The Prose Works of William Wordsworth / For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts.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

by William Wordsworth

It is nowhere dated, but inasmuch as Bishop WATSON'S Sermon, with the Appendix, appeared early in 1793, to that year certainly belongs the composition of the 'Letter.' The title-page of the Sermon and Appendix may be here given;

A
SERMON
PREACHED BEFORE THE
STEWARDS
OF THE
WESTMINSTER DISPENSARY,
AT THEIR
ANNIVERSARY MEETING,
CHARLOTTE STREET CHAPEL, APRIL 1785.
WITH AN APPENDIX, BY R. WATSON, D.D.
LORD BISHOP OF LANDAFF.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR T. CADELL IN THE STRAND; AND T. EVANS
IN PATERNOSTER ROW.
1793 [8vo].

In the same year a 'second edition' was published, and also separately the Appendix, thus:

STRICTURES
ON THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION
AND THE
BRITISH CONSTITUTION,
AS WRITTEN IN 1793
IN AN
APPENDIX TO A SERMON
PREACHED BEFORE THE
STEWARDS OF THE WESTMINSTER DISPENSARY,
AT THEIR
ANNIVERSARY MEETING,
CHARLOTTE STREET CHAPEL, APRIL 1785,
BY R. WATSON, D.D.
LORD BISHOP OF LANDAFF.
Reprinted at Loughborough,
(With his Lordship's permission) by Adams, Jun.
and
Recommended by the Loughborough Association
For the Support of the Constitution to
The Serious Attention of the Public.
Price Twopence, being one third of the original price,
1793 [small 8vo],

The Sermon is a somewhat commonplace dissertation on 'The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor,' from Proverbs xxii. 2: 'The rich and poor meet together, the Lord is the Maker of them all.' It could not but be most irritating to one such as young WORDSWORTH—then in his twenty-third year—who passionately felt as well with as for the poor of his native country, and that from an intimacy of knowledge and intercourse and sympathy in striking contrast with the serene optimism of the preacher,—all the more flagrant in that Bishop Watson himself sprang from the very humblest ranks. But it is on the Appendix this Letter expends its force, and, except from BURKE on the opposite side, nothing more forceful, or more effectively argumentative, or informed with a nobler patriotism, is to be found in the English language. If it have not the kindling eloquence which is Demosthenic, and that axiomatic statement of principles which is Baconian, of the 'Convention,' every sentence and epithet pulsates—as its very life-blood—with a manly scorn of the false, the base, the sordid, the merely titularly eminent. It may not be assumed that even to old age WILLIAM WORDSWORTH would have disavowed a syllable of this 'Apology.' Technically he might not have held to the name 'Republican,' but to the last his heart was with the oppressed, the suffering, the poor, the silent. Mr. H. CRABB ROBINSON tells us in his Diary (vol. ii. p. 290, 3d edition): 'I recollect once hearing Mr. WORDSWORTH say, half in joke, half in earnest, "I have no respect whatever for Whigs, but I have a great deal of the Chartist in me;"' and his friend adds: 'To be sure he has. His earlier poems are full of that intense love of the people, as such, which becomes Chartism when the attempt is formally made to make their interests the especial object of legislation, as of deeper importance than the positive rights hitherto accorded to the privileged orders.' Elsewhere the same Diarist speaks of 'the brains of the noblest youths in England' being 'turned' (i. 31, 32), including WORDSWORTH. There was no such 'turning' of brain with him. He was deliberate, judicial, while at a red heat of indignation. To measure the quality of difference, intellectually and morally, between WORDSWORTH and another noticeable man who entered into controversy with Bishop WATSON, it is only necessary to compare the present Letter with GILBERT WAKEFIELD'S 'Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Landaff's Address to the People of Great Britain' (1798).

The manuscript is wholly in the handwriting of its author, and is done with uncharacteristic painstaking; for later, writing was painful and irksome to him, and even his letters are in great part illegible. One folio is lacking, but probably it contained only an additional sentence or two, as the examination of the Appendix is complete. Following on our ending are these words: 'Besides the names which I.'

That the Reader may see how thorough is the Answer of WORDSWORTH to Bishop WATSON, the 'Appendix' is reprinted in extenso. Being comparatively brief, it was thought expedient not to put the student on a vain search for the long-forgotten Sermon. On the biographic value of this Letter, and the inevitableness of its inclusion among his prose Works, it cannot be needful to say a word. It is noticed—and little more—in the 'Memoirs' (c. ix. vol. i. pp. 78-80). In his Letters ([vol. iii.]) will be found incidental allusions and vindications of the principles maintained in the 'Apology.'

(b) Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal, to each other and the common Enemy, at this Crisis; and specifically as affected by the Convention of Cintra: the whole brought to the test of those Principles, by which alone the Independence and Freedom of Nations can be Preserved or Recovered. 1809.