147. Governor Malartie: Lord Hector of Glasgow University, &c.
LETTER TO SIR W. GOMM. &c. &c., PORT LOUIS, MAURITIUS.
Rydal Mount, Ambleside, Nov. 23. 1846.
DEAR SIR WILLIAM,
Your kind letter of the 4th of August I have just received; and I thank you sincerely for this mark of your attention, and for the gratification it afforded me. It is pleasing to see fancy amusements giving birth to works of solid profit, as, under the auspices of Lady Gomm, they are doing in your island.
Your sonnet addressed to the unfinished monument of Governor Malartie is conceived with appropriate feeling and just discrimination. Long may the finished monument last as a tribute to departed worth, and as a check and restraint upon intemperate desires for change, to which the inhabitants of the island may hereafter be liable!
Before this letter reaches you the newspapers will probably have told you that I have been recently put in nomination, unknown to myself, for the high office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and that there was a majority of twenty-one votes in my favour, in opposition to the premier, Lord John Russell. The forms of the election, however, allowed Lord John Russell to be returned, through the single vote of the sub-rector voting for his superior. To say the truth, I am glad of this result; being too advanced in life to undertake with comfort any considerable public duty, and it might have seemed ungracious to decline the office.
Men of rank, or of high station, with the exception of the poet Campbell, who was, I believe, educated at this university, have almost invariably been chosen for a rector of this ancient university; and that another exception was made in my favour by a considerable majority affords a proof that literature, independent of office, does not want due estimation. I should not have dwelt so long upon this subject, had anything personal to myself occurred in which you could have taken interest.
As you do not mention your own health, or that of Lady Gomm, I infer with pleasure that the climate agrees with you both. That this may continue to be so is my earnest and sincere wish, in which Mrs. Wordsworth cordially unites.
Believe me, dear Sir William,
Faithfully yours,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.[216]