The Prose Works of William Wordsworth / For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.

by William Wordsworth

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.'

Truth, he used to say—that is, truth in its largest sense, as a thing at once real and ideal, a truth including exact and accurate detail, and yet everywhere subordinating mere detail to the spirit of the whole—this, he affirmed, was the soul and essence not only of descriptive poetry, but of all poetry. He had often, he told me, intended to write an essay on poetry, setting forth this principle, and illustrating it by references to the chief representatives of poetry in its various departments. It was this twofold truth which made Shakspeare the greatest of all poets. 'It was well for Shakspeare,' he remarked, 'that he gave himself to the drama. It was that which forced him to be sufficiently human. His poems would otherwise, from the extraordinarily metaphysical character of his genius, have been too recondite to be understood. His youthful poems, in spite of their unfortunate and unworthy subjects, and his sonnets also, reveal this tendency. Nothing can surpass the greatness of Shakspeare where he is at his greatest; but it is wrong to speak of him as if even he were perfect. He had serious defects, and not those only proceeding from carelessness. For instance, in his delineations of character he does not assign as large a place to religious sentiment as enters into the constitution of human nature under normal circumstances. If his dramas had more religion in them, they would be truer representations of man, as well as more elevated, and of a more searching interest.' Wordsworth used to warn young poets against writing poetry remote from human interest. Dante he admitted to be an exception; but he considered that Shelley, and almost all others who had endeavoured to out-soar the humanities, had suffered deplorably from the attempt. I once heard him say, 'I have often been asked for advice by young poets. All the advice I can give may be expressed in two counsels. First, let Nature be your habitual and pleasurable study, human nature and material nature; secondly, study carefully those first-class poets whose fame is universal, not local, and learn from them: learn from them especially how to observe and how to interpret Nature.'

Those who knew Wordsworth only from his poetry might have supposed that he dwelt ever in a region too serene to admit of human agitations. This was not the fact. There was in his being a region of tumult as well as a higher region of calm, though it was almost wholly in the latter that his poetry lived. It turned aside from mere personal excitements; and for that reason, doubtless, it developed more deeply those special ardours which belong at once to the higher imagination and to the moral being. The passion which was suppressed elsewhere burned in his 'Sonnets to Liberty,' and added a deeper sadness to the 'Yew-trees of Borrowdale.' But his heart, as well as his imagination, was ardent. When it spoke most powerfully in his poetry it spoke with a stern brevity unusual in that poetry, as in the poem 'There is a change and I am poor,' and the still more remarkable one, 'A slumber did my spirit seal,' a poem impassioned beyond the comprehension of those who fancy that Wordsworth lacks passion, merely because in him passion is neither declamatory nor, latently, sensual. He was a man of strong affections, strong enough on one sorrowful occasion to withdraw him for a time from poetry.[270]

Referring once to two young children of his who had died about forty years previously, he described the details of their illnesses with an exactness and an impetuosity of troubled excitement, such as might have been expected if the bereavement had taken place but a few weeks before. The lapse of time appeared to have left the sorrow submerged indeed, but still in all its first freshness. Yet I afterwards heard that at the time of the illness, at least in the case of one of the two children, it was impossible to rouse his attention to the danger. He chanced to be then under the immediate spell of one of those fits of poetic inspiration which descended on him like a cloud. Till the cloud had drifted he could see nothing beyond. Under the level of the calm there was, however, the precinct of the storm. It expressed itself rarely but vehemently, partaking sometimes of the character both of indignation and sorrow. All at once the trouble would pass away, and his countenance bask in its habitual calm, like a cloudless summer sky. His indignation flamed out vehemently when he heard of a base action. 'I could kick such a man across England with my naked foot,' I heard him exclaim on such an occasion. The more impassioned part of his nature connected itself especially with his political feelings. He regarded his own intellect as one which united some of the faculties which belong to the statesman with those which belong to the poet; and public affairs interested him not less deeply than poetry. It was as patriot, not poet, that he ventured to claim fellowship with Dante.[271] He did not accept the term 'Reformer,' because it implied an organic change in our institutions, and this he deemed both needless and dangerous; but he used to say that while he was a decided Conservative, he remembered that to preserve our institutions we must be ever improving them. He was, indeed, from first to last, preëminently a patriot, an impassioned as well as a thoughtful one. Yet his political sympathies were not with his own country only, but with the progress of Humanity. Till disenchanted by the excesses and follies of the first French revolution, his hopes and sympathies associated themselves ardently with the new order of things created by it; and I have heard him say that he did not know how any generous-minded young man, entering on life at the time of that great uprising, could have escaped the illusion. To the end his sympathies were ever with the cottage hearth far more than with the palace. If he became a strong supporter of what has been called 'the hierarchy of society,' it was chiefly because he believed the principle of 'equality' to be fatal to the well-being and the true dignity of the poor. Moreover, in siding politically with the Crown and the coronets, he considered himself to be siding with the weaker party in our democratic days.

The absence of love-poetry in Wordsworth's works has often been remarked upon, and indeed brought as a charge against them. He once told me that if he had avoided that form of composition, it was by no means because the theme did not interest him, but because, treated as it commonly has been, it tends rather to disturb and lower the reader's moral and imaginative being than to elevate it. He feared to handle it amiss. He seemed to think that the subject had been so long vulgarised, that few poets had a right to assume that they could treat it worthily, especially as the theme, when treated unworthily, was such an easy and cheap way of winning applause. It has been observed also that the Religion of Wordsworth's poetry, at least of his earlier poetry, is not as distinctly 'Revealed Religion' as might have been expected from this poet's well-known adherence to what he has called emphatically 'The lord, and mighty paramount of Truths.' He once remarked to me himself on this circumstance, and explained it by stating that when in youth his imagination was shaping for itself the channel in which it was to flow, his religious convictions were less definite and less strong than they had become on more mature thought, and that when his poetic mind and manner had once been formed, he feared that he might, in attempting to modify them, have become constrained. He added that on such matters he ever wrote with great diffidence, remembering that if there were many subjects too low for song, there were some too high. Wordsworth's general confidence in his own powers, which was strong, though far from exaggerated, rendered more striking and more touching his humility in all that concerned Religion. It used to remind me of what I once heard Mr. Rogers say, viz. 'There is a special character of greatness about humility for it implies that a man can, in an unusual degree, estimate the greatness of what is above us.' Fortunately his diffidence did not keep Wordsworth silent on sacred themes; his later poems include an unequivocal as well as beautiful confession of Christian faith; and one of them, 'The Primrose of the Rock,' is as distinctly Wordsworthian in its inspiration as it is Christian in its doctrine. Wordsworth was a 'high churchman,' and also, in his prose mind, strongly anti-Roman Catholic, partly on political grounds; but that it was otherwise as regards his mind poetic is obvious from many passages in his Christian poetry, especially those which refer to the monastic system, and the Schoolmen, and his sonnet on the Blessed Virgin, whom he addresses as

'Our tainted nature's solitary boast.'

He used to say that the idea of one who was both Virgin and Mother had sunk so deep into the heart of Humanity, that there it must ever remain.

Wordsworth's estimate of his contemporaries was not generally high. I remember his once saying to me, 'I have known many that might he called very clever men, and a good many of real and vigorous abilities, but few of genius; and only one whom I should call "wonderful." That one was Coleridge. At any hour of the day or night he would talk by the hour, if there chanced to be any sympathetic listener, and talk better than the best page of his writings; for a pen half paralysed his genius. A child would sit quietly at his feet and wonder, till the torrent had passed by. The only man like Coleridge whom I have known is Sir William Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Dublin.' I remember, however, that when I recited by his fireside Alfred Tennyson's two political poems, 'You ask me why, though ill at ease,' and 'Of old sat Freedom on the heights,' the old bard listened with a deepening attention, and when I had ended, said after a pause, 'I must acknowledge that those two poems are very solid and noble in thought. Their diction also seems singularly stately.' He was a great admirer of Philip van Artevelde. In the case of a certain poet since dead, and never popular, he said to me, 'I consider his sonnets to be the best of modern times;' adding, 'Of course I am not including my own in any comparison with those of others.' He was not sanguine as to the future of English poetry. He thought that there was much to be supplied in other departments of our literature, and especially he desired a really great History of England; but he was disposed to regard the roll of English poetry as made up, and as leaving place for little more except what was likely to be eccentric or imitational.

In his younger days Wordsworth had had to fight a great battle in poetry, for both his subjects and his mode of treating them were antagonistic to the maxims then current. It was fortunate for posterity, no doubt, that his long 'militant estate' was animated by some mingling of personal ambition with his love of poetry. Speaking in an early sonnet of

'The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth, and pure delight, by heavenly lays,'

he concludes,

'Oh! might my name be numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.'

He died at eighty, and general fame did not come to him till about fifteen years before his death. This perhaps might have been fifteen years too soon, if he had set any inordinate value on it. But it was not so. Shelley tells us that' Fame is love disguised;' and it was intellectual sympathy that Wordsworth had always valued far more than reputation. 'Give me thy love; I claim no other fee,' had been his demand on his reader. When Fame had laid her tardy garland at his feet he found on it no fresher green than his 'Rydalian laurels' had always worn. Once he said to me, 'It is indeed a deep satisfaction to hope and believe that my poetry will be, while it lasts, a help to the cause of virtue and truth—especially among the young. As for myself, it seems now of little moment how long I may be remembered. When a man pushes off in his little boat into the great seas of Infinity and Eternity, it surely signifies little how long he is kept in sight by watchers from the shore.'

Such are my chief recollections of the great poet, whom I knew but in his old age, but whose heart retained its youth till his daughter Dora's death. He seemed to me one who from boyhood had been faithful to a high vocation; one who had esteemed it his office to minister, in an age of conventional civilisation, at Nature's altar, and who had in his later life explained and vindicated such life-long ministration, even while he seemed to apologise for it, in the memorable confession,

'But who is innocent? By grace divine,
Not otherwise, O Nature, are we thine.'[272]

It was to Nature as first created, not to Nature as corrupted by 'disnatured' passions, that his song had attributed such high and healing powers. In singing her praise he had chosen a theme loftier than most of his readers knew—loftier, as he perhaps eventually discovered, than he had at first supposed it to be. Utterly without Shakspeare's dramatic faculty, he was richer and wider in the humanities than any poet since Shakspeare. Wholly unlike Milton in character and in opinions, he abounds in passages to be paralleled only by Milton in solemn and spiritual sublimity, and not even by Milton in pathos. It was plain to those who knew Wordsworth that he had kept his great gift pure, and used it honestly and thoroughly for that purpose for which it had been bestowed. He had ever written with a conscientious reverence for that gift; but he had also written spontaneously. He had composed with care—not the exaggerated solicitude which is prompted by vanity, and which frets itself to unite incompatible excellences; but the diligence which shrinks from no toil while eradicating blemishes that confuse a poem's meaning, and frustrate its purpose. He regarded poetry as an art; but he also regarded Art not as the compeer of Nature, much less her superior, but as her servant and interpreter. He wrote poetry likewise, no doubt, in a large measure, because self-utterance was an essential law of his nature. If he had a companion, he discoursed like one whose thoughts must needs run on in audible current; if he walked alone among his mountains, he murmured old songs. He was like a pine grove, vocal as well as visible. But to poetry he had dedicated himself as to the utterance of the highest truths brought within the range of his life's experience; and if his poetry has been accused of egotism, the charge has come from those who did not perceive that it was with a human, not a mere personal interest that he habitually watched the processes of his own mind. He drew from the fountain that was nearest at hand what he hoped might be a refreshment to those far off. He once said, speaking of a departed man of genius, who had lived an unhappy life and deplorably abused his powers, to the lasting calamity of his country, 'A great poet must be a great man; and a great man must be a good man; and a good man ought to be a happy man.' To know Wordsworth was to feel sure that if he had been a great poet, it was not merely because he had been endowed with a great imagination, but because he had been a good man, a great man, and a man whose poetry had, in an especial sense, been the expression of a healthily happy moral being.

AUBREY DE VERE.
Curragh Chase, March 31, 1875.

P.S. Wordsworth was by no means without humour. When the Queen on one occasion gave a masked ball, some one said that a certain youthful poet, who has since reached a deservedly high place both in the literary and political world, but who was then known chiefly as an accomplished and amusing young man of society, was to attend it dressed in the character of the father of English poetry, grave old Chaucer. 'What,' said Wordsworth, 'M. go as Chaucer! Then it only remains for me to go as M.!'

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PART II.

SONNET—RYDAL WITH WORDSWORTH.

BY THE LATE SIR AUBREY DE VERE.

'What we beheld scarce can I now recall
In one connected picture; images
Hurrying so swiftly their fresh witcheries
O'er the mind's mirror, that the several
Seems lost, or blended in the mighty all.
Lone lakes; rills gushing through rock-rooted trees:
Peaked mountains shadowing vales of peacefulness:
Glens echoing to the flashing waterfall.
Then that sweet twilight isle! with friends delayed
Beside a ferny bank 'neath oaks and yews;
The moon between two mountain peaks embayed;
Heaven and the waters dyed with sunset hues:
And he, the Poet of the age and land,
Discoursing as we wandered hand in hand.'

The above-written sonnet is the record of a delightful day spent by my father in 1833 with Wordsworth at Rydal, to which he went from the still more beautiful shores of Ulswater, where he had been sojourning at Halsteads. He had been one of Wordsworth's warmest admirers, when their number was small, and in 1842 he dedicated a volume of poems to him.[273] He taught me when a boy of 18 years old to admire the great bard. I had been very enthusiastically praising Lord Byron's poetry. My father calmly replied, 'Wordsworth is the great poet of modern times.' Much surprised, I asked, 'And what may his special merits be?' The answer was, 'They are very various, as for instance, depth, largeness, elevation, and, what is rare in modern poetry, an entire purity. In his noble "Laodamia" they are chiefly majesty and pathos.' A few weeks afterwards I chanced to take from the library shelves a volume of Wordsworth, and it opened on 'Laodamia.' Some strong, calm hand seemed to have been laid on my head, and bound me to the spot, till I had come to the end. As I read, a new world, hitherto unimagined, opened itself out, stretching far away into serene infinitudes. The region was one to me unknown, but the harmony of the picture attested its reality. Above and around were indeed

'An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams;'

and when I reached the line,

'Calm pleasures there abide—majestic pains,'

I felt that no tenants less stately could walk in so lordly a precinct. I had been translated into another planet of song—one with larger movements and a longer year. A wider conception of poetry had become mine, and the Byronian enthusiasm fell from me like a bond that is broken by being outgrown. The incident illustrates poetry in one of its many characters, that of 'the deliverer.' The ready sympathies and inexperienced imagination of youth make it surrender itself easily despite its better aspirations, or in consequence of them, to a false greatness; and the true greatness, once revealed, sets it free. As early as 1824 Walter Savage Landor, in his 'Imaginary Conversation' between Southey and Porson, had pronounced Wordsworth's 'Laodamia' to be 'a composition such as Sophocles might have exulted to own, and a part of which might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the regions he describes'—the Elysian Fields.

Wordsworth frequently spoke of death, as if it were the taking of a new degree in the University of Life. 'I should like,' he remarked to a young lady, 'to visit Italy again before I move to another planet.' He sometimes made a mistake in assuming that others were equally philosophical. We were once breakfasting at the house of Mr. Rogers, when Wordsworth, after gazing attentively round the room with a benignant and complacent expression, turned to our host, and wishing to compliment him, said, 'Mr. Rogers, I never see this house, so perfect in its taste, so exquisite in all its arrangements, and decorated with such well-chosen pictures, without fancying it the very house imaged to himself by the Roman poet, when, in illustration of man's mortality, he says, "Linquenda est domus."' 'What is that you are saying?' replied Mr. Rogers, whose years, between eighty and ninety, had not improved his hearing. 'I was remarking that your house,' replied Wordsworth, 'always reminds me of the Ode (more properly called an Elegy, though doubtless the lyrical measure not unnaturally causes it to be included among Horace's Odes) in which the Roman poet writes "Linquenda est domus;" that is, since, ladies being present, a translation may be deemed desirable, The house is, or has to be, left; and again, "et placens uxor"—and the pleasing wife; though, as we must all regret, that part of the quotation is not applicable on the present occasion.' The Town Bard, on whom 'no angle smiled' more than the end of St. James's-place, did not enter into the views of the Bard of the Mountains. His answer was what children call 'making a great face,' and the ejaculation, 'Don't talk Latin in, the society of ladies.' When I was going away he remarked, 'What a stimulus the mountain air has on the appetite! I made a sign to Edmund to hand him the cutlets a second time. I was afraid he would stick his fork into that beautiful woman who sat next him.' Wordsworth never resented a jest at his own expense. Once when we had knocked three times in vain at the door of a London house, I exclaimed, quoting his sonnet written on Westminster-bridge,

'Dear God, the very houses seem asleep.'

He laughed heartily, then smiled gravely, and lastly recounted the occasion, and described the early morning on which that sonnet was written. He did not recite more than a part of it, to the accompaniment of distant cab and carriage; and I thought that the door was opened too soon.

Wordsworth, despite his dislike to great cities, was attracted occasionally in his later years

'To the proud margin of the Thames,
And Lambeth's venerable towers,'

where his society was courted by persons of the most different character. But he complained bitterly of the great city. It was next to impossible, he remarked, to tell the truth in it. 'Yesterday I was at S. House: the Duchess of S., showing me the pictures, observed, "This is the portrait of my brother" (naming him), "and it is considered very like." To this I assented, partly perhaps in absence of mind, but partly, I think, with an impression that her Grace's brother was probably a person whose face every one knew, or was expected to know; so that, as I had never met him, my answer was in fact a lie! It is too bad that, when more than seventy years old, I should be brought from the mountains to London in order to tell a lie!' He made his complaint wherever he went, laying the blame, however, not so much on himself, or on the Duchess, as on the corrupt city; and some of those who learned how the most truthful man in England had thus quickly been subverted by metropolitan snares came to the conclusion that within a few years more no virtue would be left extant in the land. He was likewise maltreated in lesser ways. 'This morning I was compelled by my engagements to eat three breakfasts—one with an aged and excellent gentleman, who may justly be esteemed an accomplished man of letters, although I cannot honestly concede to him the title of a poet; one at a fashionable party; and one with an old friend whom no pressure would induce me to neglect—although for this, my first breakfast to-day, I was obliged to name the early hour of seven o'clock, as he lives in a remote part of London.'

But it was only among his own mountains that Wordsworth could be understood. He walked among them not so much to admire them as to converse with them. They exchanged thoughts with him, in sunshine or flying shadow, giving him their own and accepting his. Day and night, at all hours, and in all weather, he would face them. If it rained, he might fling his plaid over him, but would take no admonition. He must have his way. On such occasions, dutiful as he was in higher matters, he remained incurably wayward. In vain one reminded him that a letter needed an answer, or that the storm would soon be over. It was very necessary for him to do what he liked; and one of his dearest friends said to me, with a smile of the most affectionate humour, 'He wrote his "Ode to Duty," and then he had done with that matter.' This very innocent form of lawlessness, corresponding with the classic expression, 'Indulge genio,' seemed to belong to his genius, not less than the sympathetic reverence with which he looked up to the higher and universal laws. Sometimes there was a battle between his reverence for Nature and his reverence for other things. The friend already alluded to was once remarking on his varying expressions of countenance. 'That rough old face is capable of high and real beauty; I have seen in it an expression quite of heavenly peace and contemplative delight, as the May breeze came over him from the woods while he was slowly walking out of church on a Sunday morning, and when he had half emerged from the shadow.' A flippant person present inquired, 'Did you ever chance, Miss F., to observe that heavenly expression on his countenance, as he was walking into church, on a fine May morning?' A laugh was the reply. The ways of Nature harmonised with his feelings in age as well as in youth. He could understand no estrangement. Gathering a wreath of white thorn on one occasion, he murmured, as he slipped it into the ribbon which bound the golden tresses of his youthful companion,

'And what if I enwreathed my own?
'Twere no offence to reason;
The sober hills thus deck their brows
To meet the wintry season.'

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(k) FROM 'RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON.'

BY E.J. TRELAWNY. 1858 (MOXON).

Some days after this conversation I walked to Lausanne, to breakfast at the hotel with an old friend, Captain Daniel Roberts, of the navy. He was out sketching, but presently came in accompanied by two English ladies, with whom he had made acquaintance whilst drawing, and whom he brought to our hotel. The husband of one of them soon followed. I saw by their utilitarian garb, as well as by the blisters and blotches on their cheeks, lips, and noses, that they were pedestrian tourists, fresh from the snow-covered mountains, the blazing sun and frosty air having acted on their unseasoned skins as boiling water does on the lobster by dyeing his dark coat scarlet. The man was evidently a denizen of the north, his accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and bony build, and self-confident and dogmatic in his opinions. The precision and quaintness of his language, as well as his eccentric remarks on common things, stimulated my mind. Our icy islanders thaw rapidly when they have drifted into warmer latitudes: broken loose from its anti-social system, mystic castes, coteries, sets, and sects, they lay aside their purse-proud, tuft-hunting, and toadying ways, and are very apt to run risk in the enjoyment of all their senses. Besides, we were compelled to talk in strange company, if not from good breeding, to prove our breed, as the gift of speech is often our principal, if not sole, distinction from the rest of the brute animals.

To return to our breakfast. The travellers, flushed with health, delighted with their excursion, and with appetites earned by bodily and mental activity, were in such high spirits that Roberts and I caught the infection of their mouth; we talked as loud and fast as if under the exhilarating influence of champagne, instead of such a sedative compound as café au lait. I can rescue nothing out of oblivion but a few last words. The stranger expressed his disgust at the introduction of carriages into the mountain districts of Switzerland, and at the old fogies who used them.

'As to the arbitrary, pitiless, godless wretches,' he exclaimed, 'who have removed Nature's landmarks by cutting roads through Alps and Apennines, until all things are reduced to the same dead level, they will he arraigned hereafter with the unjust: they have robbed the best specimens of what men should be of their freeholds in the mountains; the eagle, the black cock, and the red deer they have tamed or exterminated. The lover of Nature can nowhere find a solitary nook to contemplate her beauties. Yesterday,' he continued, 'at the break of day, I scaled the most rugged height within my reach; it looked inaccessible; this pleasant delusion was quickly dispelled; I was rudely startled out of a deep reverie by the accursed jarring, jingling, and rumbling of a calèche, and harsh voices that drowned the torrent's fall.'

The stranger, now hearing a commotion in the street, sprang on his feet, looked out of the window, and rang the bell violently.

'Waiter,' he said, 'is that our carriage? Why did you not tells us? Come, lasses, be stirring; the freshness of the day is gone. You may rejoice in not having to walk; there is a chance of saving the remnants of skin the sun has left on our chins and noses; to-day we shall he stewed instead of barbecued.'

On their leaving the room to get ready for their journey, my friend Roberts told me the strangers were the poet Wordsworth, his wife and sister.

Who could have divined this? I could see no trace, in the hard features and weather-stained brow of the outer man, of the divinity within him. In a few minutes the travellers reappeared; we cordially shook hands, and agreed to meet again at Geneva. Now that I knew that I was talking to one of the veterans of the gentle craft, as there was no time to waste in idle ceremony, I asked him abruptly what he thought of Shelley as a poet.

'Nothing,' he replied as abruptly.

Seeing my surprise, he added, 'A poet who has not produced a good poem before he is twenty-five we may conclude cannot and never will do so.'

'The "Cenci"!' I said eagerly.

'Won't do,' he replied, shaking his head, as he got into the carriage: a rough-coated Scotch terrier followed him.

'This hairy fellow is our flea-trap,' he shouted out as they started off.

When I recovered from the shock of having heard the harsh sentence passed by an elder bard on a younger brother of the Muses, I exclaimed,

'After all, poets are but earth. It is the old story,—envy—Cain and Abel. Professions, sects, and communities in general, right or wrong, hold together, men of the pen excepted; if one of their guild is worsted in the battle, they do as the rooks do by their inky brothers—fly from him, cawing and screaming; if they don't fire the shot, they sound the bugle to charge.'

I did not then know that the full-fledged author never reads the writings of his contemporaries, except to cut them up in a review, that being a work of love. In after years, Shelley being dead, Wordsworth confessed this fact; he was then induced to read some of Shelley's poems, and admitted that Shelley was the greatest master of harmonious verse in our modern literature. (Pp. 4-8.)[274]

(l) FROM 'LETTERS, EMBRACING HIS LIFE, OF JOHN JAMES TAYLER, B.A., PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY, AND PRINCIPAL OF MANCHESTER NEW COLLEGE. LONDON, 1872' (TWO VOLS. 8vo).

Spring Cottage, Loughrigg, Ambleside, July 26. 1826.

Rydal, where we now are, has an air of repose and seclusion which I have rarely seen surpassed; the first few days we were here we perfectly luxuriated in the purity and sweetness of the air and the delicious stillness of its pastures and woods. It is interesting, too, on another account, as being the residence of the poet Wordsworth: his house is about a quarter of a mile from ours; and since Osler joined us we have obtained an introduction to him, and he favoured us with his company at tea one evening last week. He is a very interesting man, remarkably simple in his manners, full of enthusiasm and eloquence in conversation, especially on the subject of his favourite art—poetry—which he seems to have studied in a very philosophical spirit, and about which he entertains some peculiar opinions. Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton are his favourites among the English poets, especially the latter, whom he almost idolises. He expressed one opinion which rather surprised me, and in which I could not concur—that he preferred the 'Samson Agonistes' to 'Comus.' He recited in vindication of his judgment one very fine passage from the former poem, and in a very striking manner; his voice is deep and pathetic, and thrills with feeling. He is Toryish—at least what would he considered so—in his political principles, though he disclaims all connection with party, and certainly argues with great fairness and temper on controverted topics, such as Parliamentary Reform and Catholic Emancipation. We took a long walk with him the other evening, to the scene of one of his Pastorals in the neighbourhood of Grasmere. He has a good deal of general conversation, and has more the manners of a man of the world than I should have expected from his poems; but his discourse indicates great simplicity and purity of mind; indeed, nothing renders his conversation more interesting than the unaffected tone of elevated morality and devotion which pervades it. We have been reading his long poem, the 'Excursion,' since we came here. I particularly recommend it to your notice, barring some few extra vagancies into which his peculiar theory has led him: his fourth book, the last, contains specimens both of versification, sentiment, and imagery, scarcely inferior to what you will find in the best passages of Milton. He spoke with great plainness, and yet with candour, of his contemporaries. He admitted the power of Byron in describing the workings of human passion, but denied that he knew anything of the beauties of Nature, or succeeded in describing them with fidelity. This he illustrated by examples. He spoke with deserved severity of Byron's licentiousness and contempt of religious decorum. He told us he thought the greatest of modern geniuses, had he given his powers a proper direction, and one decidedly superior to Byron, was Shelley, a young man, author of 'Queen Mab,' who died lately at Rome. (Vol. i. pp. 72-4.)

Manchester, July 16. 1830.

....Though I am busy, I feel rather melancholy; and I am continually reminded how sad my life would be without the society and affection of those we love, and how terribly awful the dispensation of death must be to those who cannot anticipate a future reunion, and regard it as the utter extinction of all human interests and affections. I am solacing myself with Wordsworth. Do you know, I shall become a thorough convert to him. Much of his poetry is delicious, and I perfectly adore his philosophy. To me he seems the purest, the most elevated, and the most Christian of poets. I delight in his deep and tender piety, and his spirit of exquisite sympathy with whatever is lovely and grand in the breathing universe around us. (Vol. i. p. 86.)

---

(m) ANECDOTE OF CRABBE.

FROM 'DIARY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.'

Talking of Wordsworth, he [W.] told Anne a story, the object of which, as she understood it, was to show that Crabbe had no imagination. Crabbe, Sir George Beaumont, and Wordsworth were sitting together in Murray's room in Albemarle-street. Sir George, after sealing a letter, blew out the candle which had enabled him to do so, and exchanging a look with Wordsworth, began to admire in silence the undulating thread of smoke which slowly arose from the expiring wick, when Crabbe put on the extinguisher. Anne laughed at the instance, and inquired if the taper was wax; and being answered in the negative, seemed to think that there was no call on Mr. Crabbe to sacrifice his sense of smell to their admiration of beautiful and evanescent forms. In two other men I should have said, 'Why, it is affectations,' with Sir Hugh Evans ['Merry Wives of Windsor,' act i. scene 1]; but Sir George is the man in the world most void of affectation; and then he is an exquisite painter, and no doubt saw where the incident would have succeeded in painting. The error is not in you yourself receiving deep impressions from slight hints, but in supposing that precisely the same sort of impression must arise in the mind of men otherwise of kindred feeling, or that the common-place folk of the world can derive such inductions at any time or under any circumstances.[275]

---

(n) LATER OPINION OF LOUD BROUGHAM.

I am just come from breakfasting with Henry Taylor to meet Wordsworth; the same party as when he had Southey—Mill, Elliot, Charles Villiers. Wordsworth may be bordering on sixty; hard-featured, brown, wrinkled, with prominent teeth and a few scattered gray hairs, but nevertheless not a disagreeable countenance; and very cheerful, merry, courteous, and talkative, much more so than I should have expected from the grave and didactic character of his writings. He held forth on poetry, painting, politics, and metaphysics, and with a great deal of eloquence; he is more conversible and with a greater flow of animal spirits than Southey. He mentioned that he never wrote down as he composed, but composed walking, riding, or in bed, and wrote down after; that Southey always composes at his desk. He talked a great deal of Brougham, whose talents and domestic virtues he greatly admires; that he was very generous and affectionate in his disposition, full of duty and attention to his mother, and had adopted and provided for a whole family of his brother's children, and treats his wife's children as if they were his own. He insisted upon taking them both with him to the Drawing-room the other day when he went in state as Chancellor. They remonstrated with him, but in vain.[276]

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

[P. 5]. Footnotes: 5a, 'Intake.' Cf. p. 436 (bottom).

[P. 6], l. 6. 'Gives one bright glance,' &c. From 'The Seasons,' l. 175, from the end of 'Summer.' Originally (1727) this line ran, 'Gives one faint glimmer, and then disappears.'

[P. 17], l. 2. Shelvocke's 'Voyages:' 'A Voyage round the World, by the Way of the Great South Sea.' 1726, 8vo; 2d edition, 1757.

[P. 22], l. 27. Milton, History of England, &c. 'The History of Britain, that Part especially now called England; from the first traditional Beginning, continued to the Norman Conquest. In six Books.' Lond. 1670. (Works by Mitford, Prose, iii. pp. 1-301.)

[P. 24], l. 28. Hearne's 'Journey,' &c.; viz. Samuel Hearne's 'Journey from the Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean.' 1795, 4to.

[P. 31], l. 12. Waterton's 'Wanderings,' &c.; viz. Charles Waterton's 'Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles.' 1825, 4to. Many subsequent editions, being a book that has taken its place beside Walton's 'Angler' and White's 'Selborne.'

[P. 32], l. 11. James Montgomery's 'Field Flower.' Nothing gratified this 'sweet Singer' so much as these words of Wordsworth. He used to point them out to visitors if the conversation turned, or was directed, to Wordsworth. The particular poem is a daintily-touched one, found in all the editions of his Poems.

[P. 32], l. 33. 'Has not Chaucer noticed it [the small Celandine]'? Certainly not under this name, nor apparently under any other.

[P. 33], l. 2. 'Frederica Brun.' More exactly Frederike. She was a minor poetess; imitator of Matthison, whose own poems can hardly be called original. (See Gostwick and Harrison's 'Outlines of German Literature,' p. 355, cxxiii., 7th period, 1770-1830.)

[P. 36], ll. 13-15. Quotation from Thomson, 'The Seasons,' 'Summer,' l. 980.

[P. 44], l. 17. Quotation from Sir John Beaumont, 'The Battle of Bosworth Field,' l. 100. (Poems in the Fuller Worthies' Library, p. 29.) Accurately it is, 'The earth assists thee with the cry of blood.'

[P. 47], ll. 17-19. 'The Triad.' Sara Coleridge thus wrote of this poem: 'Look at "The Triad," written by Mr. Wordsworth four-or five-and-twenty years ago. That poem contains a poetical glorification of Edith Southey (now W.), of Dora, and of myself. There is truth in the sketch of Dora, poetic truth, though such as none but a poet-father would have seen. She was unique in her sweetness and goodness. I mean that her character was most peculiar—a compound of vehemence of feeling and gentleness, sharpness and lovingness, which is not often seen' ('Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, edited by her Daughter,' 2 vols. 8vo, 3d edition, 1873, p. 68). Later: 'I do confess that I have never been able to rank "The Triad" among Mr. Wordsworth's immortal works of genius. It is just what he came into the poetical world to condemn, and both by practice and theory to supplant. It is to my mind artificial and unreal. There is no truth in it as a whole, although bits of truth, glazed and magnified, are embodied in it, as in the lines, "Features to old ideal grace allied"—a most unintelligible allusion to a likeness discovered in dear Dora's contour of countenance to the great Memnon head in the British Museum, with its overflowing lips and width of mouth, which seems to be typical of the ocean. The poem always strikes me as a mongrel,' &c. (p. 352).

[P. 56], l. 7. 'Mr. Duppa.' See note in Vol. II. on p. 163, l. 2.

[P. 56], l. 27. '179—.' Sic in the MS. He died in January 1795.

[P. 60], l. 16. 'Mr. Westall;' viz. William Westall's 'View of the Caves near Ingleton, Gosdale Scar, and Malham Cove, in Yorkshire.' 1818, folio.

[P. 62], l. 31. 'The itinerant Eidouranian philosopher,' &c. Query—the Walker of the book on the Lakes noticed in Vol. II. on p. 217?

[P. 63], l. 6. 'I have reason,' &c. Cf. Letter to Sir W.R. Hamilton, first herein printed, pp. 310-11.

[P. 68], l. 24. Dampier's' Voyages, 'etc.; viz.' Collection of Voyages.' London, 1729, 4 vols. 8vo.

[P. 72], l. 29. 'Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke.' His complete Works in Verse and Prose are given in the Fuller Worthies' Library, 4 vols.

[P. 76], l. 14. Spenser. An apparent misrecollection of the 'Fairy Queen,' b. iii. c. viii. st. 32, l. 7, 'Had her from so infamous fact assoyld.'

[P. 78], l. 6. 'Armstrong;' i.e. Dr. John Armstrong, whose 'Art of Preserving Health,' under an unpromising title, really contains splendid things. His portrait in the 'Castle of Indolence' is his most certain passport to immortality.

[P. 80], l. 21. 'The Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci.' A reproduction of the head of our Blessed Lord, taken from the fresco (photograph), is given in the quarto edition of Southwell's complete Poems in the Fuller Worthies' Library—none the less precious that it pathetically reveals the marks of Time's 'effacing fingers.' No engraving approaches the 'power' of this autotype of the supreme original.

[P. 88], l. 32. 'Faber.' Among the treasures (unpublished) of the Wordsworth Correspondence are various remarkable letters of Faber—one, very singular, announcing his going over to the Church of Rome.

[P. 90], l. 34. 'Mr. Robinson.' Cf. 'Reminiscences' onward.

[P. 97], ll. 9-10, &c. 'Dyer.' Cf. note, Vol. II., on p. 296, l. 35.

[P. 97], l. 18. 'Mr. Crowe;' i.e. Rev. William Crowe, Public Orator of Oxford. His poem was originally published in 1786 (4to); reprinted 1804 (12mo).

[P. 98], l. 19. 'Armstrong.' See on p. 78, l. 6.

[P. 98], l. 20. 'Burns.' Verse-Epistle to William Simpson, st. 13; but for 'nae' read 'na,' and for 'na' read 'no.'

[P. 101], l. 9. 'Rev. Joseph Sympson.' This poet, so pleasantly noticed by Wordsworth, appears in none of the usual bibliographical authorities. Curiously enough, his 'Vision of Alfred' was republished in the United States—Philadelphia.

[P. 116], ll. 33-34. Quotation, Shakspeare, 'Henry VIII.' iii. 2.

[P. 120], l. 22. Quotation from Milton, 'Paradise Lost,' viii. l. 282.

[P. 125], l. 4. 'Mr. Hazlitt quoted,' &c. See Index, s.n. for Wordsworth's estimate of Hazlitt; also our Preface.

[P. 130], l. 17. Hill at St. Alban's. See 'Eccl. Hist.' s.n.

[P. 130], l. 31. 'Germanus.' Bede, 'Eccl. Hist.' b. ii. c. xvi.

[P. 131], l. 10. 'Fuller;' viz. his 'Church History.'

[P. 131], l. 16. 'Turner.' The late laborious Sharon Turner, whose 'Histories' are still kept in print (apparently).

[P. 131], l. 21. 'Paulinus.' Bede, 'Eccl. Hist.' b. ii. c. xvi.

[P. 131], l. 26. 'King Edwin.' Bede, 'Eccl. Hist.' b. ii. c. xiii.

[P. 136], l. 28. 'An old and much-valued friend in Oxfordshire;' viz. Rev. Robert Jones, as before.

[P. 137], l. 10. 'Dyer's History of Cambridge,' 2 vols. 8vo, 1814.

[P. 137], l. 14. 'Burnet,' in his 'History of the Reformation;' many editions.

[P. 119], ll. 4-5. Latin verse-quotation, Ovid, 'Metam.' viii. 163, 164.

[P. 151], l. 11. 'Charlotte Smith.' It seems a pity that the Poems of this genuine Singer should have gone out of sight.

[P. 155], l. 31. 'Russel.' Should be Russell. Some very beautiful Sonnets of his appear in Dyce's well-known collection, and to it doubtless Wordsworth was indebted for his knowledge of Russell. He has cruelly passed out of memory.

[P. 165], ll. 7-9. 'Is not the first stanza of Gray's,' etc. Gray himself prefixed these lines from Aeschylus, 'Agam.' 181:

He seems to have been rather indebted to Dionysius' Ode to Nemesis, v. Aratus.

[P. 182], l. 9. 'Dr. Darwin's Zoonomia;' i.e. 'The Laws of Organic Life,' 1794-96, 2 vols. 4to.

[P. 182], l. 24. 'Peter Henry Bruce ... entertaining Memoirs.' Published 1782, 4to.

[P. 185], ll. 2-3. Verse-quotation, from Milton, 'Il Penseroso,' ll. 109-110.

[P. 190], l. 27. 'Light will be thrown,' &c. We have still to deplore that the Letters of Lamb are even at this later day either withheld or sorrowfully mutilated; e.g. among the Wordsworth Correspondence (unpublished) is a whole sheaf of letters in their finest vein from Lamb and his sister. Some of the former are written in black and red ink in alternate lines, and overflow with all his deepest and quaintest characteristics. His sister's are charming. The same might be said of nearly all Wordsworth's greatest contemporaries. Surely these MSS. will not much longer be kept in this inexplicable and, I venture to say, scarcely pardonable seclusion?

[P. 192], foot-note. This deliciously naïve note of 'Dora' to her venerated father suggests that it is due similarly to demur—with all respect—to the representation given of Mrs. Hemans (pp. 193-4). Three things it must be permitted me to recall: (a) That the 'brevity's sake' hardly condones the fulness of statement of an imagined ignorance of 'housewifery' on the part of Mrs. Hemans. (b) That a visitor for a few days in a family could scarcely be expected to set about using her needle in home duties. (c) That unquestionable testimony, furnished me by those who knew her intimately, warrant me to state that Wordsworth was mistaken in supposing that Mrs. Hemans 'could as easily have managed the spear of Minerva as her needle.' Her brave and beautiful life, and her single-handed upbringing of her many boys worthily, make one deeply regret that such sweeping generalisation from a narrow and hasty observation should have been indulged in. My profound veneration for Wordsworth does not warrant my suppression of the truth in this matter. Be it remembered, too, that other expressions of Wordsworth largely qualify the present ungracious judgment.

[P. 209], l. 8. 'Lord Ashley.' Now the illustrious and honoured Earl of Shaftesbury.

[P. 212], l. 17. 'Burnet;' i.e. Thomas Burnet, whose Latin treatise was published in 1681 and 1689; in English, 1684 and 1689. Imaginative genius will be found in this uncritical and unscientific book.

[P. 214], l. 12. 'The Hurricane,' &c.; viz. 'The Hurricane; a Theosophical and Western Eclogue,' &c. 1797; reprinted 1798.

[P. 216], ll. 4-5. Quotation from Coleridge, from 'Sibylline Leaves,' Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath.

[P. 216], l. 29. 'Dr. Bell.' Southey edited the bulky Correspondence of this pioneer of our better education, in 3 vols. 8vo.

[P. 233], ll. 34-36. 'They have been treated,' &c. ('Evening Walk,' &c., 1794.)

[P. 247], foot-note [A]. De Quincey, in his 'Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey' (Works, vol. ii. pp. 151-6), gives a very realistic exposé of the Lonsdales—abating considerably the glow of Wordsworth's recurring praise and homage.

[P. 255], l. 31. 'History of Cleveland.' The book is by the Rev. John Graves, and is entitled 'The History of Cleveland in the North Riding of the County of York.' Carlisle, 1808. Wordsworth is unjust: it is a deserving work, if o' times inevitably dry.

[P. 285], l.1. 'Francis Edgeworth's "Dramatic Fragment."' This was Francis Beaufort Edgeworth, half-brother of Maria Edgeworth.

[P. 285], ll. 29-30. 'Spectator.' From No. 46, April 23, 1711, one of Addison's own charming papers in his lighter vein of raillery.

[P. 280], ll. 13-16. 'Mr. Page;' viz. Frederick Page, author of (a) 'The Principle of the English Poor Laws illustrated and defended by an Historical View of Indigence in Civil Society.' Bath, 1822. (b) 'Observations on the State of the Indigent Poor in Ireland, and the existing Institutions for their Relief.' London, 1830.

[P. 290], ll. 25-27. Verse-quotation, from Milton, 'Paradise Regained,' b. iii. ll. 337-9.

[P. 293], l. 1. Letter to Hamilton. The Rev. R.P. Graves, M.A.—Wordsworth's friend—is engaged in preparing a Life of this preeminent mathematician and many-gifted man of genius, than whom there seems to have been no contemporary who so deeply impressed Wordsworth intellectually, or so won his heart. The 'Poems' of Miss Hamilton (1 vol. 1838) sparkle with beauties, often unexpected as the flash of gems. Space can only be found for one slight specimen of her gift in 'Lines written in Miss Dora Wordsworth's Album,' as follows:

'It is not now that I can speak, while still
Thy lakes, thy hills, thyself are in my sight;
I would be quiet—for the thoughts that fill
My spirit's urn are a confused delight;
They must have time to settle to the clear
Untroubled calm of memory, ere they show,
True as the water-depths around thee here,
These images, that then will come and go,
An everlasting joy. Far, far away
As life, extends the shadow of to-day;
And keenlier present from the past will come
Thy sweet laugh's freshness pure, with all the poet's home.

'Rydal Mount. 1830.'

'The Boys' School' is the title of Miss Hamilton's poem referred to by Wordsworth. It occurs in the volume, pp. 126-131. Her brother's was one commencing, 'It haunts me yet.' The 'Mr. Nimmo' of this letter was a civil engineer connected with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.

[P. 299], l. 18; 300, l. 8, &c. 'Countess of Winchelsea.' Sad to say, a collection of this remarkable English gentlewoman's Poems remains still an unfurnished desideratum.

[P. 306], l. 11. 'The Duchess of Newcastle.' Edward Jenkins, Esq. M.P., has recently collected some of the Poems of this lady and her lord in a pretty little volume, which he entitles, 'The Cavalier and the Lady.'

[P. 312], l. 32. 'Eschylus and the eagle. 'The reference doubtless is to Aeschylus' 'Prometheus Vinctus,' l. 1042:

916()#;ιδϛ
πτηνδϛ κὑων, δαφοινὑϛ αἱετυϛ.

Compare

'Aischulos' bronze-throat eagle-bark at blood
Has somehow spoiled my taste for twitterings.'

Robert Browning, 'Aristophanes' Apology' (1875), p. 94.

[P. 321], ll. 32-3. Verse-quotation, from 'Macbeth,' viz. i. 3.

[P. 333], l. 2. 'Russell.' Before misspelled 'Russel' (p. 155).

[P. 337], ll. 17-18. 'Auld Robin Grey' [= Gray], by Lady Ann Lindsay. 'Lament for the Defeat,' &c., viz. 'The Flowers of the Forest,' by (1) Mrs. Cockburn; 'I've seen the smiling,' &c. (2), Miss Jane Elliot. 'I've heard the lilting,' &c.

[P. 342], l. 1. 'Shakspeare.' Quotation from Sonnet lxxiii.

[P. 380], ll. 6-7. Horace, Ep. i. l, 8-9.

[P. 382], ll. 27-9. Southey's Letters. Admirably done by his son Cuthbert in many volumes. The seeming over-quantity have been reduced (to the look) by the American reproduction in a single handsome volume.

[P. 394]. Heading of Letter 144. 'Of the' has by misadventure slipped in a second time here. Read, 'Of the Heresiarch Church of Rome.'

[P. 449], l. 34 onward. Mrs. Wordsworth. My excellent Correspondent the Rev. R.P. Graves, of Dublin, thus writes me of Mrs. Wordsworth: 'I forget whether it has been put on record, as it certainly deserves to be, that Wordsworth habitually referred to his wife for the help of her judgment on his poems. Mrs. Wordsworth did not indeed possess the creative and colouring power of imagination that belonged to his sister as well as to himself; but her simple truthfulness, her strong good sense (which no sophistry could impose upon), and her delicate feeling for propriety, rendered her judgment a test of utmost value with regard to any subjects of which it could take adequate cognisance. And these were confined within no narrow range—the workings of Nature as it lived and moved around her, social equities and charities, religious and moral truth, tried by the heart as well as by the head, and verbal expression, required by her to avoid the regions of the merely abstract and philosophical, and keep to the lower but more poetical ground of idiomatic strength and transparent logic.'

[P. 457], l. 18. 'The (almost) contemporary notice of Milton.' A still more significant contemporary notice of Milton than the well-known one of the text occurs in 'The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's book entituled The Ready and Easie Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, 1660, by James Harrington,' as comes out at p. 16 ('my Oceana'). As it seems to have escaped the commentators, a short quotation must be given here: 'Though you have scribled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the company of Chandlers and Tobacco-Men, who are your Stationers, and the onely men that vend your Labors' (pp. 4-5). 'He Defence of the People of England for a groat, that was sentenced to vile Mundungus, and had suffer'd inevitably (but for him), though it cost you much oyle and the Rump 300l. a year,' &c. (ibid.). This of the 'Defence'!!!

[P. 459], l. 7 onward. Horace, Ode iv. 2, 1; ibid. 2, 27.

[P. 462], l. 15. 'Walter Scott is not a careful composer,' &c. This recurs in Mr. Aubrey do Vere's 'Recollections' (p. 487 onward). I venture as a Scot to observe that for this one slight misquotation by Scott, on which so large a conclusion is built, the quotations by Wordsworth from others would furnish twenty-fold. He was singularly inexact in quotation, as even these Notes and Illustrations will satisfy in the places—scarcely in a single instance being verbally accurate. 'Sweet' certainly was a perfectly fitting word for the sequestered lake of St. Mary in its serene summer beauty. Moreover, swans are not usually found singly, but in pairs; and a pair surely differenced not greatly the symbol of loneliness. The latter remark points to Wordsworth's further objection, as stated to Mr. de Vere (as supra).

[P. 492], l. 26. 'In the case of a certain poet since dead,' &c. I may record what his own son has not felt free to do, that this was Sir Aubrey de Vere, whose 'Song of Faith, and other Poems,' has not yet gathered its ultimate renown. Wordsworth greatly admired the modest little volume. See one of his Sonnets on page 495. Nor with the Laureate's poem-play of 'Queen Mary' (Tudor) winning inevitable welcome ought it to be forgotten—as even prominent critics of it are sorrowfully forgetting—that Sir Aubrey de Vere, so long ago as 1847, published his drama of 'Mary Tudor.' I venture to affirm that it takes its place—a lofty one—beside 'Philip van Artevelde,' and that it need fear no comparison with 'Queen Mary.' Early and comparatively modern supreme poetry somehow gets out of sight for long.

[P. 497], 1. 15. Read 'no angel smiled.' I can only offer the plea of an old Worthy, who said, 'Errata are inevitable, for we are human; and to have none would imply eyes behind as well as before, or the wallet of our errors all in front.' G.

INDEX.

* * * As pointed out in the places, the 'Contents' of Vol. III. give the details of topics in the 'Notes and Illustrations of the Poems' and of 'Letters and Extracts of Letters' so minutely, as to obviate their record here; thus lightening the Index. G.

A.
Abuses, [i. 284.]
Acquiescence, not choice, [i. 19.]
Action, springs of, [i. 160.]
Addresses, Two, to the Freeholders of Westmoreland, [i. 211.][ 270;]
occasion of writing, [i. 214.]
Addison, [i. 357.][iii. 508.]
Adventurers, [i. 241.]
Advice to the Young, [i. 295.][326.]
Admiration, unqualified, [i. 312.]
Advancement and preferment of youth, [i. 352.]
'Age, present,' supposed moral inferiority of, [i. 310.]
Agitators, [i. 249.]
Alban's, St., [ii. 46.]
Alfoxden, [iii. 16.][277]
Alpedrinha, [i. 56.]
Allies, to be supported, [i. 138.]
how, [i. 138-9.]et seqq.
Alston, [ii. 193.]
'Altering' of poems, [ii. 207.]
Ambleside, [ii. 224-6;]
road from, to Keswick, [ii. 227-8.]
'Amends,' how to make, [i. 130-1,]et seqq.
American war, [i. 135.]6.
American edition of poems, [iii. 483-4.]
Anxiety, moderate, [i. 324.]
Appendix
to Bishop Watson's Sermon, [i. 24-30;]
to Contention of Cintra, [i. 175-79.]
(See preface, I.[ xiv.-xix.])
Apology for the French Revolution, [i. 1-23.]
(See preface, I.[ x.-xix.])
Arbitrary,
distinctions, [i. 16-17;]
power, [i. 158-9.]
Aristocracy, [i. 19.]
Aristarchus, [ii. 17.]
Armistice, [i. 84.]
preamble of, [i. 86.]
articles of, [i. 88-94.]
Armstrong, Dr., [iii. 506.]
Army,
British, departure of, [i. 38.]
Spanish, the people, [i. 47.]
French, and the French government, [i. 95.]
'Arrow,' [i. 21.]
Artevelde, van, Philip, [iii. 492.]
Art and nature, [ii. 157-61.]
Arts and science, [i. 154.]
fine, [i. 323.]
Ashe, [i. 360.]
Ashley, [iii. 507.]
Assembly, [i. 147.]
Asturias, [i. 52-3.]
B.
' Bad people,' [ii. 41.]
'Babes in the wood,' [ii. 98.]
Bacon,
quotation from, [i. 357.]
and Shakespeare, [iii. 457.]
Beia, [i. 55.]
Benevolence, [i. 171.]
'Beck.' [i. 336.]
Beaumont, Sir George H. and Lady,
letters to, [ii. 146-201;]
drawings by Sir George, [ii. 151.]
Beaumont, Sir John, [i. 346.][iii. 505.]
Bell, Peter, [ii. 182.]
Bell, Dr., [iii. 507.]
Bede, [iii. 506.]
Biscayans, [i. 60.]
Biography, of authors, [ii. 11-12.]
Birthday, [iii. 443-4.]
Bonaparte, [i. 37.]
acknowledgment of titles, [i. 84-5;]
influence of concession on, [i. 93-4;]
ravager of Europe, [i. 115.]
formidable yet weak, [i. 163-4;]
to decrease, [i. 200.][ii. 18.] et alibi frequenter.
Books, religious, [i. 335.]
'Bolton, Mr.,' [i. 350.]
Boswell's Johnson, [ii. 9.]
Bran [misprinted Braw], [iii. 69.]
Bleeding, good, [i. 86.]
Britain, history of a noble one, [i. 101-2.]
Brougham,
public life of, [i. 225.] et seqq., [i. 242-8,] et seqq.
later opinion of, [iii. 504.]
Bruce, Michael, [ii. 21.][i. 343.]
Bruce, P.H..[iii. 507.]
Browne, Sir Thomas, [ii. 23.]
Browning, Robert,
letter to the Editor, i. xxxiv.;
quotation from poem of, [iii. 508.]
Brun, Frederica, [iii. 505.]
Brooke, Lord, [iii. 506.]
Burke, [i. 21.] [i. 357.]
Burns, Robert, Cottar's Saturday-night, [i. 356-60;]
letter to a friend of, [ii. 1.][ii. 19;]
Gilbert, [ii. 5.] [ii. 19.][ii. 343;]
fitted to tell the whole truth of, [ii. 6-7;]
quotations from, [ii. 7.] [ii. 13-14,][ 331,][ 343 (bis),] [ii. 347,][iii. 436.] [iii. 506.]
Building and gardening, [ii. 184.] [ii. 191.]
Buttermere and Crummock, [ii. 230.]
Burnet, Thomas, [ii. 327.] [ii. 507.]
Burnet, Bishop, [iii. 506.]
Buchanan, [iii. 459.]
Byron, [iii. 462-3,] [ii. 503.]
C.
Calamity, how to be regarded, [i. 52.]
Castile, council of, [i. 59.]
Cadiz, governor of, [i. 92.]
Catholic Relief Bill, [i. 259.] [i. 70.]
Camden, [ii. 27.] 343-4.
Carter, Miss, 'Spring,' [iii. 426.]
Campbell, odd forgetfulness of, [ii. 445.]
Celandine, small, [iii. 505.]
Chamber, personal character of and its chief, [ii. 140-1.]
Child and man, [i. 170.]
Charles I., tyranny of, [i. 310.]
epitaph of, [ii. 49.]
Sydney and, [ii. 50.]
Chatterton, [ii. 21.] [ii. 343.]
Chiabiera, [ii. 58.] [ii. 68,] et seqq.
Christabelle, [iii. 427.]
Chronological classification of poems, [iii. 474.]
Church of England, servility of its clergy, [i. 3-4;]
notices of, [i. 262-4,] [i. 283,] et seqq.
Churchyard, village, [ii. 33-4;]
country, [ii. 41.] et seqq.;
on sea-coast, [iii. 434.]
Clark, Mrs., [ii. 66-7,] [iii. 344-5.]
Classical study, [iii. 479.]
Clergyman, the, [i. 286-7,]et seqq.
Cleveland, history of, [iii. 508.]
Cockburn, Mrs., [iii. 509.]
Coleridge, [ii. 155-6,][ 163,][ 164,][ 166,][ 167,]
[168,] [170,] [174-5,] [184-4,] [193,] [iii. 427.]
[441,] [442,] [444,] [469-70,] [492,] [507,]
et alibi frequenter.
Coleridge, Hartley, [iii. 482.] et alibi.
Coleridge, the Lord, [i. xxxiii.]
Collins, [ii. 120.][iii. 419.]
Commissioners, report of, [i. 274.]
'Common life,' [ii. 81-2,] et seqq.
Companions, [i. 229.]
'Compulsory' relief, [i. 278.]
Conciliation and concession, [i. 265.]
Condemnation, inevitable, [i. 82-3.]
Coniston, [ii. 226-7.]
Constancy, [i. 51.]
Contempt, [ii. 18.]
Contention of Cintra, [i. 31.][172;]
occasion of writing, [i. 35.][129;]
importance of, [i. 37.][143;]
impression produced by the, [i. 37.]
condemned, [i. 65.]
reception by the people, [i. 69.]
results of, as a military act, [i. 70-1;]
critical examination of its terms, [i. 71.] et seqq.;
not necessary, [i. 82.]
military results, [i. 84.] et seqq.;
conditions of, thus far examined, [i. 99.]
injury done to British character, [i. 99-100,][101-102;]
sorrow of the nation over, [i. 103-4;]
punishment demanded, [i. 104-5;]
to be repudiated, [i. 105-6;]
disgrace of, [i. 121.]
Vindication of the Opinions on, [i. 195.] [209.]
(See preface. Vol. I.[ xiv.-xix.]
Continuous education, [i. 355-6.]
Contradictions, [i. 237.]
Conversations and personal reminiscences of Wordsworth, [iii. 403.] [504.]
Coöperation of working people, [i. 282.]
Copyright, international, [iii. 483.]
Corruption, [i. 20.]
Cortes, [i. 147.]
Cotton, Charles, and Walton, [ii. 89.] [345.]
Cotton, Dr., [ii. 142-4.]
Counters and stakes, [i. 81.]
County elections, entire charge of, [i. 251-2.]
Courage, [i. 50.]
intellectual, lacking, [i. 74-5.]
Cowley, [iii. 465.]
Courts, corruption of, [i. 14.]
Cowper, [ii. 104.] [211,] [346.]
Crabbe, [iii. 503.] et alibi.
Crashaw, [ii. 344.]
Criticism, false, [ii. 175.][181;]
result of in Edinburgh Review and Quarterly, [iii. 437.]
a low ability for, [iii. 438.] [9;]
verbal, [iii. 474.] [5.]
Critic, decision of, [ii. 110.]
Cromwell, [i. 166.] [359.]
Crowe, [iii. 506.]
Cuckoo, [ii. 136-7.]
Cumberland's Calvary, [iii. 415.]
Curates, [i. 285-6.]
Currie, Dr., [ii. 5.]
indignation with, [ii. 7-8,] [i12]
D.
Dalrymple, Sir Hew, [i. 72.] et frequenter.
Daughter, education of a, [i. 329-33.]
Dante, [i. 359.] et alibi.
Da Vinci, Leonardo, [iii. 506.]
Darwin, Dr., [iii. 507.]
D'Abrantes, title of, wrongly acknowledged, [i. 68.] [357.]
Delusions, [i. 19.]
Debt, national, [i. 20.]
'Declarations,' [i. 43-4.]
Defeats and disasters, [i. 44-5.]
Delicacy, no, [i. 98.]
Defence of fellow-countrymen, [i. 113.]
Despotism[i. 139.] [40] [229.]
Despond, those who, [i. 171-2.]
Detraction, no, [ii. 42.]
Dedication, to the Queen, [i. v.;]
of 1815, [ii. 144.]
De Vere, Sir Aubrey, [iii. 495.] [509-510.]
De Quincey, i. xxxiii.-iv., [iii. 507.]
Diction, of poetic, [ii. 101.] [5.]
'Difficulties,' [i. 72.]
Diogenes, [i. 238.]
Disabilities, civil, [i. 269.]
Dissenters, [i. 262.]
'Dignity,' individual, [i. 292.]
Discrimination in epitaphs, [ii. 37-8.]
Doe, White, the, [iii. 430.] et alibi.
Double sense, [ii. 45-6.]
Drummond, Miss.[ii. 65-6.]
Dryden, [ii. 118.] [iii. 416.] [419.]
Duty, [i. 40.][1,] [129,] [326,] [349.]
Dupont, [i. 358.]
Duppa, [ii. 162.] [346,] [iii. 506.]
Dubartas, [ii. 111-12.]
Dyer, John, [ii. 196.] [7,] [ii. 196.] [iii. 216.] [405,] [506,] et alibi.
E.
Economists, unfortunate, [i. 233.]
Education, of, [i. 327.] [56;]
what it is, [i. 343-4,] et seqq.,
moral, [i. 346-7;]
of Scotland, [i. 348.]
continuous, [i. 355-6.]
Edinburgh Review, censured, [ii. 16.] et alibi.
Edwards, John, [ii. 33.] [344.]
Edgeworth, Francis, [iii. 508.]
Egle, bank of, [iii. 508.]
Election, free, [i. 234.]
Elizabeth, [i. 310.]
Elliot, Jane, [iii. 509.]
Emerson, [i. xxxiv,] et alibi
Ends, [i. 80-1.]
Enthusiasm, [i. 149.]
Epitaphs, upon, from 'The Friend,' [ii. 27.] [40;]
laws of, [31,] et seqq.;
requisites of, [ii. 35.] et seqq.;
a perfect, [ii. 39.]
The country Churchyard, and critical Examination of ancient, [ii. 41.] [59;]
in Germany, [ii. 44.]
homeliness, [ii. 46-7;]
in Westmoreland, [ii. 51-2;]
of Pope, criticised, [ii. 55.] et seqq.;
Celebrated Epitaphs considered, [ii. 60.] [75;]
favourable examples, [ii. 72.] et seqq. (See preface, I.[xxiv.-v.])
Equality, [i. 14.] [288.]
Established church and priesthood, [i. 232.]
preservation of, [i. 290.]
Eschylus, [iii. 508.]
'Estate,' gift of, [ii. 151.]
Europe, state of, [i. 220-1.]
Evil, [ii. 91.]
Excursion, [ii. 145.] [8,] [168-9.]
Executive, the power, [i. 13.]
F.
Faith, [ii. 109-10.]
Fancy and imagination, [ii. 134-5,] et seqq.
'Favourite spots,' [iii. 424.]
Fame, posthumous, [iii. 458.] [493.]
Faber, [iii. 488.] [506.]
Family, a single, [215-16.] et seqq.;
defence of the, [217-18.] et seqq.
Feelings, [i. 65.] [158,] [ii. 83.] [4,] et seqq.;
rely on our, [ii. 99.]
Ferguson, General, [i. 137.]
Fermor, Mrs., [ii. 178.]
Fenwick, Miss, [xxvi-xxx.]
Ferdinand VII., [i. 358.]
'Fire.' [i. 118-19.]
Flowers, [iii. 447.]
Florus, [i. 359.]
Fortitude, ancient, [i. 205-6.]
Forebodings, [i. 249-50.]
Fore-feeling, [ii. 344.]
Founders of a school to be remembered, [i. 351.]
Fool, in Lear, [iii. 419.]
Fools, Paradise of, [ii. 18.]
Fox, letter to, on poems, [ii. 202.] [5;]
reply, [ii. 205-6.]
Frere, [i. 67.][8,] [96,] [358.]
French armies, character of, [i. 79-80;]
to surrender at discretion, [i. 81.]
under French government, [i. 90.]
'Free,' a nation resolved to be, [i. 146.]
Franchise, [i. 223.] [239.]
Fuller, [iii. 506.]
G.
Gardening, [ii. 174.]
and building, [ii. 184.] [191.]
Generals, British, bearing of, [i. 79.]
political, [i. 95.]
incompetent and competent, [i. 143.]
Girl, peasant, [iii. 466-7;]
education of, [i. 341.]
Goldsmith, [ii. 154.] [333.]
Goethe, [iii. 435.][6,] [465.]
Grammar, &c., [i. 353.]
Grasmere, [ii. 229.]
Gratifications, what, [i. 315-16.]
Gratuitous instruction, [i. 346.]
Gratitude for kindnesses, [ii. 149.]
Graves, Rev. R.P., M.A., [i. xxxv-vi.;]
prayer by, [i. 359-60.]
Gray, [ii. 41.] [67-68,] [85-6,] [327,] [344,] [345,] [iii. 507.]
Gray, James, [ii. 5.] [343.]
Gregoire, [i. 4,] [5,] [357.]
Grievances, national, [i. 4.]
Grimm, Baron, [ii. 113.]
Guide through the District of the Lakes, [ii. 215.] [313.](See under
[Lakes] and different places.)
H.
Hamlet, [i. 22.]
Hakewell, [ii. 113.] [345.]
Hamilton, Sir R.W., [iii. 492.] [506,]

[508,] et frequenter.
Hamilton, Miss, [iii. 508.]
Hazlitt, i. xxiv., [ii. 168.] [177,] [iii. 125.] et alibi.
Hearne, [iii. 505.]
Hemans, Mrs., [iii. 507.]
Hessians, [i. 136.]
High-minded men, [i. 76.]
Hope, [i. 41.] [123-4,] [148,] [169,] [322-3.]
Honour, [i. 78.]
Home influences, [i. 345.]
Houbraken, [ii. 170.] [346.]
Homer and the classics, [iii. 458.] [9.]
Horace, [i. 357.][iii. 509.](bis).
Humanity, [i. 78.] [274.]
Humility, [iii. 491.]
Humour, [iii. 495-6.]
'Hurricane,' [iii. 507.]
I.
Idiots, [ii. 212.]
Impulses, grand, [i. 115.]
Imagination, [i. 154.]
and taste, [ii. 126.] et seqq.;
and fancy, [ii. 134.]5, et seqq.
Immoral, the perishable, [i. 163.]
Improvement, process of intellectual, [i. 318-20.]
Immortality, [ii. 27.] [30.]
Imbecility, [i. 172.]
Imagery and imagination, [iii. 464-5.]
Independence and liberty, [i. 102-3;]
of Spain, [i. 151.]
'Indifferent,' [i. 110.]
Invasion of our country, supposed, [i. 114.]
Infancy and childhood, [i. 318.]
Intellect, sharpening of, [i. 340.]
Infant-schools, [i. 343.]
Inscriptions at Coleorton, [ii. 191.] [2,] [195-6.]
'Intimations of immortality,' [iii. 464.]
Individual character, [iii. 467-8.]
Intake, [iii. 505.]
Ireland, [i. 267-8,] et alibi.
J.
James I., [ii. 47-8.]
Johnson, Dr., [ii. 98.] [103-4.]
Jones, Rev. Robert, [iii. 506.]
Judges in England, [i. 12.]
Junot, [i. 55-6.]
'Judicature, court of,' not essential to a verdict on wrong, [i. 108-10.]
Justice, [i. 116.]
moral, [i. 118.]
K.
Kant, [iii. 420.]
Keble, [iii. 441.]
Kendal and Windermere Railway, two letters on, [ii. 321-41,] [iii. 448-9.]
Keswick, vale of, [ii. 229.]
Kirkstone, pass of, [ii. 314-15.]
Klopstock, [iii. 405-23.]
Knowledge, life and spirit of, [i. 309.]
for virtue, [i. 320.]
L.
Laws, partial and oppressive, [i. 12-13.]
Laws, delay, [i. 20.]
Labour, dishonoured, [i. 18.]
Lament for England, [i. 112.]
Land, [i. 239.]
Landscape gardens, [i. 248.]
Lakes, the country of, as formed by Nature, [ii. 235-6;]
as affected by its inhabitants, [ii. 256-69;]
changes and rules of taste for preventing their bad effects, [ii. 269-86;]
miscellaneous observations, [ii. 287.][301;]
excursions to the top of Scawfell, &c., [ii. 302.] [315.]
itinerary of, [ii. 316-19.]
(See preface, i.[xxv.-vi.])
Laodamia, [iii. 496.]
Laing, Malcom, [ii. 345.]
Lamb, letters of, [iii. 507.]
Leon, [i. 60.]
Legislation for the Poor, &c., [i. 271-94.]
Letter-writing, difficulty of, [ii. 149-50.]
Leech-gatherer, [ii. 206-7.]
Letters and extracts of Letters, [ii. 217.] [401.]
(See preface, I.[xxx.-ii].)
Liberty, [i. 6.]
against oppression, [i. 52.]
and independence, [i. 155-6.]
Life, [i. 77-8,] [280.]
Library for poor, [i. 337-8.]
Lindsay, Lady Ann, [iii. 509.]
Louis XVI., 'royal martyr' (so-called), [i. 4-5.]et seqq.
Loyalty, enthusiasm of, [i. 46.]
Lowther family, [i. 235.][iii. 507-8.]
'Lower orders,' [i. 273.]
Loughrigg Tarn, [ii. 155.]
Loweswater, [ii. 230.]
Locke, [iii. 461.]
Loison, [i. 357.]
Luff, Mr., [ii. 172.]
Lucretius, [ii. 347.]
Lyttleton, Lucy, [ii. 52.]
Lord, monody criticised, [ii. 53-4.]
Lyrical ballads, defence of, [ii. 79.] [100.]
Lying, [iii. 497-8.]
M.
Macpherson, [ii. 122.] et seqq.
Madoc, [ii. 169.] [171.]
Madras, system of education, [i. 341.] [343.]
Malignity, [ii. 17.]
Manner in conversation, [iii. 480.]
Manufactories, workmen in, [i. 282-3.]
Massaredo, [i. 56-8,] [357.]
Mathetes, Letter of, [i. 297.] [308;]
Answer to, [i. 309-26.]
Mason, William, [ii. 62.] et seqq.
Matter-of-fact and poetry, [ii. 86.]
Means, [i. 80.]
Mearely, [ii. 344.]
Memory, [ii. 41.]
Metrical language, [ii. 95-6,] et seqq.
Might, [i. 116.]
Military spirit, [i. 48-9;]
men to be judged by the people, [i. 83-4.]
Milton, [i. 358.](bis), [359,] [360.] [ii. 6.] [40,] [114-15,] [136,]
[142,] et seqq. [344,] [345,] [346,] [iii. 430.] [1,] [449,] [453-4,]
[461,] [505,] [506,] [507,] [508;]
contemporary notice of, [iii. 509.] et alibi frequenter.
'Ministry,' the conduct of the, [i. 105-6.]
Mirza, vision of, [i. 3.]
Miscarriages, national, [i. 128-9.]
Misery, effects of, [i. 281.]
Monarchy, objections to, [i. 13.] et seqq.
Montgomery, James, [iii. 505.]
Montrose, Marquis of, [ii. 49,] [51,] [344.]
Monuments to Literary Men, [ii. 20.] [22;]
beauty of, [ii. 31-2;]
monition of, [ii. 32-3.]
near churches, [ii. 34-5;]
in churches, [iii. 450-1.]
'Moral' superiority, [i. 165.]
Morla, [i. 357-8.]
Morning Post, letter to, [ii. 321-41.]
N.
Nations, the two suffering, [i. 63-4;]
to speak to representatives of, [i. 144-5.]
Nature, [i. 317.][ii. 60.][iii. 493-4;]
and art, [ii. 157.] [161.]
Needpath Castle, sonnet on, [ii. 152.] [345-6.]
Nelson, Lord, [ii. 173.]
Necklace, diamond, [i. 357.]
Newcastle, Duchess of, [iii. 508.]
Nobility, hereditary, a wrong, [i. 17.]
Notes and Illustrations of the Poems
(a), the notes originally added to the first and successive editions;
(b) the whole of the I.F. MSS., [ii. 1.] [216.]
(For details of these Notes, see minute ['Contents' of Vol. III.])
O.
Obliquities of admiration, [ii. 116.]
Observation and description, [ii. 131.] [144.]
'Occurrences,' [i. 98.]
Offices, [i. 18-19.]
Oligarchy, [i. 147.]
'Oppression,' [i. 168-9.]
'Opposition,' in House of Commons needed, [i. 219.]
the party of, [i. 222.]
degenerated, [i. 225.]
Originality, [ii. 126.]
Oviedo, [i. 63.]
Oversight, culpable, [i. 68.]
Ovid, [iii. 506.]
P.
Paine, Thomas, [i. 14.] [357.]
Parchment, 'dead,' [i. 21.]
Past, retrospect of, [i. 43-4.]
Passions and passion, [i. 115-6.] [ii. 127.] et seqq.;
in poetry, [iii. 473-4;]
though not declamatory, [iii. 489.]
'Party,' [i. 144.] [219.]
Patriot, the, [i. 150.]
Palafox, [i. 167.] [359.]
Pasley, letter to, [i. 195.] [206;]
essay on the military policy of Great Britain, [i. 197.] [205,]et seqq.
Palmers, [ii. 46.]
Page, Frederic, [iii. 508.]
'People,' the, [i. 10-11;]
Spanish, [i. 47-8;]
their ways and needs, [i. 334.] [339.]
Peasants and mechanics, [i. 11-12;]
peasantry, [i. 159.]
'Petition,' vindication of, [i. 107-8,] [110.]
'Petty' things, [i. 120.]
Peninsula, southern, [i. 122-3.]
'Peace,' [i. 221.]
Peterkin, [ii. 5.] [343.]
'Pedlar,' [ii. 163.] [346.]
Pelayo and Cid, [i. 358.]
Petrarch, [i. 359.]
Philosophy, [i. 316.]
Pity, [i. 5.]
Pitt, [ii. 174.]
Pleasures, poetic, [ii. 13.]
production of, [ii. 90.]
Pluralities, [i. 284.]
Policy, [i. 116.]
'Political' generals, [i. 78-9.] [95.]
Poems, classification of, [ii. 133.] et seqq.
Poet, what is a, [ii. 87.] et seqq.
Poetry, of the Principles of and the 'Lyrical Ballads,' [ii. 79.] [100;]
as a study, [ii. 106.] [130;]
kinds of readers of, [ii. 106.]
as observation and description, [ii. 131.] [144;]
forms of, [ii. 132-3;]
of the principle of and Wordsworth's own poems, [ii. 208-14.]
(See preface, I.[xxv.-vi.])
Poor, laws to be reformed, [i. 232.]
amendment act, [i. 273-4,] et seqq.;
just claims of the, [i. 274-7,] [278-9.]
Pope, [ii. 55.] et seqq., 116, [iii. 419.]
'Popular,' [ii. 129.]
vox populi, [ii. 130.]
Portugal, [i. 80.]1.
Portugeze, [i. 43.] [54-5,] [67,] [86,] [97,] [100-101,] et seqq.
Power without right, [i. 159-60.]
Priesthood, French, [i. 6-7.]
Principles, [i. 39.] [43,] [74-5,] [144,] [145;]
of poetry, [ii. 79.] [100.]
Primogeniture, [i. 16.]
Prostitution, [i. 18.]
'Precautions,' [i. 45.] [61.]
Prudence, [i. 58-9.]
Private, a, individual, [i. 83.]
Private property, [i. 89-90.]
Preface, Editor's, [i. vii-xxxviii.]
Prisoners of war, [i. 89.]
Property, a sound basis, [i. 240.]
Protestantism and Popery, [i. 261.]
Progress, [i. 314-15.]
Prosaisms, [ii. 85.]
Prose, more of but for Coleridge, [iii. 457.]
Purpose, worthy, [ii. 82.]
Public, not the people, [ii. 130.]
Puny, [ii. 347.]
Pyrrhus, [i. 359.]
Q.
Qualities, moral, [i. 49-50.]
Queen, dedication and poem to the, [i. v-vi.]
R.
Racine, [i. 5.]6.
'Rash' politicians, [i. 248.]
Reputation, [i. 3.]
Republic, American, [i. 10.]
Republican, Wordsworth a, [i. 3.] [10]
republicanism defended, [i. 9-10.]et seqq.
Revolution, [i. 6.]
war against the French, [i. 135.][iii. 490.]
Reform, parliamentary, [i. 22.]
Representation, universal, [i. 11.]
'Rejoicing,' deplorable, [i. 69.] [105.]
Regeneration, national, [i. 122.]
'Remonstrance,' [i. 127.]
Representation of Westmoreland, [i. 215.]
Religion, in poetry, [ii. 108-9.]et seqq.
Religious instruction, [i. 354.]
Reserve, biographical, [ii. 9.]
'Reliques,' [ii. 120.] et seqq.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, [ii. 153-7,] [161-2,] [345.]
'Recluse,' the, [ii. 163.] [105.]
Revision of Authorised Version, &c., [iii. 471-3.]
Riddance, [i. 115.]
Royalty, no more, in France, [i. 5.]
Road, anecdote, [i. 22.]
old, [iii. 428.]
Robespierre, [ii. 18.]
Roscius, Young, [ii. 164.] 165.
Robinson Crusoe, [iii. 468.]
Rogers, [iii. 516.] et alibi.
'Ruin mouldering.' [i. 237.]
Russell, [iii. 507.] 509.
S.
Saragossa, [i. 117.] [121,] [166,] [357.]
Sass, Padre St. Iago, [i. 167.] [359.]
Scott, i. xiv., [iii. 442.] [30,] [445,] [457,] [462,] [487;]
vindication of, [509,] et alibi frequenter.
Scotland, critics of, [ii. 116.]
Schiller, [iii. 417.]
Seville, [i. 1-3.] [60.]
Shelvocke, [iii. 505.]
Shelley, [iii. 489.] [493,] [501,] [503.]
Shakespeare, [ii. 113.] [114,] [136,] [139,] [140,] [141,] [345-6,]
[460,] [488,] [506,] [509,] et alibi frequenter.
Silence, [ii. 10.]
Simonides, [ii. 30.]
Sincerity, [ii. 48.]
Slavery, [i. 77.]
Smith, Charlotte, [iii. 507.]
Southey's Letters, [iii. 509.]
Spain and Britain, [i. 41-2,] [161-2,] et seqq.
Spanish people, patriotism of, [i. 45-7,] et seqq., [125-6,] et seqq.
Spenser, [i. 322.][ii. 111-12,] [345,] [347,] [iii. 466,] [506,] et alibi.
Speech on laying the Foundation stone of Bowness School, [i. 350-6.]
Spelling and style, [iii. 452.]3.
Struggle, how the, ought to have been carried on, [i. 116.]
Statesmen and courtiers, minds of, [i. 130-1,] et seqq.
Stagnation, apparent, [i. 313.]
Statistical account of Scotland, [ii. 44.]
Style, [ii. 84.] et seqq.
Stevens, George, [ii. 113-14.]
Steamboats and railways, [ii. 340.]
Superstition, [i. 117.]
Superiority, [i. 321.]
Sword, not pen, [i. 95.]
Sympathy, [ii. 38.]
Sydney, Sir Philip, [ii. 49-50.]
Sympson, Rev. John, [iii. 506.]
T.
Tam o'Shanter, [ii. 13-14.]
Tempers and dispositions, [i. 279.]
Teacher, enlightened, [i. 325.]
Tenderness, [iii. 480.] [489.]
Tennyson, [iii. 390.] [492,] et alibi.
Things, if not men, [i. 142.]
Thomson, [ii. 117.] et seqq., [160,] [iii. 505.] et alibi.
Timidity, [i. 231.]
Tourist, directions and information for the, [ii. 221.] et seqq.
Traitors,

[i. 23.]
Tranquillity from 'Relief Bill' not possible, [i. 266-7.]
Truth, love of, [i. 323.][iii. 488.]
Trespass, [iii. 425.]
Tree-planting, [iii. 436.]
Transcendental world, [iii. 467.]
Triad, [iii. 505-6.]
Turner, Sharon, [iii. 506.]
Tyrant, the, [i. 70.] et seqq.
Tyranny, French, basis of, [i. 139.] [148.]
U.
Ulpha, Kirk, [ii. 227.]
Ullswater, [ii. 230-4.]
Union of nations, [i. 152-3.]
Unworthy objects, [i. 326.]
V.
Vane, Sir George, [ii. 47.]
Verse, why write in, [ii. 93-4.]
Veracity and ideality, [iii. 486.]
Vespers, Sicilian, [i. 359.]
Vimiera, [i. 43.] [75.]
Vindication of opinions, &c.[i. 195.] [209.]
Vice and Virtue, [ii. 42-3,] [61.]
Virgil, [i. 358.](bis), [iii. 469.] et alibi.
(See II. 274-9.)
Virgin, the, [iii. 492.]
Voice of the people, [i. 113.]
Volunteers, [i. 234.]
W.
Watson, Bp., [i. 3.] et seqq.
(See preface, I.[x.-xiv.])
Watson, Thomas, [ii. 313.]
War, just and necessary, [i. 39-40;]
opponents of, [i. 40.]
with France, wished still, [i. 201-2,] et seqq.;
varied opinions of, [i. 226-7.]
Warrior, happy, [ii. 173-4.]
Wales, North, excursion in, [ii. 197.] [201.]
Wastdale, [ii. 230.]
Walks, [iii. 423.]
Warwick, Sir Philip, [i. 359.]
Walker, A., book on the lakes overlooked, [ii. 346-7,] [iii. 506. (?)]
Waterton, [iii. 506.]
Wealth, [i. 15.] [189.]
Westmoreland, two letters to freeholders of, [i. xix-xxi.,] [211,] et seqq.
Wellesley (= Wellington), [i. 65-6.] [68-9,] [126-7,] et seqq., et alibi.
Weever, John, [ii. 27.] [50,] [344.]
Westall, [iii. 506.]
Wickedness, prodigious, [i. 170.]
Wilson, Alexander, [ii. 346.]
Wilson, Professor, [ii. 208-14.]
(See under Mathetes.)
Windermere, [ii. 223-4.]
Wieland, [iii. 418.]
Winchelsea, Countess of, [iii. 508.]
Wordsworth, Mrs.[iii. 509.]
Workmen in manufactories, [i. 282-3.]
Worthlessnesses swept away, [i. 311.]
Woman, [iii. 457.]
Y.
Young, Advice to the.[i. 295.]326, et alibi.
(See under Education.)
Z.
Zaragoza, [i. 167.]

FINIS.