[19] Compare The Triad, vol. vii. p. 181.—Ed.
[21] See a fragment of ten lines, which was written by Wordsworth in MS. after the above, in a copy of his poems. They are printed in the Appendix to this volume.—Ed.
[Light will be thrown upon the tragic circumstance alluded to in this poem when, after the death of Charles Lamb’s Sister, his biographer, Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, shall be at liberty to relate particulars which could not, at the time his Memoir was written, be given to the public. Mary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as long a time. Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not only on her genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and refinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under most trying circumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother’s friends; and others, some of them strange characters, whom his philanthropic peculiarities induced him to countenance. The death of C. Lamb himself was doubtless hastened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge, to whom he had been attached from the time of their being school-fellows at Christ’s Hospital. Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and probably would have gone to college upon one of the school foundations but for the impediment in his speech. Had such been his lot, he would most likely have been preserved from the indulgences of social humours and fancies which were often injurious to himself, and causes of severe regret to his friends, without really benefiting the object of his misapplied kindness.—I.F.]
In the edition of 1837, these lines had no title. They were printed privately,—before their first appearance in that edition,—as a small pamphlet of seven pages without title or heading. A copy will be found in the fifth volume of the collection of pamphlets, forming part of the library bequeathed by the late Mr. John Forster to the South Kensington Museum. There are several readings to be found only in this privately-printed edition. The poem was placed among the “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—Ed.
Composed November 19, 1835.—Published 1837
[22] 1837.
[23] Charles Lamb died December 27, 1834, and was buried in Edmonton Churchyard, in a spot selected by himself.—Ed.
[24] This way of indicating the name of my lamented friend has been found fault with, perhaps rightly so; but I may say in justification of the double sense of the word, that similar allusions are not uncommon in epitaphs. One of the best in our language in verse, I ever read, was upon a person who bore the name of Palmer†; and the course of the thought, throughout, turned upon the Life of the Departed, considered as a pilgrimage. Nor can I think that the objection in the present case will have much force with any one who remembers Charles Lamb’s beautiful sonnet addressed to his own name, and ending—
W. W. 1837.
† 1840. Pilgrim; 1837.
Professor Henry Reed, in his edition of 1837, added the following note to Wordsworth’s. “In Hierologus, a Church Tour through England and Wales, I have met with an epitaph which is probably the one alluded to above … a Kentish epitaph on one Palmer:
The above is Professor Reed’s note. The following is an exact copy of the epitaph:—
Ed.
[25] Compare Talfourd’s Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, passim.—Ed.
[26] 1837.
[27] 1837.
Professor Dowden quotes, from “a slip of MS. in the poet’s hand-writing,” the following variation of these lines—
Ed.
[28] Lamb’s indifference to the country “was a sort of ‘mock apparel,’ in which it was his humour at times to invest himself.” (H. N. Coleridge, Supplement to the Biographia Literaria, p. 333.)—Ed.
[29] 1837.
[30] 1837.
[31] 1837.
[32] 1837.
[33] 1837.
[34] Compare the testimony borne to Mary Lamb by Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall), and by Henry Crabb Robinson.—Ed.
[35] 1837.
Wordsworth originally meant to write an epitaph on Charles Lamb, but his verse grew into an elegy of some length. A reference to the circumstance of its “composition” will be found in one of his letters, in a later volume.—Ed.
Composed 1835.—Published 1835
[These verses were written extempore, immediately after reading a notice of the Ettrick Shepherd’s death, in the Newcastle paper, to the Editor of which I sent a copy for publication. The persons lamented in these verses were all either of my friends or acquaintance. In Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, an account is given of my first meeting with him in 1803. How the Ettrick Shepherd and I became known to each other has already been mentioned in these notes. He was undoubtedly a man of original genius, but of coarse manners and low and offensive opinions. Of Coleridge and Lamb I need not speak here. Crabbe I have met in London at Mr. Rogers’s, but more frequently and favourably at Mr. Hoare’s upon Hampstead Heath. Every spring he used to pay that family a visit of some length, and was upon terms of intimate friendship with Mrs. Hoare, and still more with her daughter-in-law, who has a large collection of his letters addressed to herself. After the Poet’s decease, application was made to her to give up these letters to his biographer, that they, or at least part of them, might be given to the public. She hesitated to comply, and asked my opinion on the subject. “By no means,” was my answer, grounded not upon any objection there might be to publishing a selection from these letters, but from an aversion I have always felt to meet idle curiosity by calling back the recently departed to become the object of trivial and familiar gossip. Crabbe obviously for the most part preferred the company of women to that of men, for this among other reasons, that he did not like to be put upon the stretch in general conversation: accordingly in miscellaneous society his talk was so much below what might have been expected from a man so deservedly celebrated, that to me it seemed trifling. It must upon other occasions have been of a different character, as I found in our rambles together on Hampstead Heath, and not so much from a readiness to communicate his knowledge of life and manners as of natural history in all its branches. His mind was inquisitive, and he seems to have taken refuge from the remembrance of the distresses he had gone through, in these studies and the employments to which they led. Moreover, such contemplations might tend profitably to counterbalance the painful truths which he had collected from his intercourse with mankind. Had I been more intimate with him, I should have ventured to touch upon his office as a minister of the Gospel, and how far his heart and soul were in it so as to make him a zealous and diligent labourer: in poetry, though he wrote much as we all know, he assuredly was not so. I happened once to speak of pains as necessary to produce merit of a certain kind which I highly valued: his observation was—“It is not worth while.” You are quite right, thought I, if the labour encroaches upon the time due to teach truth as a steward of the mysteries of God: if there be cause to fear that, write less: but, if poetry is to be produced at all, make what you do produce as good as you can. Mr. Rogers once told me that he expressed his regret to Crabbe that he wrote in his later works so much less correctly than in his earlier. “Yes,” replied he, “but then I had a reputation to make; now I can afford to relax.” Whether it was from a modest estimate of his own qualifications, or from causes less creditable, his motives for writing verse and his hopes and aims were not so high as is to be desired. After being silent for more than twenty years, he again applied himself to poetry, upon the spur of applause he received from the periodical publications of the day, as he himself tells us in one of his prefaces. Is it not to be lamented that a man who was so conversant with permanent truth, and whose writings are so valuable an acquisition to our country’s literature, should have required an impulse from such a quarter? Mrs. Hemans was unfortunate as a poetess in being obliged by circumstances to write for money, and that so frequently and so much, that she was compelled to look out for subjects wherever she could find them, and to write as expeditiously as possible. As a woman, she was to a considerable degree a spoilt child of the world. She had been early in life distinguished for talent, and poems of hers were published while she was a girl. She had also been handsome in her youth, but her education had been most unfortunate. She was totally ignorant of housewifery, and could as easily have managed the spear of Minerva as her needle. It was from observing these deficiencies, that, one day while she was under my roof, I purposely directed her attention to household economy, and told her I had purchased Scales which I intended to present to a young lady as a wedding present; pointed out their utility (for her especial benefit) and said that no ménage ought to be without them. Mrs. Hemans, not in the least suspecting my drift, reported this saying, in a letter to a friend at the time, as a proof of my simplicity. Being disposed to make large allowances for the faults of her education and the circumstances in which she was placed, I felt most kindly disposed towards her, and took her part upon all occasions, and I was not a little affected by learning that after she withdrew to Ireland, a long and severe sickness raised her spirit as it depressed her body. This I heard from her most intimate friends, and there is striking evidence of it in a poem written and published not long before her death. These notices of Mrs. Hemans would be very unsatisfactory to her intimate friends, as indeed they are to myself, not so much for what is said, but what for brevity’s sake is left unsaid. Let it suffice to add, there was much sympathy between us, and, if opportunity had been allowed me to see more of her, I should have loved and valued her accordingly; as it is, I remember her with true affection for her amiable qualities, and, above all, for her delicate and irreproachable conduct during her long separation from an unfeeling husband, whom she had been led to marry from the romantic notions of inexperienced youth. Upon this husband I never heard her cast the least reproach, nor did I ever hear her even name him, though she did not wholly forbear to touch upon her domestic position; but never so that any fault could be found with her manner of adverting to it. —I.F.]
This first appeared in The Athenæum, December 12, 1835, and in the edition of 1837 it was included among the “Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.”—Ed.
[36] Compare Yarrow Visited (September, 1814), vol. vi. p. 35.—Ed.
[37] Compare Yarrow Revisited (1831), vol. vii. p. 278.—Ed.
[38] Scott died at Abbotsford, on the 21st September 1832, and was buried in Dryburgh Abbey.—Ed.
[39] Hogg died at Altrive, on the 21st November 1835.—Ed.
[40] Coleridge died at Highgate, on the 25th July 1834.—Ed.
[41] Compare the Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson’s “Castle of Indolence” (vol. ii. p. 307)—
Ed.
[42] Lamb died in London, on the 27th December 1834.—Ed.
[43] “This expression is borrowed from a sonnet by Mr. G. Bell, the author of a small volume of poems lately printed at Penrith. Speaking of Skiddaw he says—
(Henry Reed, 1837.)—Ed.
[44] 1845.
[45] George Crabbe died at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, on the 3rd of February 1832.—Ed.
[46] Felicia Hemans died 16th May 1835.—Ed.
Composed 1835.—Published 1836
[I cannot forbear to record that the last seven lines of this Poem were composed in bed during the night of the day on which my sister Sara Hutchinson died about 6 P.M., and it was the thought of her innocent and beautiful life that, through faith, prompted the words——
The reader will find two poems on pictures of this bird among my Poems. I will here observe that in a far greater number of instances than have been mentioned in these notes one poem has, as in this case, grown out of another, either because I felt the subject had been inadequately treated, or that the thoughts and images suggested in course of composition have been such as I found interfered with the unity indispensable to every work of art, however humble in character.—I.F.]
One of the “Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.”—Ed.