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]
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.)
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]
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]
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:
'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:
Compare
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 [a member of the Rota] said that he himself reprieved the Whole 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.
* * * 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.