German metaphysics had so much captivated the taste of

Coleridge, for he was frequently not intelligible on this subject;

whereas, if his energy and his originality had been more exerted in the

channel of poetry, an instrument of which he had so perfect a mastery,

Wordsworth thought he might have done more permanently to enrich the

literature, and to influence the thought of the nation, than any man of

the age. As it was, however, he said he believed Coleridge's mind to

have been a widely fertilising one, and that the seed he had so lavishly

sown in his conversational discourses, and the Sibylline leaves (not the

poems so called by him) which he had scattered abroad so extensively

covered with his annotations, had done much to form the opinions of the

highest-educated men of the day; although this might be an influence not

likely to meet with adequate recognition. After mentioning, in answer to

our inquiries about the circumstances of their friendship, that though a

considerable period had elapsed during which they had not seen much of

each other, Coleridge and he had been, for more than two years,

uninterruptedly, in as close intimacy as man could be with man, he

proceeded to read to us the letter from Henry Nelson Coleridge which

conveyed the tidings of his great relation's death, and of the manner of

it. It appeared that, his death was a relief from intense pain, which,

however, subsided at the interval of a few days before the event; and

that shortly after this cessation of agony, he fell into a comatose

state. The most interesting part of the letter was the statement, that

the last use he made of his faculties was to call his children and other

relatives and friends around him, to give them his blessing, and to

express his hope to them that the manner of his end might manifest the

depth of his trust in his Saviour Christ. As I heard this, I was at once

deeply glad at the substance, and deeply affected by Wordsworth's

emotion in reading it. When he came to this part his voice at first

faltered, and then broke; but soon divine faith that the change was a

blest one overcame aught of human grief, and he concluded in an equable

though subdued tone. Before I quit this subject, I will tell you what I

was interested in hearing from a person of the highest abilities,[266]

whom I had the good fortune of meeting at Rydal Mount. He said that he

had visited Coleridge about a month before his death, and had perceived

at once his countenance pervaded by a most remarkable serenity. On being

congratulated on his appearance, Coleridge replied that he did now, for

the first time, begin to hope, from the mitigation of his pains, that

his health was undergoing a permanent improvement (alas! he was

deceived; yet may we not consider this hopeful feeling, which is, I

believe, by no means uncommon, to be under such circumstances a valuable

blessing?); but that what he felt most thankful for was the deep, calm

peace of mind which he then enjoyed; a peace such as he had never before

experienced, or scarcely hoped for. This, he said, seemed now settled

upon him; and all things were thus looked at by him through an

atmosphere by which all were _reconciled and harmonised_.[267]

[266] Dr. Whewell. G.

[267] Extract of a letter to a friend, by Rev. R.P. Graves, M.A.,

formerly of Windermere, now of Dublin: _Memoirs_, pp. 288-90.

(_h_) FURTHER REMINISCENCES OF WORDSWORTH BY THE SAME, SENT TO THE

PRESENT EDITOR.

I remember to have been very much struck by what appeared to me the

wisdom of a plan suggested by Wordsworth, for the revision of the

authorised version of the Bible and of the Book of Common Prayer.

With regard to the former, no one, he said, could be more deeply

convinced of the inestimable value of its having been made when it was,

and being what it is. In his opinion it was made at the happy juncture

when our language had attained adequate expansion and flexibility, and

when at the same time its idiomatic strength was unimpaired by excess of

technical distinctions and conventional refinements; and these

circumstances, though of course infinitely subordinate to the spiritual

influence of its subject-matter, he considered to be highly important in

connection with a volume which naturally became a universally recognised

standard of the language; for thus the fresh well of English undefiled

was made a perennial blessing to the nation, in no slight degree

conducive to the robust and manly thinking and character of its

inhabitants. He was satisfied, too, as to its general and most impartial

accuracy, and its faithfulness in rendering not only the words but the

style, the strength, and the spirit and the character of the original

records. He attached too the value one might suppose he would attach to

the desirableness of leaving undisturbed the sacred associations which

to the feelings of aged Christians belonged to the _ipsissima verba_

which had been their support under the trials of life.

And so with regard to the Prayer Book, he reverenced and loved it as the

Church's precious heritage of primitive piety, equally admirable for its

matter and its style. It may be interesting to add, that in reference to

this latter point I have heard him pronounce that many of the collects

seemed to him examples of perfection, consisting, according to his

impression, of words whose signification filled up without excess or

defect the simple and symmetrical contour of some majestic meaning, and

whose sound was a harmony of accordant simplicity and grandeur; a

combination, he added, such as we enjoy in some of the best passages of

Shakespeare.

But notwithstanding that he held these opinions, which will evince that

he was not one who would lightly touch either sacred volume, he did not

think that plain mistakes in the translation of the Bible, or obsolete

words, or renderings commonly misunderstood, should be perpetually

handed down in our authorised version of the volume of inspiration, or

that similar blemishes in the Prayer Book, which, as being of human

composition, would admit of freer though still reverential handling,

should be permitted to continue as stumbling-blocks interfering with its

acceptableness and usefulness.

The plan which he suggested as meeting the difficulties of the case was

the following:

That by proper authority a Committee of Revision of the English Bible

should be appointed, whose business should be, retaining the present

authorised version as a standard to be departed from as little as

possible to settle upon such indubitable corrections of meaning and

improvements of expression as they agreed ought to be made, and have

these printed _in the margin_ of all Bibles published by authority.

That, as an essential part of the scheme, this Committee of Revision

should be renewed periodically, but not too frequently--he appeared to

think that periods of fifty years might serve--at which times it should

be competent to the Committee to authorise the transference from the

margin into the text of all such alterations as had stood the test of

experience and criticism during the previous period, as well as to fix

on new marginal readings.

He was of opinion that in the constitution of the Committee care should

be taken to appoint not only divines of established reputation for sound

theology, and especially for their knowledge in connection with the

original languages of the sacred volume, but some one author at least

noted for his mastery over the vernacular language.

It will be seen that this plan, while it provides for corrections of

errors and substitution of understood for obsolete or mistaken

expressions, leaves undisturbed the associations of aged Christians, and

prepares the younger generation for receiving the marginal amendments

into the text. Wordsworth conceived that fixing the duration of the

period of revision was of great consequence, both as obviating all

agitation in the way of call for such a process, and as tending in the

matter of critical discussions respecting the sanctioning, cancelling,

and proposing of amendments to bring them to something of definitiveness

in preparation for each era of revision.

The same process, under certain modifications, he thought applicable to

the Book of Common Prayer. In this he deprecated all tampering with

doctrine, considering that alterations ought to be confined to changes

rendering the services more clearly understood or more conveniently

used. It is fair to add, however, that I have heard him express a strong

desire that the Athanasian Creed were rid of the so-called damnatory

clauses; at the same time declaring that no one was ever more profoundly

convinced than himself of the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity.

He was in favour of a collection of metrical hymns, more peculiarly

Christian in character than the Psalter, being set forth by authority

for use in the Church; and for the choice of such hymns he thought a

Committee should be appointed in which the knowledge of divine, of poet,

and of laymen trusted for common sense and experience in life should be

severally and conjointly engaged. As a practical suggestion of moment in

the _composition_ of such hymns he advised that composers should not in

the four-line stanza do more than make the second and fourth lines

rhyme; leaving the other two unrhymed, he said, would give an important

addition of freedom both to the sense and the style.

R.P. GRAVES. Windermere, 1850.

To the above memorandum I now (Sept. 1874) add two items, of which I

retain a distinct remembrance.

(1) He was in favour of the officiating clergyman being allowed to

introduce into his reading of the Lessons in church the authorised

marginal corrections.

(2) He expressed in very strong terms his opinion that the prefatory

portion of the Marriage Service should be altered so as to make it not

only less repulsive to modern feelings, but more accordant with the

higher aspects of the union to be solemnised.

_Passion in Poetry_.--One day, speaking of passion as an element of

poetry, he referred to his own poems, and said that he thought there was

a stronger fire of passion than was elsewhere to be found among them in

the lyrical burst near the conclusion of 'The Song at the Feast of

Brougham Castle:'

'Armour rusting in his halls,

On the blood of Clifford calls:

"Quell the Scot," exclaims the Lance--

"Bear me to the heart of France,"

Is the longing of the Shield.'

_Chronological Classification of Poems_.--Many years ago I expressed to

Wordsworth a wish that his poems were printed in the order of their

composition, assigning as reasons for the wish the great interest which

would attach to observing the progressive development of the poet's

thought, and the interpretative value of the light mutually reflected by

poems of the same period. I remember being surprised by the feeling akin

to indignation which he manifested at the suggestion. He said that such

proceeding would indicate on the part of a poet an amount of egotism,

placing interest in himself above interest in the subjects treated by

him, which could not belong to a true poet caring for the elements of

poetry in their right proportion, and designing to bring to bear upon

the minds of his readers the best influences at his command in the way

best calculated to make them effectual. I felt that his ground of

objection made me revere him the more both as a man and as a poet; yet I

retained the opinion that much might be said on the reader's part in the

case of a great poet for such an arrangement of his poems as I had been

suggesting, and I welcomed in after-days the concession made by him in

consenting to put dates to the poems, while adhering to their

classification according to subject or predominant element.

_Verbal Criticism_.--Wordsworth not only sympathised with the feelings

expressed in Southey's touching lines upon The Dead, but admired very

much the easy flow of the verse and the perfect freedom from strain in

the expression by which they are marked. Yet in the first two stanzas he

noted three flaws, and suggested changes by which they might have been

easily avoided. I have underlined the words he took exception to:

'My days among the dead are past;

Around me I behold,

Where'er _these casual eyes_ are cast,

The mighty minds of old;

My never-failing friends are they,

With whom I _converse_ day by day.

With them I take delight in weal,

And seek relief in woe;

And while I understand and feel

How much to them I owe,

My cheeks have often been bedew'd

With tears of thoughtful gratitude.'

In the first stanza, for 'Where'er _these casual eyes_ are cast,' which

he objected to as not simple and natural, and as scarcely correct, he

suggested 'Where'er _a casual look I cast_;' and for '_converse_,' the

accent of which he condemned as belonging to the noun and not to the

verb, he suggested '_commune_.' In the second stanza he pointed out the

improper sequence of tenses in the third and fifth lines, which he

corrected by reading in the latter '_My cheeks are oftentimes bedew'd_.'

Of the narrative poems of his friend, well executed as he considered

them, and of the mainly external action of imagination or fancy in which

they deal, I have certainly heard him pronounce a very depreciatory

opinion; whether I ever heard him use the hard words attributed to him,

'I would not give five shillings for a ream of them,' I cannot now

assert, but if used, they were said in reference to the nobler kind of

imaginative power which reveals to man the deep places and sublimer

affinities of his own being. But to some others of Southey's verses, as

well as to the lines above quoted, and to his prose writings in general,

he was wont to give liberal praise; and no one could doubt the sincerity

and warmth of his admiration of the intellect and virtues of the man, or

the brotherly affection towards him which he not unfrequently expressed.

R.P. GRAVES. Dublin, 1875.

(i) AN AMERICAN'S REMINISCENCES.

To PROFESSOR HENRY REED.

Philadelphia, Sept. 1850.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

You have asked me to write out as fully as I can an account of my visit

to Wordsworth last Summer, of which your letter of introduction was the

occasion. Feeling very grateful to you for the pleasure which that visit

gave me, and desiring to make a more minute record of it than either the

letter I addressed to you from Keswick, or my journal written at the

time contains, I gladly comply with your request.

It was about noon on the 18th of August 1849, that I set out with my

friends, from their house near Bowness, to ride to Ambleside. Our route

was along the shore of Lake Windermere. It was my first day among the

English Lakes, and I enjoyed keenly the loveliness which was spread out

before me. My friends congratulated me on the clearness of the

atmosphere and the bright skies. Twilight is all-important in bringing

out the full beauty of the Lake Region, and in this respect I was very

fortunate. I had already been deeply moved by the tranquil beauty of

Windermere, for, as I came out of the cottage, formerly Professor

Wilson's, where I had passed the night, there it lay in all its

grandeur, its clear waters, its green islands, and its girdle of solemn

mountains. It was quite dark when I had been conducted to this cottage

the night before, so that I saw the Lake for the first time in the light

of early morning. The first impression was confirmed by every new

prospect as we rode along. The vale seemed a very paradise for its sweet

seclusion. I had been told that after Switzerland, I should find little

to attract me in this region, but such was not the case. Nothing can be

more lovely than these lakes and mountains, the latter thickly wooded,

and rising directly from the water's edge. The foliage is of the darkest

green, giving to the lake in which it is reflected the same sombre hue.

It seemed the fittest dwelling-place for a Poet, amid all this quiet

beauty.

It was half-past one when we reached Ambleside, where I left Mr. and

Mrs. B., and walked on alone to Rydal Mount. I was full of eager

expectations as I thought how soon I should, perhaps, be in the presence

of Wordsworth--that after long years of waiting, of distant reverential

admiration and love, I was, as I hoped, to be favoured with a personal

interview with the great poet-philosopher, to whom you and I, and so

many, many others, feel that we are under the deepest obligation for the

good which has come to us from his writings. At two o'clock I was at the

wicket gate opening into Wordsworth's grounds. I walked along the gravel

pathway, leading through shrubbery to the open space in front of the

long two-story cottage, the Poet's dwelling. Your sketch of the house by

Inman is a correct one, but it gives no idea of the view _from_ it,

which is its chief charm. Rydal Mere with its islands, and the mountains

beyond it, are all in sight. I had but a hasty enjoyment of this beauty;

nor could I notice carefully the flowers which were blooming around. It

was evident that the greatest attention had been paid to the grounds,

for the flower-beds were tastefully arranged, and the gravel walks were

in complete order. One might be well content, I thought, to make his

abode at a spot like this.

A boy of about twelve years was occupied at one of the flower-beds, as I

passed by; he followed me to the door, and waited my commands. I asked

if Mr. Wordsworth was in.... He was dining--would I walk into the

drawing-room, and wait a short time?... I was shown into the

drawing-room, or study, I know not which to call it.... Here I am, I

said to myself, in the great Poet's house. Here his daily life is spent.

Here in this room, doubtless, much of his poetry has been written--words

of power which are to go down with those of Shakspeare, and Spenser, and

Milton, while our English tongue endures. It was a long apartment, the

ceiling low, with two windows at one end, looking out on the lawn and

shrubbery. Many engravings were on the walls. The famous Madonna of

Raphael, known as that of the Dresden Gallery, hung directly over the

fire-place. Inman's portrait of the Poet, your gift to Mrs. Wordsworth,

being a copy of the one painted for you, had a conspicuous place. The

portrait of Bishop White, also your gift (the engraving from Inman's

picture), I also noticed.

* * * * *

I could have waited patiently for a long time indulging the thoughts

which the place called up. In a few minutes, however, I heard steps in

the entry, the door was opened, and Wordsworth came in, it could be no

other--- a tall figure, a little bent with age, his hair thin and grey,

and his face deeply wrinkled.... The expression of his countenance was

sad, mournful I might say; he seemed one on whom sorrow pressed heavily.

He gave me his hand, and welcomed me cordially, though without smiling.

'Will you walk out, Sir, and join us at the table?' said he. 'I am

engaged to dine elsewhere.' 'But you can sit with us,' said he; so,

leading the way, he conducted me to the dining-room. At the head of the

table sat Mrs. Wordsworth, and their three grandchildren made up the

party.... It was a humble apartment, not ceiled, the rafters being

visible; having a large old-fashioned chimney-place, with a high

mantelpiece.

* * * * *

Wordsworth asked after Mr. Ticknor of Boston, who had visited him a few

months before, and for whom he expressed much regard. Some other

questions led me to speak of the progress we were making in America in

the extension of our territory, the settlements on the Pacific, &c.; all

this involving the rapid spread of our English tongue. Wordsworth at

this looked up, and I noticed a fixing of his eye as if on some remote

object. He said that considering this extension of our language, it

behoved those who wrote to see to it, that what they put forth was on

the side of virtue. This remark, although thrown out at the moment, was

made in a serious thoughtful way; and I was much impressed by it. I

could not but reflect that to him a deep sense of responsibility had

ever been present: to purify and elevate has been the purpose of all his

writings. Such may have been at that moment his own inward meditation,

and he may have had in mind the coming generations who are to dwell upon

his words.

* * * * *

Queen Victoria was mentioned--her visit to Ireland which had just been

made--the courage she had shown. 'That is a virtue,' said he, 'which she

has to a remarkable degree, which is very much to her credit.'

* * * * *

Inman's portrait of him I alluded to as being very familiar to me, the

copy which hung in the room calling it to mind, which led him to speak

of the one painted by Pickersgill for St. John's College, Cambridge. 'I

was a member of that College, he said, 'and the fellows and students

did me the honour to ask me to sit, and allowed me to choose the artist.

I wrote to Mr. Rogers on the subject, and he recommended Pickersgill,

who came down soon afterwards, and the picture was painted here.' He

believed he had sat twenty-three times. My impression is he was in doubt

whether Inman's or Pickersgill's portrait was the better one.

* * * * *

He spoke with great animation of the advantage of classical study, Greek

especially. 'Where,' said he, 'would one look for a greater orator than

Demosthenes; or finer dramatic poetry, next to Shakspeare, than that of

Aeschylus and Sophocles, not to speak of Euripides?' Herodotus he

thought 'the most interesting and instructive book, next to the Bible,

which had ever been written.' Modern discoveries had only tended to

confirm the general truth of his narrative. Thucydides he thought less

of.

* * * * *

France was our next subject, and one which seemed very near his heart.

He had been much in that country at the out-break of the Revolution, and

afterwards during its wildest excesses. At the time of the September

massacres he was at Orleans. Addressing Mrs. W. he said, 'I wonder how I

came to stay there so long, and at a period so exciting.' He had known

many of the abbÈs and other ecclesiastics, and thought highly of them as

a class; they were earnest, faithful men: being unmarried, he must say,

they were the better able to fulfil their sacred duties; they were

married to their flocks. In the towns there seemed, he admitted, very

little religion; but in the country there had always been a great deal.

'I should like to spend another month in France,' he said, 'before I

close my eyes.' He seemed to feel deep commiseration for the sorrows of

that unhappy country. It was evidently the remembrance of hopes which in

his youth he had ardently cherished, and which had been blighted, on

which his mind was dwelling. I alluded to Henry the Fifth, to whom many

eyes were, I thought, beginning to turn. With him, he remarked, there

would be a principle for which men could contend--legitimacy. The

advantage of this he stated finely.

There was tenderness, I thought, in the tones of his voice, when

speaking with his wife; and I could not but look with deep interest and

admiration on the woman for whom this illustrious man had for so many

years cherished feelings of reverential love.

'Peace settles where the intellect is meek,'

is a line which you will recall from one of the beautiful poems

Wordsworth has addressed to her; and this seemed peculiarly the temper

of her spirit--_peace_, the holy calmness of a heart to whom love had

been an 'unerring light.' Surely we may pray, my friend, that in the

brief season of separation which she has now to pass, she may be

strengthened with divine consolation.

I cannot forbear to quote here that beautiful passage, near the end of

the great poem, 'The Prelude,' as an utterance by the author of tender

feelings in his own matchless way. After speaking of his sister in tones

of deepest thankfulness, he adds,

'Thereafter came

One, whom with thee friendship had early prized;

She came, no more a phantom to adorn

A moment, but an inmate of the heart;

And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined,

To penetrate the lofty and the low;

Even as one essence of pervading light

Shines in the brightness of ten thousand stars,

And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp

Couched in the dewy grass.'

I have been led away from my narrative; but I wished to record the

feelings which had arisen within me with regard to this excellent lady;

she who has been, as ---- has so happily expressed it in his letter to

you, 'almost like the Poet's guardian angel for near fifty years.'

* * * * *

I may here mention, that throughout the conversation Wordsworth's manner

was animated, and that he took pleasure in it evidently. His words were

very choice: each sentence seemed faultless. No one could have listened

to his talk for five minutes, even on ordinary topics, without

perceiving that he was a remarkable man. Not that he was brilliant; but

there was sustained vigour, and that mode of expression which denotes

habitual thoughtfulness.

When the clock struck four, I thought it time for me to go. Wordsworth

told me to say to his friends in America, that he and his wife were

well; that they had had a great grief of late, in the loss of their only

daughter, which he supposed they would never get over. This explained,

as I have already mentioned, the sadness of his manner. Such strength of

the affections in old age we rarely see. And yet the Poet has himself

condemned, as you remember, in 'The Excursion,' long and persevering

grief for objects of our love 'removed from this unstable world,'

reminding one so sorrowing of

'that state

Of pure, imperishable blessedness

Which reason promises, and Holy Writ

Ensures to all believers.'

But, as if foreseeing his own case, he has added, with touching power,

'And if there be whose tender frames have drooped

Even to the dust, apparently through weight

Of anguish unrelieved, and lack of power

An agonising sorrow to transmute;

Deem not that proof is here of hope withheld

When wanted most; a confidence impaired

So pitiably, that having ceased to see

With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love

Of what is lost, and perish through regret.'

The weakness of his bodily frame it was which took away his power of

tranquil endurance. Bowed down by the weight of years, he had not

strength to sustain this further burden, grief for a much-loved child.

His mind, happily, retained its clearness, though his body was decaying.

* * * * *

He walked out into the entry with me, and then asked me to go again into

the dining-room, to look at an oak chest or cabinet he had there--a

piece of old furniture curiously carved. It bore a Latin inscription,

which stated that it was made 300 years ago, for William Wordsworth, who

was the son of, &c. &c. giving the ancestors of said William for many

generations, and ending, 'on whose souls may God have mercy.' This

Wordsworth repeated twice, and in an emphatic way, as he read the

inscription. It seemed to me that he took comfort in the religious

spirit of his ancestors, and that he was also adopting the solemn

ejaculation for himself. There was something very impressive in his

manner.

I asked to see the cast from Chantrey's bust of him, which he at once

showed me; also a crayon sketch by Haydon, which, I understood him to

say, West had pronounced the finest crayon he had ever seen. He referred

also to another sketch, by Margaret Gillies, I think, which was there.

We then went out together on the lawn, and stood for a while to enjoy

the views, and he pulled open the shrubbery or hedge in places, that I

might see to better advantage. He accompanied me to the gate, and then

said if I had a few minutes longer to spare he would like to show me the

waterfall which was close by--the lower fall of Rydal. I gladly

assented, and he led the way across the grounds of Lady Fleming, which

were opposite to his own, to a small summer-house. The moment we opened

the door, the waterfall was before us; the summer-house being so placed

as to occupy the exact spot from which it was to be seen; the rocks and

shrubbery around closing it in on every side. The effect was magical.

The view from the rustic house, the rocky basin into which the water

fell, and the deep shade in which the whole was enveloped, made it a

lovely scene. Wordsworth seemed to have much pleasure in exhibiting this

beautiful retreat; it is described in one of his earlier poems, 'The

Evening Walk.'

As we returned together he walked very slowly, occasionally stopping

when he said anything of importance; and again I noticed that looking

into remote space of which I have already spoken. His eyes, though not

glistening, had yet in them the fire which betokened the greatness of

his genius. This no painter could represent, and this it was which gave

to his countenance its high intellectual expression.

* * * * *

Hartley Coleridge he spoke of with affection.... 'There is a single

line,' he added, 'in one of his father's poems which I consider explains

the after-life of the son. He is speaking of his own confinement in

London, and then says,

"But thou, my child, shalt wander like a breeze."

* * * * *

Of Southey he said that he had had the misfortune to outlive his

faculties. His mind, he thought, had been weakened by long watching by

the sick-bed of his wife, who had lingered for years in a very

distressing state.

The last subject he touched on was the international copyright

question--the absence of protection in our country to the works of

foreign authors. He said, mildly, that he thought it would be better

_for us_ if some acknowledgment, however small, was made. The fame of

his own writings, as far as it was of pecuniary advantage to him, he had

long regarded with indifference; happily, he had an income more than

sufficient for all his wants.... He remarked, he had once seen a volume

of his poems published in an American newspaper.

I happened to have in my pocket the small volume of selections, which

you made some years ago. I produced it, and asked at the same time if he

had ever seen it. He replied he had not. He took it with evident

interest, turned to the title-page, which he read, with its motto. He

began the preface then, in the same way. But here I must record a

trifling incident, which may yet be worth noting. We were standing

together in the road, Wordsworth reading aloud, as I have said, when a

man accosted us asking charity--a beggar of the better class.

Wordsworth, scarcely looking off the book, thrust his hands into his

pockets, as if instinctively acknowledging the man's right to beg by

this prompt action. He seemed to find nothing, however; and he said, in

a sort of soliloquy, 'I have given to four or five, already, to-day,' as

if to account for his being then unprovided.

Wordsworth, as he turned over one leaf after another, said, 'But I shall

weary you, sir.' 'By no means,' said I; for I could have been content to

stand there for hours to hear, as I did, the Poet read from time to

time, with fitting emphasis, the choice passages which your preface and

biographical sketch contain. Imagine with what delight I listened to the

venerable man, and to hear, too, from his own lips, such words as these,

your own most true reflection: '_His has been a life devoted to the

cultivation of the poet's art for its best and most lasting uses--a

self-dedication as complete as the world has ever witnessed_.' Your

remark with regard to his having outlived many of his contemporaries

among the poets, he read with affecting simplicity; his manner being

that of one who looked backward to the past with entire tranquillity,

and forward with sure hope. I felt that his honoured life was drawing

rapidly to a close, and with him there was evidently the same

consciousness.

He made but little comment on your notice of him. Occasionally he would

say, as he came to a particular fact, 'That's quite correct;' or, after

reading a quotation from his own works, he would add, 'That's from my

writings.' These quotations he read in a way that much impressed me; it

seemed almost as if he was awed by the greatness of his own power, the

gifts with which he had been endowed. It was a solemn time to me, this

part of my interview; and to you, my friend, it would have been a

crowning happiness to stand, as I did, by his side on that bright summer

day, and thus listen to his voice. I thought of his long life; that he

was one who had felt himself from early youth 'a renovated spirit

singled out for holy services'--one who had listened to the teachings of

Nature, and communed with his own heart in the seclusion of those

beautiful vales, until his thoughts were ready to be uttered for the

good of his fellow-men. And there had come back to him offerings of

love, and gratitude, and reverent admiration, from a greater multitude

than had ever before paid their homage to a living writer; and these

acknowledgments have been for benefits so deep and lasting, that words

seem but a poor return. But I will not attempt to describe further the

feelings which were strongly present to me at that moment, when I seemed

most to realise in whose presence I stood.

* * * * *

He walked with me as far as the main road to Ambleside. As we passed the

little chapel built by Lady Fleming, which has been the occasion, as you

remember, of one of his poems, there were persons, tourists evidently,

talking with the sexton at the door. Their inquiries, I fancied, were

about Wordsworth, perhaps as to the hour of service the next day

(Sunday), with the hope of seeing him there. One of them caught sight of

the venerable man at the moment, and at once seemed to perceive who it

was, for she motioned to the others to look, and they watched him with

earnest gaze. I was struck with their looks of delighted admiration. He

stopped when we reached the main road, saying that his strength would

not allow him to walk further. Giving me his hand, he desired again to

be remembered to you and others in America, and wished me a safe return

to my friends, and so we parted. I went on my way, happy in the

recollection of this, to me, memorable interview. My mind was in a

tumult of excitement, for I felt that I had been in the familiar

presence of one of the noblest of our race; and this sense of

Wordsworth's intellectual greatness had been with me during the whole

interview. I may speak, too, of the strong perception of his moral

elevation which I had at the same time. No word of unkindness had fallen

from him. He seemed to be living as if in the presence of God, by

habitual recollection. A strange feeling, almost of awe, had impressed

me while I was thus with him. Believing that his memory will be had in

honour in all coming time, I could not but be thankful that I had been

admitted to intimate intercourse with him then, when he was so near the

end of life. To you, my dear friend, I must again say I owe this

happiness, and to you it has been denied. You also, of all others of our

countrymen, would have most valued such an interview, for to you the

great Poet's heart has been in an especial manner opened in private

correspondence. No other American has he honoured in the same degree;

and by no one else in this country has the knowledge and appreciation of

his poetry been so much extended. The love which has so long animated

you has been such, that multitudes have been influenced to seek for joy

and refreshment from the same pure source.

I have been led, as I said at the beginning of my letter, to make this

record, partly from your suggestion, and partly from a remark of Southey

which I have lately seen, to the effect that Wordsworth was one of whom

posterity would desire to know all that can be remembered. You will not,

I trust, deem the incidents I have set down trivial; or consider any

detail too minute, the object of which was only to bring the living man

before you. Now that he has gone for ever from our sight in this world,

I am led to look back to the interview with a deeper satisfaction; and

it may be that this full account of it will have value hereafter. To you

it was due that I should make the record; by myself these remembrances

will ever be cherished among my choicest possessions.

Believe me, my dear friend, yours faithfully,

Ellis Yarnall.[268]

[268] _Memoirs_, ii. 483-500.

(j) RECOLLECTIONS OF WORDSWORTH.

By Aubrey de Vere, Esq.

_(Sent to the present Editor, and now first published)_

PART I.

It was about eight years before his death that I had the happiness of

making acquaintance with Wordsworth. During the next four years I saw a

good deal of him, chiefly among his own mountains, and, besides many

delightful walks with him, I had the great honour of passing some days

under his roof. The strongest of my impressions respecting him was that

made by the manly simplicity, and lofty rectitude, which characterised

him. In one of his later sonnets he writes of himself thus: 'As a true

man who long had served the lyre:'--it was because he was a _true_ man

that he was a true poet; and it was impossible to know him without being

reminded of this. In any case he must have been recognised as a man of

original and energetic genius; but it was his strong and truthful moral

nature, his intellectual sincerity, the abiding conscientiousness of his

imagination, which enabled that genius to do its great work, and

bequeath to the England of the future the most solid mass of

deep-hearted and authentic poetry which has been the gift to her of any

poet since the Elizabethan age. There was in his nature a veracity,

which, had it not been combined with an idealising imagination not less

remarkable, would to many have appeared prosaic; yet, had he not

possessed that characteristic, the products of his imagination would

have lacked reality. They might still have enunciated a deep and sound

philosophy; but they would have been divested of that human interest

which belongs to them in a yet higher degree. All the little incidents

of the neighbourhood were to him important.

The veracity and the ideality which are so signally combined in

Wordsworth's poetic descriptions of Nature, made themselves at least as

much felt whenever Nature was the theme of his discourse. In his intense

reverence for Nature he regarded all poetical delineations of her with

an exacting severity; and if the descriptions were not true, and true in

a twofold sense, the more skilfully executed they were, the more was his

indignation roused by what he deemed a pretence and a deceit. An untrue

description of Nature was to him a profaneness, a heavenly message

sophisticated and falsely delivered. He expatiated much to me one day,

as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature

had been described by one of the most justly popular of England's modern

poets--one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect. 'He

took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and

note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most--a river rippling

over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a

mountain ash waving its red berries. He went home, and wove the whole

together into a poetical description.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed

with a flashing eye and impassioned voice, 'But Nature does not permit

an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil

and note-book at home; fixed his eye, as he walked, with a reverent

attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that

could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he

should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have

discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him,

much was also most wisely obliterated. That which remained--the picture

surviving in his mind--would have presented the ideal and essential

truth of the scene, and done so, in a large part, by discarding much

which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene

many of the most brilliant details are but accidental. A true eye for

Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.' On the

same occasion he remarked, 'Scott misquoted in one of his novels my

lines on _Yarrow_. He makes me write,

"The swans on sweet St. Mary's lake

Float double, swans and shadow;"

but I wrote

"The _swan_ on _still_ St. Mary's lake."

Never could I have written "swans" in the plural. The scene when I saw

it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter

loneliness: there was _one_ swan, and one only, stemming the water, and

the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one

companion of that swan, its own white image in the water. It was for

that reason that I recorded the Swan and the Shadow. Had there been many

swans and many shadows, they would have implied nothing as regards the

character of the scene; and I should have said nothing about them.' He

proceeded to remark that many who could descant with eloquence on Nature

cared little for her, and that many more who truly loved her had yet no

eye to discern her--which he regarded as a sort of 'spiritual

discernment.' He continued, 'Indeed I have hardly ever known any one but

myself who had a true eye for Nature, one that thoroughly understood her

meanings and her teachings--except' (here he interrupted himself) 'one

person. There was a young clergyman, called Frederick Faber,[269] who

resided at Ambleside. He had not only as good an eye for Nature as I

have, but even a better one, and sometimes pointed out to me on the

mountains effects which, with all my great experience, I had never

detected.'

[269] Afterwards Father Faber of the Oratory. His 'Sir Launcelot'

abounds in admirable descriptions.

The Prose Works of William Wordsworth For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes. · 第 10 / 11 章

We walked out on the turf terrace, on the Loughrigg side of Rydal Water.