She was buried in Hawkshead churchyard, where a small tablet of white marble is raised to her memory, on which there is the scantiest record that, for a person so eminently accomplished, I have ever met with. After mentioning her birth and age (twenty-nine), it closes thus:—"She possessed great talents, exalted virtues, and humble piety." Anything so unsatisfactory or so commonplace I have rarely known. As much, or more, is often said of the most insipid people; whereas Miss Smith was really a most extraordinary person. I have conversed with Mrs. Hannah More often about her; and I never failed to draw forth some fresh anecdote illustrating the vast extent of her knowledge, the simplicity of her character, the gentleness of her manners, and her unaffected humility. She passed, it is true, almost inaudibly through life; and the stir which was made after her death soon subsided. But the reason was that she wrote but little! Had it been possible for the world to measure her by her powers, rather than her performances, she would have been placed, perhaps, in the estimate of posterity, at the head of learned women; whilst her sweet and feminine character would have rescued her from all shadow and suspicion of that reproach which too often settles upon the learned character when supported by female aspirants.
The family of Tent Lodge continued to reside at Coniston for many years; and they were connected with the Lake literary clan chiefly through the Lloyds and those who visited the Lloyds; for it is another and striking proof of the slight hold which Wordsworth, &c., had upon the public esteem in those days, that even Miss Smith, with all her excessive diffidence in judging of books and authors, never seems, by any one of her letters, to have felt the least interest about Wordsworth or Coleridge; nor did Miss Hamilton, with all her esprit de corps and acquired interest in everything at all bearing upon literature, ever mention them in those of her letters which belong to the period of her Lake visit in 1802; nor, for the six or seven months which she passed in that country, and within a short morning ride of Grasmere, did she ever think it worth her while to seek an introduction to any one of the resident authors.
Yet this could not be altogether from ignorance that such people existed; for Thomas Wilkinson, the intimate and admiring friend of Miss Smith, was also the friend of Wordsworth; and, for some reason that I never could fathom, he was a sort of pet with Wordsworth. Professor Wilson and myself were never honoured with one line, one allusion from his pen; but many a person of particular feebleness has received that honour. Amongst these I may rank Thomas Wilkinson. Not that I wish to speak contemptuously of him; he was a Quaker, of elegant habits, rustic simplicity, and with tastes, as Wordsworth affirms, "too pure to be refined."[174] His cottage was seated not far from the great castle of the Lowthers; and, either from mere whim—as sometimes such whims do possess great ladies—whims, I mean, for drawing about them odd-looking, old-world people, as piquant contrasts to the fine gentlemen of their own society—or because they did really feel a homely dignity in the plain-speaking "Friend," and liked, for a frolic, to be thou'd and thee'd—on some motive or other, at any rate, they introduced themselves to Mr. Wilkinson's cottage; and I believe that the connexion was afterwards improved by the use they found for his services in forming walks through the woods of Lowther, and leading them in such a circuit as to take advantage of all the most picturesque stations. As a poet, I presume that Mr. Wilkinson could hardly have recommended himself to the notice of ladies who would naturally have modelled their tastes upon the favourites of the age. A poet, however, in a gentle, unassuming way, he was; and he, therefore, is to be added to the corps litteraire of the Lakes, and Yanwath to be put down as the advanced post of that corps to the north.
Two families there still remain which I am tempted to gather into my group of Lake society—notwithstanding it is true that the two most interesting members of the first had died a little before the period at which my sketch commences; and the second, though highly intellectual in the person of that particular member whom I have chiefly to commemorate, was not, properly speaking, literary, and, moreover, belongs to a later period of my own Westmoreland experience—being, at the time of my settlement in Grasmere, a girl at a boarding-school. The first was the family of the Sympsons, whom Mr. Wordsworth has spoken of, with deep interest, more than once. The eldest son, a clergyman, and, like Wordsworth, an alumnus of Hawkshead school, wrote, amongst other poems, "The Vision of Alfred." Of these poems Wordsworth says that they "are little known; but they contain passages of splendid description; and the versification of his 'Vision' is harmonious and animated." This is much for Wordsworth to say; and he does him even the honour of quoting the following illustrative simile from his description of the sylphs in motion (which sylphs constitute the machinery of his poem); and, probably, the reader will be of opinion that this passage justifies the praise of Wordsworth. It is founded, as he will see, on the splendid scenery of the heavens in Polar latitudes, as seen by reflection in polished ice at midnight.
"Less varying hues beneath the Pole adorn
The streamy glories of the Boreal morn,
That, waving to and fro, their radiance shed
On Bothnia's gulf, with glassy ice o'erspread;
Where the lone native, as he homeward glides
On polished sandals o'er the imprisoned tides,
Sees, at a glance, above him and below,
Two rival heavens with equal splendour glow:
Stars, moons, and meteors ray oppose to ray;
And solemn midnight pours the blaze of day."
"He was a man," says Wordsworth, in conclusion, "of ardent feeling; and his facilities of mind, particularly his memory, were extraordinary." Brief notices of his life ought to find a place in the history of Westmoreland.
But it was the father of this Joseph Sympson who gave its chief interest to the family. Him Wordsworth has described, at the same time sketching his history, with a fulness and a circumstantiality beyond what he has conceded to any other of the real personages in "The Excursion." "A priest he was by function"; but a priest of that class which is now annually growing nearer to extinction among us, not being supported by any sympathies in this age.
"His course,
From his youth up, and high as manhood's noon,
Had been irregular—I might say wild;
By books unsteadied, by his pastoral care
Too little checked. An active, ardent mind;
A fancy pregnant with resource and scheme
To cheat the sadness of a rainy day;
Hands apt for all ingenious arts and games;
A generous spirit, and a body strong
To cope with stoutest champions of the bowl;
Had earned for him sure welcome, and the rights
Of a priz'd visitant, in the jolly hall
Of country squire; or at the statelier board
Of duke or earl, from scenes of courtly pomp
Withdrawn, to while away the summer hours
In condescension amongst rural guests.
With these high comrades he had revelled long,
By hopes of coming patronage beguiled,
Till the heart sickened."