He then expatiated on the inexhaustible beauty of the arrangements of Nature, its power of combining in the most secret recesses, and that it must be for some purpose of beneficence that such operations existed. After breakfast, we got into the cart of the inn, which had a seat swung into it, upon which a bolster was put, in honour, I presume, of the Poet Laureate. In this we jogged on to Seathwaite, getting out to ascend a craggy eminence on the right, which Mrs. Wordsworth admired: the view from it is very striking. You see from it all the peculiarities of the vale, the ravine where the Duddon 'deserts the haunts of men,' 'the spots of stationary sunshine,' and the homesteads which are scattered here and there, both on the heights and in the lower ground near protecting rocks and craggy steeps. Seathwaite I had a perfect recollection of; and the way we approached it twenty years ago, from Coniston over Walna Scar, is the way Mr. Wordsworth still recommends as the most beautiful. We went on some distance beyond the chapel, and every new turning and opening among the hills allured us on, till at last the Poet was obliged to exercise the word of command, that we should proceed no further. The return is always a flat thing, so I shall not detail it, except that we reached our respective homes in good time; and I hope I shall never cease to think with gratitude and pleasure of the kindness of my honoured guide through the lovely scenes he has rescued from obscurity, although it happily still remains an unvitiated region, 'which stands in no need of the veil of twilight to soften or disguise its features: as it glistens in the morning's sun it fills the spectator's heart with gladsomeness.'

November 21.—My mother and I called at Rydal last Saturday, to see the Wordsworths after their autumnal excursion. We found him only at home, looking in great vigour and much the better for this little change of scene and circumstance. He spoke with much interest of a communication he had had from a benevolent surgeon at Manchester, an admirer of his, who thinks that a great proportion of the blindness in this country might be prevented by attention to the diseases of the eye in childhood. He spoke of two very interesting blind ladies he had seen at Leamington, one of whom had been at Rydal Mount a short time before her 'total eclipse,' and now derived the greatest comfort from the recollection of these beautiful scenes, almost the last she looked on. He spoke of his own pleasure in returning to them, and of the effect of the first view from 'Orrest Head,' the point mentioned in his 'unfortunate[250] sonnet, which has,' he said, 'you are aware, exposed me to the most unlooked for accusations. They actually accuse me of desiring to interfere with the innocent enjoyments of the poor, by preventing this district becoming accessible to them by a railway. Now I deny that it is to that class that this kind of scenery is either the most improving or the most attractive. For the very poor the great God of Nature has mercifully spread out His Bible everywhere; the common sunshine, green fields, the blue sky, the shining river, are everywhere to be met with in this country; and it is only an individual here and there among the uneducated classes who feels very deeply the poetry of lakes and mountains; and such persons would rather wander about where they like, than rush through the country in a railway. It is not, therefore, the poor, as a class, that would benefit morally or mentally by a railway conveyance; while to the educated classes, to whom such scenes as these give enjoyment of the purest kind, the effect would be almost entirely destroyed.'

Wednesday, 20th Nov.—A most remarkable halo was seen round the moon soon after five o'clock to-day; the colours of the rainbow were most brilliant, and the circle was entire for about five minutes.

Thursday, Mr. Wordsworth dined here with the Balls, Davys, and Mr. Jefferies. Mr. W. spoke with much delight of the moon the day before, and said his servant, whom he called 'dear James,' called his attention to it.

Wednesday, Dec. 18th.—The Wordsworths and Quillinans sat two hours with us. He said he thought [Dr. Arnold] was mistaken in the philosophy of his view of the danger of Milton's Satan being represented without horns and hoofs; that Milton's conception was as true as it was grand; that making sin ugly was a common-place notion compared with making it beautiful outwardly, and inwardly a hell. It assumed every form of ambition and worldliness, the form in which sin attacks the highest natures.

This day, Sunday, the 9th of February, the snow is again falling fast, but very gently. Yesterday, the 8th, was a beautiful day. We had a very pleasant visit of above an hour from Wordsworth and his wife. He was in excellent spirits, and repeated with a solemn beauty, quite peculiar to himself, a sonnet he had lately composed on 'Young England;' and his indignant burst 'Where then is old, our dear old England?' was one of the finest bursts of Nature and Art combined I have ever heard. My dear mother's face, too, while he was repeating it, was a fine addition to the picture; and I could not help feeling they were both noble specimens of 'dear old England.' Mrs. Wordsworth, too, is a goodly type of another class of old England, more thoroughly English perhaps than either of the others, but they made an admirable trio; and Mrs. Wordsworth's face expressed more admiration of her husband in his bardic mood than I ever saw before. He discussed mesmerism very agreeably, stating strongly his detestation of clairvoyance; not only on the presumption of its being altogether false, but supposing it, for argument sake, to be true, then he thinks it would be an engine of enormous evil, putting it in the power of any malicious person to blast the character of another, and shaking to the very foundations the belief in individual responsibility. He is not disposed to reject without examination the assertions with regard to the curative powers of mesmerism. He spoke to-day with pleasure of having heard that Mr. Lockhart had been struck by his lines from a MSS. poem, printed in his Railway-Sonnet pamphlet.

February 24th.—Snow still on the ground. It has never been quite clear of snow since the 27th January. Partial thaws have allowed us to peep out into the world of Ambleside and Rydal; and last Saturday we drank tea at Foxhow, and met the Wordsworths and Miss F——. He is very happy to have his friend home again, and was in a very agreeable mood. He repeated his sonnet on the 'Pennsylvanians,' and again that on 'Young England,' which I admire so much.

March 6th.—Wordsworth, whom we met yesterday at dinner at the Oaks, expressed his dislike to monuments in churches; partly from the absurdity and falsehood of the epitaphs which sometimes belonged to them, and partly from their injuring the architectural beauties of the edifice, as they grievously did in Westminster Abbey and many other cathedrals. He made an exception in favour of those old knightly monuments, which he admitted added to the solemnity of the scene, and were in keeping with the buildings; and he added, 'I must also except another monument which once made a deep impression on my mind. It was in a small church near St. Alban's; and I once left London in the afternoon, so as to sleep at St. Alban's the first night, and have a few hours of evening light to visit this church. It was before the invention of railways, and I determined that I would always do the same; but, the year after, railways existed, and I have never been able to carry out my project again: all wandering is now over. Well, I went to this small country church; and just opposite the door at which you enter, the figure of the great Lord Bacon, in pure white, was the first thing that presented itself. I went there to see his tomb, but I did not expect to see himself; and it impressed me deeply. There he was, a man whose fame extends over the whole civilised world, sitting calmly, age after age, in white robes of pure alabaster, in this small country church, seldom visited except by some stray traveller, he having desired to be interred in this spot, to lie near his mother.'

On referring to Mallet's Life of Bacon, I see he mentions that he was privately buried at St. Michael's church, near St. Alban's; and it adds, 'The spot that contains his remains lay obscure and undistinguished, till the gratitude of a private man, formerly his servant' (Sir Thomas Meautys), 'erected a monument to his name and memory.' This makes it probable that the likeness is a correct one.

November 8th, 1845.—On our way to take an early dinner at Foxhow yesterday, we met the Poet at the foot of his own hill, and he engaged us to go to tea to the Mount on our way home to hear their adventures, he and his Mary having just returned from a six weeks' wander among their friends. During their absence we always feel that the road between Grasmere and Ambleside is wanting in something, beautiful as it is. We reached the Mount before six, and found dear Mrs. Wordsworth much restored by her tour. She has enjoyed the visit to her kith and kin in Herefordshire extremely, and we had a nice comfortable chat round the fire and the tea-table. After tea, in speaking of the misfortune it was when a young man did not seem more inclined to one profession than another, Wordsworth said that he had always some feeling of indulgence for men at that age who felt such a difficulty. He had himself passed through it, and had incurred the strictures of his friends and relations on this subject. He said that after he had finished his college course, he was in great doubt as to what his future employment should be. He did not feel himself good enough for the Church, he felt that his mind was not properly disciplined for that holy office, and that the struggle between his conscience and his impulses would have made life a torture. He also shrank from the law, although Southey often told him that he was well fitted for the higher parts of the profession. He had studied military history with great interest, and the strategy of war; and he always fancied that he had talents for command; and he at one time thought of a military life, but then he was without connections, and he felt if he were ordered to the West Indies his talents would not save him from the yellow fever, and he gave that up. At this time he had only a hundred a year. Upon this he lived, and travelled, and married, for it was not until the late Lord Lonsdale came into possession that the money which was due to them was restored. He mentioned this to show how difficult it often was to judge of what was passing in a young man's mind, but he thought that for the generality of men, it was much better that they should be early led to the exercise of a profession of their own choice.

December 1846.—Henry Fletcher and I dined at the Mount on the 21st of this month. The party consisted of Mr. Crabb Robinson (their Christmas guest), Mrs. Arnold, Miss Martineau, and ourselves. My mother's cold was too bad to allow her to go, which I regretted, as it was, like all their little meetings, most sociable and agreeable. Wordsworth was much pleased with a little notice of his new edition in the Examiner; he thought it very well done. He expressed himself very sweetly at dinner on the pleasant terms of neighbourly kindness we enjoyed in the valleys. It will be pleasant in after times to remember his words, and still more his manner when he said this, it was done with such perfect simplicity and equality of feeling, without the slightest reference to self, and I am sure without thinking of himself at the time as more than one of the little circle whose friendly feeling he was commending.

October 1846.—Wordsworth dined with us one day last week, and was in much greater vigour than I have seen him all this summer.

He mentioned incidentally that the spelling of our language was very much fixed in the time of Charles the Second, and that the attempts which had been made since, and are being made in the present day, were not likely to succeed. He entered his protest as usual against [Carlyle's] style, and said that since Johnson no writer had done so much to vitiate the English language. He considers Lord Chesterfield the last good English writer before Johnson. Then came the Scotch historians, who did infinite mischief to style, with the exception of Smollett, who wrote good pure English. He quite agreed to the saying that all great poets wrote good prose; he said there was not one exception. He does not think Burns's prose equal to his verse, but this he attributes to his writing his letters in English words, while in his verse he was not trammelled in this way, but let his numbers have their own way.

Lancrigg, November.—Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth took an early dinner with us on the 26th of this month. He was very vigorous, and spoke of his majority at Glasgow, also of his reception at Oxford. He told us of an application he had just had from a Glasgow publisher that he should write a sonnet in praise of Fergusson and Allan Ramsay, to prefix to a new edition of those Poets which was about to appear. He intended to reply, that Burns's lines to Fergusson would be a much more appropriate tribute than anything he could write; and he went on to say that Burns owed much to Fergusson, and that he had taken the plan of many of his poems from Fergusson, and the measure also. He did not think this at all detracted from the merit of Burns, for he considered it a much higher effort of genius to excel in degree, than to strike out what may be called an original poem. He spoke highly of the purity of language of the Scotch poets of an earlier period, Gavin Douglass and others, and said that they greatly excelled the English poets, after Chaucer, which he attributed to the distractions of England during the wars of York and Lancaster.

December 25th, 1846.—My mother and I called at Rydal Mount yesterday early, to wish our dear friends the blessings of the season. Mrs. W. met us at the door most kindly, and we found him before his good fire in the dining-room, with a flock of robins feasting at the window. He had an old tattered book in his hand; and as soon as he had given us a cordial greeting, he said, in a most animated manner, 'I must read to you what Mary and I have this moment finished. It is a passage in the Life of Thomas Elwood.' He then read to us the following extract:

'Some little time before I went to Alesbury prison, I was desired by my quondam master, Milton, to take an house for him in the neighbourhood where I dwell, that he might get out of the city, for the safety of himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles-Chalford, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice; and intended to have waited on him, and seen him well settled in it, but was prevented by that imprisonment.

'But now being released, and returned home, I soon made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country.

'After some common discourses had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his, which being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me and read it at my leisure; and when I had so done, return it to him with my judgment thereupon.

'When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he entituled 'Paradise Lost.' After I had with the best attention read it through, I made him another visit, and returned him his book with due acknowledgment of the favour he had done me in communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly, but freely told him; and after some further discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" He made me no answer, but sate some time in a muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject. After the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed and become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I went to wait on him there (which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions drew me to London), he showed me his second poem, called "Paradise Regained;" and in a pleasant tone said to me, "This is owing to you, for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalford, which before I had not thought of." But from this digression I return to the family I then lived in.'

Wordsworth was highly diverted with the apology of the worthy Quaker, for the digression, which has alone saved him from oblivion. He offered to send us the old book, which came a few days after; and I shall add another digression in favour of John Milton, to whom he appears to have been introduced about the year 1661, by a Dr. Paget. It is thus notified apropos to Thomas Elwood feeling a desire for more learning than he possessed, which having expressed to Isaac Pennington, with whom he himself lived as tutor to his children, he says, 'Isaac Pennington had an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he had written on various subjects and occasions. This person having filled a public station in the former times, lived now a private and retired life in London, and, having wholly lost his sight, kept always a man to read to him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom in kindness he took to improve in his learning.

'He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington who recommended me, to both whom he bore a good respect; and having inquired divers things of me, with respect to my former progression in learning, he dismissed me to provide myself of such accommodations as might be most suitable to my future studies.

'I went, therefore, and took myself a lodging as near to his house, which was then in Jewin-street, as conveniently I could, and from thenceforward went every day in the afternoon (except on the first days of the week), and sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him in such books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to hear me read.'

(VI.) MRS. DAVY (CONTINUED).

The Oaks, Ambleside, Jan. 15. 1845.

We dined to-day at Rydal Mount. Mr. Wordsworth, during dinner, grave and silent, till, on some remark having been made on the present condition of the Church, he most unreservedly gave his own views; and gave expression, as I have only once heard him give before, to his own earnest, devout, humble feelings as a Christian. In the evening, being led by some previous conversation to speak of St. Paul, he said, 'Oh, what a character that is! how well we know him! How human, yet how noble! How little outward sufferings moved him! It is not in speaking of these that he calls himself wretched; it is when he speaks of the inward conflict. Paul and David,' he said, 'may be called the two Shakspearian characters in the Bible; both types, as it were, of human nature in its strength and its weakness. Moses is grand, but then it is chiefly from position, from the office he had entrusted to him. We do not know Moses as a man, as a brother man.'

April 7, 1846.—I went to the Mount to-day, to pay my respects to Mr. Wordsworth on his birthday. I found him and dear Mrs. Wordsworth very happy, in the arrival of their four grandsons. The two elder are to go to Rossall next week. Some talk concerning schools led Mr. Wordsworth into a discourse, which, in relation to himself, I thought very interesting, on the dangers of emulation, as used in the way of help to school progress. Mr. Wordsworth thinks that envy is too likely to go along with this, and therefore would hold it to be unsafe. 'In my own case,' he said, 'I never felt emulation with another man but once, and that was accompanied by envy. It is a horrid feeling.' This 'once' was in the study of Italian, which, he continued, 'I entered on at college along with ——' (I forget the name he mentioned). 'I never engaged in the proper studies of the university, so that in these I had no temptation to envy any one; but I remember with pain that I had envious feelings when my fellow-student in Italian got before me. I was his superior in many departments of mind, but he was the better Italian scholar, and I envied him. The annoyance this gave me made me feel that emulation was dangerous for me, and it made me very thankful that as a boy I never experienced it. I felt very early the force of the words, "Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect," and as a teacher, or friend, or counsellor of youth, I would hold forth no other motive to exertion than this. There is, I think, none other held forth in the gospels. No permission is given to emulation there.... There must always be a danger of incurring the passion of vanity by emulation. If we try to outstrip a fellow-creature, and succeed, we may naturally enough be proud. The true lesson of humility is to strive after conformity to that excellence which we never can surpass, never even by a great distance attain to.' There was, in the whole manner as well as matter of Mr. Wordsworth's discourse on this subject, a deep veneration for the will of God concerning us, which I shall long remember with interest and delight—I hope with profit. 'Oh! one other time,' he added, smiling, 'one other time in my life I felt envy. It was when my brother was nearly certain of success in a foot race with me. I tripped up his heels. This must have been envy.'

Lesketh How, Jan. 11. 1847.

In a morning visit by our fireside to-day from Mr. Wordsworth, something led to the mention of Milton, whose poetry, he said, was earlier a favourite with him than that of Shakspeare. Speaking of Milton's not allowing his daughters to learn the meaning of the Greek they read to him, or at least not exerting himself to teach it to them, he admitted that this seemed to betoken a low estimate of the condition and purposes of the female mind. 'And yet, where could he have picked up such notions,' said Mr. W., 'in a country which had seen so many women of learning and talent? But his opinion of what women ought to be, it may be presumed, is given in the unfallen Eve, as contrasted with the right condition of man before his Maker:

Now that,' said Mr. Wordsworth, earnestly, 'is a low, a very low and a very false estimate of woman's condition.' He was amused on my showing him the (almost) contemporary notice of Milton by Wycherly, and, after reading it, spoke a good deal of the obscurity of men of genius in or near their own times. 'But the most singular thing,' he continued, 'is, that in all the writings of Bacon there is not one allusion to Shakspeare.'

Lasketh How, Jan. 10. 1849.

A long fireside visit from Mr. Wordsworth this morning, in highly sociable spirits; speaking much of old days and old acquaintances. He spoke with much regret of Scott's careless views about money, and said that he had often spoken to him of the duty of economy, as a means to insure literary independence. Scott's reply always was, 'Oh, I can make as much as I please by writing.' 'This,' said Mr. W., 'was marvellous to me, who had never written a line with a view to profit.' Speaking of his own prose writing, he said, that but for Coleridge's irregularity of purpose he should probably have left much more in that kind behind him. When Coleridge was proposing to publish his 'Friend,' he (Mr. Wordsworth) offered contributions. Coleridge expressed himself pleased with the offer, but said, 'I must arrange my principles for the work, and when that is done I shall be glad of your aid.' But this 'arrangement of principles' never took place. Mr. Wordsworth added, 'I think my nephew, Dr. Conversations and Personal Reminiscences.

Wordsworth,[251] will, after my death, collect and publish all I have written in prose.'

On this day, as I have heard him more than once before, Mr. Wordsworth, in a way very earnest, and to me very impressive and remarkable, disclaimed all value for, all concern about, posthumous fame.[252]

The first book of Homer appears to be independent of the rest. The plan of the Odyssey is more methodical than that of the Iliad. The character of Achilles seems to me one of the grandest ever conceived. There is something awful in it, particularly in the circumstance of his acting under an abiding foresight of his own death. One day, conversing with Payne Knight and Uvedale Price concerning Homer, I expressed my admiration of Nestor's speech, as eminently natural, where he tells the Greek leaders that they are mere children in comparison with the heroes of old whom he had known[253]. 'But,' said Knight and Price, 'that passage is spurious.' However, I will not part with it. It is interesting to compare the same characters (Ajax, for instance) as treated by Homer, and then afterwards by the Greek dramatists, and to mark the difference of handling. In the plays of Euripides, politics come in as a disturbing force: Homer's characters act on physical impulse. There is more introversion in the dramatist: whence Aristotle rightly calls him tsagichhôtatos. The tower-scene, where Helen comes into the presence of Priam and the old Trojans, displays one of the most beautiful pictures anywhere to be seen. Priam's speech[254] on that occasion is a striking proof of the courtesy and delicacy of the Homeric age, or, at least, of Homer himself.

Catullus translated literally from the Greek; succeeding Roman writers did not so, because Greek had then become the fashionable, universal language. They did not translate, but they paraphrased; the ideas remaining the same, their dress different. Hence the attention of the poets of the Augustan age was principally confined to the happy selection of the most appropriate words and elaborate phrases; and hence arises the difficulty of translating them.

The characteristics ascribed by Horace to Pindar in his ode, 'Pindarum quisquis,' &c. are not found in his extant writings. Horace had many lyrical effusions of the Theban bard which we have not. How graceful is Horace's modesty in his 'Ego apis Matinae More modoque,' as contrasted with the Dircaean Swan! Horace is my great favourite: I love him dearly.

I admire Virgil's high moral tone: for instance, that sublime 'Aude, hospes, contemnere opes,' &c. and 'his dantem jura Catonem!' What courage and independence of spirit is there! There is nothing more imaginative and awful than the passage,

In describing the weight of sorrow and fear on Dido's mind, Virgil shows great knowledge of human nature, especially in that exquisite touch of feeling[256],

The ministry of Confession is provided to satisfy the natural desire for some relief from the load of grief. Here, as in so many other respects, the Church of Rome adapts herself with consummate skill to our nature, and is strong by our weaknesses. Almost all her errors and corruptions are abuses of what is good.

I think Buchanan's 'Maiae Calendae' equal in sentiment, if not in elegance, to anything in Horace; but your brother Charles, to whom I repeated it the other day, pointed out a false quantity in it[257]. Happily this had escaped me.

When I began to give myself up to the profession of a poet for life, I was impressed with a conviction, that there were four English poets whom I must have continually before me as examples—Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton. These I must study, and equal if I could; and I need not think of the rest[258].

I have been charged by some with disparaging Pope and Dryden. This is not so. I have committed much of both to memory. As far as Pope goes, he succeeds; but his Homer is not Homer, but Pope.

I cannot account for Shakspeare's low estimate of his own writings, except from the sublimity, the superhumanity, of his genius. They were infinitely below his conception of what they might have been, and ought to have been.

The mind often does not think, when it thinks that it is thinking. If we were to give our whole soul to anything, as the bee does to the flower, I conceive there would be little difficulty in any intellectual employment. Hence there is no excuse for obscurity in writing.

'Macbeth,' is the best conducted of Shakspeare's plays. The fault of 'Julius Caesar,' 'Hamlet,' and 'Lear,' is, that the interest is not, and by the nature of the case could not be, sustained to their conclusion. The death of Julius Caesar is too overwhelming an incident for any stage of the drama but the last. It is an incident to which the mind clings, and from which it will not be torn away to share in other sorrows. The same may be said of the madness of Lear. Again, the opening of 'Hamlet' is full of exhausting interest. There is more mind in 'Hamlet' than in any other play, more knowledge of human nature. The first act is incomparable.... There is too much of an every-day sick room in the death-bed scene of Catherine, in 'Henry the Eighth'—too much of leeches and apothecaries' vials.... 'Zanga' is a bad imitation of 'Othello.' Garrick never ventured on Othello: he could not submit to a blacked face. He rehearsed the part once. During the rehearsal Quin entered, and, having listened for some time with attention, exclaimed, 'Well done, David! but where's the teakettle?' alluding to the print of Hogarth, where a black boy follows his mistress with a teakettle in his hand.... In stature Garrick was short.... A fact which conveys a high notion of his powers is, that he was able to act out the absurd stage-costume of those days. He represented Coriolanus in the attire of Cheapside. I remember hearing from Sir G. Beaumont, that while he was venting, as Lear, the violent paroxysms of his rage in the awful tempest scene, his wig happened to fall off. The accident did not produce the slightest effect on the gravity of the house, so strongly had he impregnated every breast with his own emotions.

Some of my friends (H.C. for instance) doubt whether poetry on contemporary persons and events can be good. But I instance Spenser's 'Marriage,' and Milton's 'Lycidas.' True, the 'Persae' is one of the worst of Aeschylus's plays; at least, in my opinion.

Milton is falsely represented by some as a democrat. He was an aristocrat in the truest sense of the word. See the quotation from him in my 'Convention of Cintra.'[259] Indeed, he spoke in very proud and contemptuous terms, of the populace. 'Comus' is rich in beautiful and sweet flowers, and in exuberant leaves of genius; but the ripe and mellow fruit is in 'Samson Agonistes.' When he wrote that, his mind was Hebraized. Indeed, his genius fed on the writings of the Hebrew prophets. This arose, in some degree, from the temper of the times; the Puritan lived in the Old Testament, almost to the exclusion of the New.

The works of the old English dramatists are the gardens of our language.

One of the noblest things in Milton is the description of that sweet, quiet morning in the 'Paradise Regained,' after that terrible night of howling wind and storm. The contrast is divine.[260]

What a virulent democrat —— is! A man ill at ease with his own conscience is sure to quarrel with all government, order, and law.

The influence of Locke's Essay was not due to its own merits, which are considerable; but to external circumstances. It came forth at a happy opportunity, and coincided with the prevalent opinions of the time. The Jesuit doctrines concerning the papal power in deposing kings, and absolving subjects from their allegiance, had driven some Protestant theologians to take refuge in the theory of the divine right of kings. This theory was unpalatable to the world at large, and others invented the more popular doctrine of a social contract, in its place; a doctrine which history refutes. But Locke did what he could to accommodate this principle to his own system.

The only basis on which property can rest is right derived from prescription.

The best of Locke's works, as it seems to me, is that in which he attempts the least—his Conduct of the Understanding.

In the Summer of 1827, speaking of some of his contemporaries, Wordsworth said, T. Moore has great natural genius; but he is too lavish of brilliant ornament. His poems smell of the perfumer's and milliner's shops. He is not content with a ring and a bracelet, but he must have rings in the ears, rings on the nose—rings everywhere.

Walter Scott is not a careful composer. He allows himself many liberties, which betray a want of respect for his reader. For instance, he is too fond of inversions; i.e. he often places the verb before the substantive, and the accusative before the verb. W. Scott quoted, as from me,

instead of still; thus obscuring my idea, and betraying his own uncritical principles of composition.

Byron seems to me deficient in feeling. Professor Wilson, I think, used to say that 'Beppo' was his best poem; because all his faults were there brought to a height. I never read the 'English Bards' through. His critical prognostications have, for the most part, proved erroneous.

Sir James Mackintosh said of me to M. de Staël, Wordsworth is not a great poet, but he is the greatest man among poets.' Madame de Staël complained of my style.

Now whatever may be the result of my experiment in the subjects which I have chosen for poetical composition—be they vulgar or be they not,—I can say without vanity, that I have bestowed great pains on my style, full as much as any of my contemporaries have done on theirs. I yield to none in love for my art. I, therefore, labour at it with reverence, affection, and industry. My main endeavour as to style has been that my poems should be written in pure intelligible English. Lord Byron has spoken severely of my compositions. However faulty they may be, I do not think that I ever could have prevailed upon myself to print such lines as he has done; for instance,

Some person ought to write a critical review, analysing Lord Byron's language, in order to guard others against imitating him in these respects.

Shelley is one of the best artists of us all: I mean in workmanship of style.

At Calgarth, dining with Mrs. and the Miss Watsons ... a very fine portrait of the late Bishop in the dining-room.... Mr. Wordsworth there: a very agreeable party. Walked home with him in the evening to Rydal. It rained all the way. We met a poor woman in the road. She sobbed as she passed us. Mr. Wordsworth was much affected with her condition: she was swollen with dropsy, and slowly hobbling along with a stick, having been driven from one lodging to another. It was a dark stormy night. Mr. Wordsworth brought her back to the Lowwood Inn, where, by the landlord's leave, she was housed in one of his barns.

One day I met Mr. M.T. Sadler at the late Archbishop's. Sadler did not know me; and before dinner he began to launch forth in a critical dissertation on contemporary English Poetry. 'Among living poets, your Grace may know there is one called Wordsworth, whose writings the world calls childish and puerile, but I think some of them wonderfully pathetic.' 'Now, Mr. Sadler,' said the Archbishop, 'what a scrape you are in! here is Mr. Wordsworth: but go down with him to dinner, and you will find that, though a great poet, he does not belong to the "genus irritabile."' This was very happy.

After returning one day from church at Addington, I took the liberty of saying a few words on the sermon we had heard. It was a very homely performance. 'I am rather surprised, my Lord Archbishop, that when your Grace can have the choice of so many preachers in England, you do not provide better for yourself.' 'Oh!' said he, 'I think I can bear bad preaching better than most people, and I therefore keep it to myself.' This seemed to me a very pleasing trait in the gentle and loveable character of that admirable man.

Patriarchal usages have not quite deserted us of these valleys. This morning (new year's day) you were awakened early by the minstrels playing under the eaves, 'Honour to Mr. Wordsworth!' 'Honour to Mrs. Wordsworth!' and so to each member of the household by name, servants included, each at his own window. These customs bind us together as a family, and are as beneficial as they are delightful. May they never disappear!

In my Ode on the 'Intimations of Immortality in Childhood,' I do not profess to give a literal representation of the state of the affections and of the moral being in childhood. I record my own feelings at that time—my absolute spirituality, my 'all-soulness,' if I may so speak. At that time I could not believe that I should lie down quietly in the grave, and that my body would moulder into dust.

Many of my poems have been influenced by my own circumstances when I was writing them. 'The Warning' was composed on horseback, while I was riding from Moresby in a snow-storm. Hence the simile in that poem,