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 LITEEARY REMINISCENCES ; 
 
 FROM 
 
 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS, 
 
 MDCCCLIV. 
 
 148913
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 
 TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS, 
 lu the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 IHCRSTON, TORRY, AND EMERSON, PRISTEBS.
 
 
 r^ 
 
 V, Z 
 
 (-■O 
 
 <3%' 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XIII. WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY .'..... 9 
 
 XIV. SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE . 46 
 XV. RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE . . . . 61 
 
 XVI. THE SARACEN'S HEAD 102 
 
 XVn. SOCIETY OF THE LAKES 116 
 
 O XVIIL CHARLES LLOYD 141 
 
 .-^ XIX. SOCIETY OF THE LAKES 168 
 
 Q( XX. " " «' ....... 203 
 
 XXI. WALKING STEWART. — EDWARD IRVING.— 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 229 
 
 XXII. TALFOURD. — THE LONDON MAGAZINE. — 
 
 JUNIUS. — CLARE. — CUNNINGHAM . . 256 
 XXIII. LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOUR- 
 NAL. — DUELLING 295
 
 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 WILLIMI WORDSWORTH AND ROBERT SOUTHEY. 
 
 That night — the first of my personal intercourse with 
 Wordsworth — the first in which I saw him face to face — 
 was (it is little, indeed, to say) memorable : it was marked 
 by a change even in the physical condition of my nervous 
 system. Long disappointment — hope for ever baffled, 
 (and why should it be less painful because seZf-baflled?) 
 — vexation and self-blame, almost self-contempt, at my 
 own want of courage to face the man whom of all since 
 the Flood I most yearned to behold : — these feelings had 
 impressed upon my nervous sensibilities a character of 
 irrhation — agitation — restlessness — eternal self-dissatis- 
 faction — which wei*e gradually gathering into a distinct, 
 well-defined type, that would, but for youth — almighty 
 youth, and the spirit of youth — have shaped itself into 
 some nervous complaint, wearing symptoms sui generis, 
 (for most nervous complaints, in minds that are at all 
 eccentric, will be sui generis ;) and, perhaps, finally, have 
 been immortalized in some medical journal as the anoma- 
 lous malady of an interesting young gentleman, aged
 
 10 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 twenty-two, who was supposed to have studied too se- 
 verely, and to have perplexed his brain with German 
 metaphysics. To this result things tended ; but, in one 
 hour, all passed away. It was gone, never to return. The 
 spiritual being whom I had anticipated — for, like Eloise, 
 
 ' My fancy framed him of th' angelic kind — 
 Some emanation of the all beauteous mind ' — 
 
 this ideal creature had at length been seen — seen ' in the 
 flesh' — seen with fleshly eyes; and now, though he did 
 not cease for years to wear something of the glory and the 
 aureola which, in Popish legends, invests the head of 
 superhuman beings, yet it was no longer as a being to be 
 feared — it was as Raphael, the ' affable ' angel, who con- 
 versed on the terms of man with man, that I now regarded 
 him. 
 
 It was four o'clock, perhaps, when we arrived. At that 
 hour the daylight soon declined ; and, in an hour and a 
 half, we were all collected about the tea-table. This, with 
 the Wordsworths, under the simple rustic system of habits 
 which they cherished then, and for twenty years after, was 
 the most delightful meal in the day ; just as dinner is in 
 great cities, and for the same reason — because it was 
 prolonged into a meal of leisure and conversation. And 
 the reason why any meal favors and encourages conversa- 
 tion is pretty much the same as that which accounts for 
 the breaking down of so many lawyers, and generally 
 their ill-success in the House of Commons. In the courts 
 of law, when a man is haranguing upon general and ab- 
 stract topics, if at any moment he feels getting beyond his 
 depth, if he finds his anchor driving, he can always bring 
 up, and drop his anchor anew upon the terrajirma of his 
 case : the facts of this, as furnished by his brief, always 
 assure him of a retreat as soon as he finds his more
 
 ■WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHET. 11 
 
 general thoughts failing him ; and the consciousness of 
 this retreat, by inspiring confidence, naakes it much less 
 probable that they should fail. But, in Parliament, where 
 the advantage of a case with given facts and circum- 
 stances, or the details of a statistical report, does not offer 
 itself once in a dozen times that a member has occasion 
 to speak — where he has to seek unpremeditated argu- 
 ments and reasonings of a general nature, from the im- 
 possibility of wholly evading the previous speeches that 
 may have made an impression upon the House ; — this 
 necessity, at any rate a trying one to most people, is 
 doubly so to one who has always walked in the leading- 
 strings of a case — always' swam with the help of bladders, 
 in the conscious resource of his/ac/s. The reason, there- 
 fore, why a lawyer succeeds ill as a senator, is to be found 
 in the sudden removal of an artificial aid. Now, just such 
 an artificial aid is furnished to timid or to unx-eady men by 
 a dinner-table, and the miscellaneous attentions, courtesies, 
 or occupations which it enjoins or permits, as by the fixed 
 memoranda of a brief. If a man fi^nds the ground slipping 
 from beneath him in a discussion — if, in a tide of illustra- 
 tion, he suddenly comes to a pause for want of matter — 
 he can make a graceful close, a self-interruption, that shall 
 wear the interpretation of forbearance, or even win the 
 rhetorical credit of an aposiopesis, (according to circum- 
 stances,) by stopping to perform a duty of the occasion : 
 pressed into a dilemma by some political partisan, one 
 may evade it by pressing him to take a little of the dish 
 before one ; or, plagued for a reason which is not forth- 
 coming, one may deprecate this logical rigor by inviting 
 one's tormentor to wine. In short, what I mean to say is, 
 that a dinner party, or any meal which is made the meal 
 for intellectual relaxation, must for ever offer the advan- 
 tages of a palcEStra, in which the weapons are foils and
 
 12 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 the wounds not mortal : in which, whilst the interest is 
 that of a real, the clanger is that of a sham fight : in which, 
 whilst there is always an opportunity for swimming into 
 deep waters, there is always a retreat into shallow ones. 
 And it may be laid down as a maxim, that no nation is 
 civilized to the height of its capacity until it has one such 
 meal. With our ancestors of sixty years back, this meal 
 was supper : with the Athenians and Greeks it was din- 
 ner,* (ccena and deinvov,) as with ourselves ; only that the 
 hour was a very early one, in consequence, partly, of the 
 early bedtime of these nations, (which again was occa- 
 sioned by the dearness of candle-light to the mass of those 
 who had political rights, on whose account the forensic 
 meetings, the visits of clients to their patrons, &c., opened 
 the political day by four hours earlier than with us,) and 
 partly in consequence of the uncommercial habits of the 
 ancients — commerce having at no time created an aris- 
 tocracy of its own, and, therefore, having at no time and 
 in no city (no, not Alexandria nor Carthage) dictated the 
 household and social arrangements, or the distribution of 
 its hours. 
 
 I have been led insensibly into this digression. I now 
 resume the thread of my narrative. That night, after 
 hearing conversation superior by much, in its tone and 
 subject, to any which I had ever heard before — one ex- 
 ception only being made, in favor of Coleridge, whose 
 
 * A curious dissertation might be written on this subject. Meantime, 
 it is remarkable that almost all modern nations have commtted the 
 blunder of supposing the Latin word for supper to be cmia, and of 
 dinner, prandium. Now, the essential definition of dinner is, that 
 which is the main meal — (what the French call the great meal.) By 
 that or any test, (for example, the time, three, p. m.,) the Roman ccena 
 was dinner. Even Louis XIL, whose death is partly ascribed to his 
 having altered his dinner hour from nine to eleven, a. m. in compliment 
 to his young English bride, did not sup at three, p. m.
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 13 
 
 Style differed from Wordsworth's in this, that being far 
 more agile and more comprehensive, consequently more 
 showy and surprising, it was less impressive and weighty ; 
 for Wordsworth's was slow in its movement, solemn, 
 majestic. After a luxury so rare as this, I found myself, 
 about eleven at night, in a pretty bedroom, about fourteen 
 feet by twelve. Much I feared that this might turn out the 
 best room in the house ; and it illustrates the hospitality 
 of my new friends, to mention that it was. Early in the 
 morning, I was awoke by a little voice, issuing from a little 
 cottage bed in an opposite corner, soliloquizing in a low 
 tone. I soon recognised the words — 'Suffered under 
 Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried;' and the 
 voice I easily conjectured to be that of the eldest amongst 
 Wordsworth's children, a son, and at that time about three 
 years old. He was a remarkably fine boy in strength and 
 size, promising (which has in fact been realized) a much 
 more powerful person, physically, than that of his father. 
 Miss Wordsworth I found making breakfast in the little 
 sitting-room. No urn was there ; no glittering breakfast 
 service ; a kettle boiled upon the fire, and everything was 
 in harmony with these unpretending arrangements. I, the 
 son of a merchant, and naturally, therefore, in the midst 
 of luxurious (though not ostentatious) display from my 
 childhood, had never seen so humble a menage : and con- 
 trasting the dignity of the man with this honorable poverty, 
 and this courageous avowal of it, his utter absence of all 
 effort 'to disguise the simple truth of the case, I felt my 
 admiration increase to the uttermost by all I saw. This, 
 thought I to myself, is, indeed, in his own words — 
 
 ' Plain living, and liigli thinking.' 
 
 This is indeed to reserve the humility and the parsimonies 
 of life for its bodily enjoyments, and to apply its lavishness
 
 14 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 and its luxury to its enjoyments of the intellect. So nnight 
 Milton have lived; so Marvell. Throughout the day — 
 which was rainy — the same style of modest hospitality 
 prevailed. Wordsworth and his sister — myself being of 
 the party — walked out in spite of the rain, and made the 
 circuit of the two lakes, Grasmere and its dependency 
 Rydal — a walk of about six miles. On the third day, 
 Mrs. Coleridge having ndw pursued her journey northward 
 to Keswick, and having, at her departure, invited me, in 
 her own name as well as Southey's, to come and see them, 
 Wordsworth proposed that we should go thither in com- 
 pany, but not by the direct route — a distance of only 
 thirteen miles : this we were to take in our road home- 
 ward ; our outward-bound journey was to be by way of 
 Ulleswater — a circuit of forty-three miles. 
 
 On the third morning after my arrival in Grasmere, I 
 found the whole family, except the two children, prepared 
 for the expedition across the mountains. I had heard of 
 no horses, and took it for granted that we were to walk ; 
 however, at the moment of starting, a cart — the common 
 farmers' cart of the country — made its appearance ; and 
 the driver was a bonny young woman of the vale. Such 
 a vehicle «I had never in my life seen used for such a 
 purpose ; but what was good enough for the Wordsworths 
 was good enough for me; and, accordingly, we were all 
 carted along to the little town, or large village, of Amble- 
 side — three and a half miles distant. Our style of 
 travelling occasioned no astonishment ; on the contrary, 
 we met a smiling salutation wherever we appeared — 
 Miss Wordsworth being, as_^ I observed, the person most 
 familiarly known of our party, and the one who took 
 upon herself the whole expenses of the flying colloquies 
 exchanged with stragglers on the road. What struck me 
 with most astonishment, however, was the liberal manner
 
 WORbSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 15 
 
 of our fair driver, who made no scruple of taking a leap, 
 with the reins in her hand, anfl seating herself dexter- 
 ously upon the shafts (or, in Westmoreland phrase, the 
 trams) of the cart. From Ambleside — and without one 
 foot of intervening flat ground — begins to rise the famous 
 ascent of Kirkstone ; after which, for three long miles, 
 all riding in a cart drawn by one horse becomes impossi- 
 ble. The ascent is computed at three miles, but is, 
 probably, a little more. In some parts it is almost fright- 
 fully steep ; for the road being only the original mountain 
 track of shepherds, gradually widened and improved from 
 age to age, (especially since the era of tourists began,) is 
 carried over ground which no engineer, even in alpine 
 countries, would have viewed as practicable. In ascend- 
 ing, this is felt chiefly as an obstruction and not as a peril, 
 unless where there is a risk of the horses backing ; but in 
 the reverse order, some of these precipitous descents are 
 terrific : and yet, once in utter darkness, after midnight, 
 and the darkness irradiated only by continual streams of 
 lightning, I was driven down this whole descent, at a full 
 gallop, by a young woman — the carriage being a light 
 one, the horses frightened, and the descents, at some 
 critical parts of the road, so literally like the sides of a 
 house, that it was difficult to keep the fore wheels from 
 pressing upon the hind legs of the horses. Indeed, this 
 is only according to the custom of the country, as I have 
 before mentioned. The innkeeper of Ambleside, or Low- 
 wood, will not mount this formidable hill without four 
 horses. The leaders you are not required to take beyond 
 the first three miles ; but, of course, they are glad if you 
 will take them on the whole stage of nine miles, to Pat- 
 terdale ; and, in that case, there is a real luxury at hand 
 for those who enjoy velocity of motion. The descent 
 into Patterdale is much above two miles ; but such is the
 
 16 LITEKAKY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 propensity for flying down hills in Westmoreland, that I 
 have found the descent accomplished in about six minutes, 
 which is at the rate of eighteen miles an hour ; the 
 various turnings of the road making the speed much 
 more sensible to the traveller. The pass, at the summit 
 of this ascent, is nothing to be compared in sublimity 
 with the pass under Great Gavil from Wastdalehead ; but 
 it is solemn, and profoundly impressive. At a height so 
 awful as this, it may be easily supposed that all human 
 dwellings have been long left behind : no sound of hu- 
 man life, no bells of churches or chapels ever ascend 
 so far. And, as is noticed in Wordsworth's fine stanzas 
 upon this memorable pass, the only sound that, even in 
 noonday, disturbs the sleep of the weary pedestrian, is that 
 of the bee murmuring amongst the mountain flowers — a 
 sound as ancient 
 
 ' As man's imperial front, and •woman's roseate bloom.' 
 
 This way, and (which, to the sentiment of the case, is an 
 important point) this way, of necessity and inevitahhj^ 
 passed the Roman legions ; for it is a mathematic impos- 
 sibility that any other route could be found for an army 
 nearer to the eastward of this pass than by way of 
 Kendal and Shap ; nearer to the westward, than by way 
 of Legbesthwaite and St. John's Vale, (and so by Threl- 
 keld to Penrith.) Now, these two roads are exactly 
 twenty-five miles apart ; and, since a Roman cohort was 
 stationed at Ambleside, [Arnhoglane,) it is pretty evident 
 that this cohort would not correspond with the more 
 northerly stations by either of these remote routes — 
 having immediately before it this direct though difiicult 
 pass of Kirkstonc. On the solitary area of table-land 
 which you find at the summit — though, Heaven knows, 
 you might almost cover it with a drawing-room carpet,
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 17 
 
 SO suddenly does the mountain take to its old trick of 
 precipitous descent, on both sides alike — there are only 
 two objects to remind you of man and his workmanship. 
 One is a guide-post — always a picturesque and interest- 
 ing object, because it expresses a wild country and a 
 labyrinth of roads, and often made much more interesting 
 (as in this case) by the lichens which cover it, and which 
 record the generations of men to whom it has done its 
 office ; as also by the crucifix form' which inevitably 
 recall, in all mountainous regions, the crosses of Catholic 
 lands, raised to the memory of wayfaring men who have 
 perished by the hand of the assassin. 
 
 The other memorial of man is even more intcrestinji : 
 — Amongst the fragments of rock which lie in the con- 
 fusion of a ruin on each side of the road, one there is 
 which exceeds the rest in height, and which, in shape, 
 presents a very close resemblance to a church. This lies 
 to the left of the road as you are going from Ambleside ; 
 and, from its name, Churchstone, (Kirkstone,) is derived 
 the name of the pass, and from the pass the name of the 
 mountain. The guide-post — which was really the work 
 of man — tells those going southwards (for to those who 
 go northwards it is useless, since, in that direction, there 
 is no choice of roads) that the left hand track conducts 
 you to Troutbeck, and Bowness, and Kendal ; the right 
 hand to Ambleside, and Hawkshead, and Ulverslone. 
 The church — which is but a phantom of man's handi- 
 work — might, however, really be mistaken for such, 
 were it not that the rude and almost inaccessible state of 
 the adjacent ground proclaims the truth. As to size, that 
 is remarkably difficult to estimate upon wild heaths or 
 mountain solitudes, where there are no leadings through 
 gradations of distance, nor any artificial standards, from 
 which height or breadth can be properly deduced. Tliis 
 
 VOL. II. 2
 
 18 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 mimic church, however, has a peculiarly fine effect in 
 this wild situation, which leaves so far below the tumults 
 of this world : the phantom church, by suggesting the 
 phantom and evanescent image of a congregation, where 
 never congregation met; of the pealing organ, where 
 never sound was heard except of wild natural notes, or 
 else of the wind rushing through these mighty gates of 
 everlasting rock — in this way, the fanciful image that 
 accompanies the traveller on his road, for half a mile or 
 more, serves to bring out the antagonist feelinj; of intense 
 and awful solitude, which is the natural and presiding 
 sentiment — the religio loci — that broods for ever over 
 the romantic pass. 
 
 Having walked up Kirkstone, we ascended our cart 
 again; then rapidly descended to Brothers' Water — a 
 lake which lies immediately below ; and, about three 
 miles further, through endless woods and under the shade 
 of mighty fells, immediate dependencies and processes of 
 the still more mighty Helvcllyn, we approached the vale 
 of Patterdale, when, by moonlight, we reached the inn. 
 Here we found horses — by whom furnished 1 never 
 asked nor heard ; perhaps I owe somebody for a horse to 
 this day. All I remember is — that through those most 
 romantic woods and rocks of Stybarren — through those 
 silent glens of Glencoin and Glenridding — through that 
 most romantic of parks then belonging to the Duke of 
 Norfolk, viz., Gobarrow Park — we saw alternately, for 
 four miles, the most grotesque and the most awful specta- 
 cles — 
 
 • Abbey windows 
 And Moorish temples of the Hindoos,' 
 
 all fantastic, all as unreal and shadowy as the moonlight 
 which created them ; whilst, at every angle of the road,
 
 •WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 19 
 
 broad gleams came upwards of Ullcswater, stretching 
 for nine miles northward, but, fortunately for its effect, 
 broken into three watery chambers of almost equal 
 length, and rarely visible at once. At the foot of the 
 lake, in a house called Ewsmere, we passed the night, 
 having accomplished about twenty-two miles only in our 
 day's walking and riding. The next day Wordsworth 
 and I, leaving at Ewsmere the rest of our party, spent 
 the morning in roamino; through the woods of Lowther, 
 and, towards evening, we dined together at Emont 
 Bridge, one mile short of Penrith. Afterwards, we 
 walked into Peniith. There Wordsworth left me in 
 excellent quarters — the house of Captain Wordsworth, 
 from which the family happened to be absent. Whither 
 he himself adjourned, I know not, nor on what business ; 
 however, it occupied him throughout the next day; and, 
 therefore, I employed myself in sauntering along the 
 road, about seventeen miles, to Keswick. There I had 
 been directed to ask for Greta Hall, which, with some 
 little difficulty, I found ; for it stands out of the town a 
 few hundred yards, upon a little eminence overhanging 
 the river Greta. It was about seven o'clock when I 
 reached Southey's door ; for I had stopped to dine at a 
 little public house in Threlkeld, and had walked slowly 
 for the last two hours in the dark. The arrival of a 
 stranger occasioned a little sensation in the house; and, 
 by the time the front door could be opened, I saw Mrs. 
 Coleridge, and a gentleman whom I could not doubt to be 
 Southey, standing, very hospitably, to greet my entrance. 
 Southey was, in person, somewhat taller than Words- 
 worth, being about five feet eleven in height, or a trifle 
 more, whilst Wordsworth was about five feet ten ; and, 
 partly from having slenderer limbs, partly from being 
 more symmetrically formed about the shoulders than
 
 20 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Wordsworth, he struck one as a better and lighter figure, 
 to the effect of which his dress contributed ; for he wore 
 pretty constantly a short jacket and pantaloons, and had 
 much the air of a Tyrolese mountaineer. 
 
 On the next day arrived Wordsworth. I could read at 
 once, in the manner of the two authors, that they were 
 not on particularly friendly, or rather, 1 should say, confi- 
 dential terms. It seemed to me as if both had silently 
 said — we are too much men of sense to quarrel, because 
 we do not happen particularly to like each other's writ- 
 ings : we are neighbors, or what passes for such in the 
 country. Let us show each other the courtesies which 
 are becoming to men of letters; and, for any closer con- 
 nection, our distance of thirteen miles may be always 
 sufficient to keep us from that. In after life, it is true — 
 fifteen years, perhaps, from this time — many circumstan- 
 ces combined to bring Southey and Wordsworth into more 
 intimate terms of friendship : agreement in politics, sor- 
 rows which had happened to both alike in their domestic 
 relations, and the sort of tolerance for different opinions 
 in literature, or, indeed, in anything else, which advancing 
 years and experience are sure to bring witli them. But 
 at this period, Southey and Wordsworth entertained a 
 mutual esteem, but did not cordially like each other. In- 
 deed, it would have been odd if they had, Wordsworth 
 lived in the open air : Southey in his library, which Cole- 
 ridge used to call his wife, Southey had particularly ele- 
 gant habits (Wordsworth called them finical) in the use of 
 books. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was so negligent, 
 and so self-indulgent in the same case, that as Southey, 
 laughing, expressed it to me some years afterwards, when 
 I was staying at Greta Hall on a visit — 'To introduce 
 Wordsworth into one's library, is like letting a bear into a 
 tulip garden.' What I mean by self-indulgent is this :
 
 WOKDSWORTH AND SOUTHET. 21 
 
 generally it happens that new books baffle and mock one's 
 curiosity by their uncut leaves ; and the trial is pretty 
 much the same, as when, in some town, where you are 
 utterly unknown, you meet the postman at a distance from 
 your inn, with some letter for yourself from a dear, dear 
 friend in foreign regions, without money to pay the 
 postage. How is it with you, dear reader, in such a 
 case? Are you not tempted [lam grievously) to snatch 
 the letter from his tantalizing hand, spite of the roar 
 which you anticipate of ' Stop thief!' and make off as 
 fast as you can for some solitary street in the suburbs, 
 where you may instantly effect an entrance upon your 
 new estate before the purchase-money is paid down ? 
 Such were Wordsworth's feelings in regard to new books ; 
 of which the first exemplication I had was early in my 
 acquaintance with him, and on occasion of a book which 
 (if any could) justified the too summary style of his ad- 
 vances in rifling its charms. On a level with the eye, 
 when sitting at the tea-table in my little cottage at Gras- 
 mere, stood the collective works of Edmund Burke. The 
 book was to me an eye-sore and an ear-sore for many 
 a year, in consequence of the cacophonous title lettered by 
 the bookseller upon the back — ' Burke's Works.' I have 
 heard it said, by the way, that Donne's intolerable defect 
 of ear, grew out of his own baptismal name, when har- 
 nessed to his own surname — John Donne. No man, it 
 was said, who had listened to this hideous jingle from 
 childish years, could fail to have his genius for discord, 
 and the abominable in sound, improved to the utmost. 
 Not less dreadful than John Donne was ' Burke's Works;* 
 which, however, on the old principle, that every day's 
 work is no day's work, continued to annoy me for twenty- 
 one years. Wordsworth took down the volume ; un- 
 fortunately it was uncut ; fortunately, and by a special 
 
 I
 
 22 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Providence as to him, it seemed, tea was proceeding at 
 the time. Dry toast required butter ; butter required 
 knives ; and knives then lay on the table ; but sad it was 
 for the virgin purity of Mr. Burke's as yet unsunned 
 pages, that every knife bore upon its blade testimonies of 
 the service it had rendered. Did that stop Wordsworth } 
 Did that cause him to call for another knife ? Not at 
 all ; he 
 
 ' Look'd at the knife that caus'd his pain : 
 And look'd and sigh'd, and look'd and sigh'd again ; ' 
 
 and then, after this momentary tribute to regret, he tore 
 his way into the heart of the volume with this knife, that 
 left its greasy honors behind it upon every page : and are 
 they not there to this day > This personal experience 
 just brought me acquainted with Wordsworth's habits, and 
 that particular, especially, with his intense impatience for 
 one minute's delay, which would have brought a remedy ; 
 and yet the reader may believe that it is no affectation in 
 me to say, that fifty such cases could have given me but 
 little pain, when I explain, that whatever could be made 
 good by money, at that time, I did not regard. Mad the 
 book been an old black-letter book, having a value from 
 its rarity, I should have been disturbed in an indescribable 
 degree ; but simply with reference to the utter impossi- 
 bility of reproducing that mode of value. As to the 
 Burke, it was a common book ; I had bought the book, 
 with many others, at the sale of Sir Cecil Wray's library, 
 for about two-thirds of the selling price: I could easily 
 replace it; and I i.iention the case at all, only to illustrate 
 the excess of Wordsworth's outrages on books, which 
 made him, in Southey's eyes, a mere monster; for 
 Southey's beautiful library was his estate ; and this differ- 
 ence of habits would alone have sufficed to alienate him
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 23 
 
 from Wordsworth. And so I argued in other cases of the 
 same nature. 
 
 Meantime, had Wordsworth done as Coleridge did, how 
 cheerfully should I have acquiesced in his destruction 
 (such as it was, in a pecuniary sense,) of books, as the 
 very highest obligation he could confer. Coleridge often 
 spoiled a book ; but, in the course of doing this, he 
 enriched that book with so many and so valuable notes, 
 tossing about him, with such lavish profusion, from such a 
 cornucopia of discursive reading, and such a fusing 
 intellect, commentaries, so many-angled and so many- 
 colored, that I have envied many a man whose luck has 
 placed him in the way of such injuries; and that man 
 must have been a churl (though, God knows! too often 
 this churl has existed) who could have found in his heart 
 to complain. But Wordsworth rarely, indeed, wrote on 
 the margin of books; and, when he did, nothing could 
 less illustrate his intellectual superiority. The comments 
 were such as might have been made by anybody. Once, 
 I remember, before I had ever seen Wordsworth — 
 probably a year before — I met a person who had once 
 enjoyed the signal honor of travelling with him to London. 
 It was in a stage-coach. But the person in question well 
 knew who it was that had been his compagnon de voyage. 
 Immediately he was glorified in my eyes. 'And,' said I, 
 to this glorified gentleman, (who, par parenthese, was also 
 a donkey,) ' now, as you travelled nearly three hundred 
 miles in the company of Mr. Wordsworth, consequently, 
 (for this was in 1805,) during two nights and two days, 
 doubtless you must have heard many profound remarks 
 that would inevitably fajl from his lips.' Nay, Coleridge 
 had also been of the party; and, if Wordsworth solus 
 could have been dull, was it within human possibilhies 
 that these gemini should have been so ? ' Was it pos-
 
 24 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 sible ? ' I said ; and, perhaps, my donkey, who looked 
 like one that had been immoderately threatened, at last 
 took courage ; his eye brightened ; and he intimated that 
 he did remember something that Wordsworth had said — 
 an ' observe,' as the Scotch call it. 
 
 * Ay, indeed ; and what was it now ? What did the 
 great man say ? ' 
 
 * Why, sir, in fact, and to make a long story short, on 
 coming near to London, we breakfasted at Baldock — 
 you know Baldock? It's in Hertfordshire. Well, now, 
 sir, would you believe it, though we were quite in regular 
 time, the breakfast was precisely good for nothing.? ' 
 
 ' And Wordsworth } ' 
 
 ' He observed ' 
 
 ' What did he observe ? ' 
 
 ' That the buttered toast looked, for all the world, as if 
 it had been soaked in hot water.' 
 
 Ye heavens ! ' buttered toast ! ' And was it this I 
 waited for ? Now, thought I, had Henry Mackenzie been 
 breakfasting with Wordsworth, at Baldock, (and, strange 
 enough ! in years to come I did breakfast with Henry 
 Mackenzie, for the solitary time I ever met him, and at 
 Wordsworth's house, in Rydal,) he would have carried off 
 one sole reminiscence from the meeting — namely, a 
 confirmation of his creed, that we English are all dedi- 
 cated, from our very cradle, to the luxuries of the palate, 
 and peculiarly to this.* Prok pudor ! Yet, in sad sin- 
 
 * It is not known to the English, hut it is a fact which I can vouch 
 for, from my six or seven years' residence in Scotland, that the Scotch, 
 one and all, lielieve it to be an inalienable characteristic of an English- 
 man to be fond of good eating. What indignation have I, and how 
 many a time, had occasion to feel and utter on this subject? But of this 
 at some other time. Meantime, the Man of Feeling had this creed in 
 excess ; and, in some paper, (of The MivroT or The Lounger,) he 
 desciibes an English tourist in Scotland by saying — ' 1 would not wish
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 25 
 
 cerity, Wordsworth's pencil-notices in books were quite 
 as disappointing. Tn Roderick Random, for example, I 
 found a note upon a certain luscious description, to the 
 effect ' that such things should be left to the imagination 
 of the reader — not expressed.' In another place, that it 
 was 'improper;' and, in a third, 'that the principle laid 
 down was doubtful ; ' or, as Sir Roger de Coverley 
 observes, ' that much might be said on both sides.' All this, 
 however, indicates nothing more than that ditferent men 
 require to be roused by different stimulants. Wordsworth, 
 in his marginal notes, thought of nothing but delivering 
 himself of a strong feeling, with which he wished to 
 challenge the reader's sympathy. Coleridge imagined an 
 audience before him ; and, however doubtful that con- 
 summation might seem, I am satisfied that he never wrote 
 a line for which he did not feel the momentary inspiration 
 of sympathy and applause, under the confidence, that, 
 sooner or later, all which he had committed to the chance 
 margins of books would converge and assemble in some 
 common reservoir of reception. Bread scattered upon 
 the waters will be gathered after many days. This, per- 
 haps, was the consolation that supported him ; and the 
 prospect that, for a time, his Arethusa of truth would flow 
 under ground, did not, perhaps, disturb, but rather cheered 
 and elevated the sublime old somnambulist.* 
 
 to be ihoughl national ; yet, in mere reverence for truth, I am bound to 
 say, and to declare to all the world, (let who will be oflended,) that the 
 first innkeeper in Scotland, under whose roof we met with genuine but- 
 tered toa'^t, was an Englishman.' 
 
 * Meantime, if it did not disturb hiin, it ought to disturb us, his 
 immediate successors, who are at once the most likely to retrieve these 
 losses by direct efforts, and the least likely to benefit by any casual or 
 indirect retrievals, such as will be produced by time. Surely a subscrip- 
 tion should be set on fool to recover all books enriched by his marginal 
 notes. I would subscribe ; and I know others who would largely.
 
 26 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Meantime, Wordsworth's habits of using books — which, 
 I am satisfied, would, in those days, alone have kept him 
 at a distance from most men with fine libraries — were 
 not vulgar ; not the habits of those who turn over the 
 page by means of a wet finger, (though even this abom- 
 ination I have seen perpetrated by a Cambridge tutor and 
 fellow of a college ; but then he had been bred up as a 
 ploughman, and the son of a ploughman ;) no ; but his 
 habits were more properly barbarous and licentious, and 
 in the spirit of audacity belonging de jure to no man but 
 him who could plead an income of four or five hundred 
 thousand per annum, and to whom the Bodleian or the 
 Vatican would be a three years' purchase. Gross, mean- 
 time, was his delusion upon this subject. Himself he 
 regarded as the golden mean between the too little and 
 the too much of care for books ; and, as it happened that 
 every one of his friends far exceeded him in this point, 
 curiously felicitous was the explanation which he gave of 
 this superfluous case, so as to bring it within the natural 
 operation of some known fact in the man's peculiar 
 situation. Southey (he was by nature something of an 
 old bachelor) had his house filled with pretty articles — 
 bijouterie, and so forth ; and, naturally, he wished his 
 books to be kept up to the same level — burnished and 
 bright for show. Sir George Beaumont — this peculiarly 
 elegant and accomplished man — was an old and most 
 affectionate friend of Wordsworth's. Sir George Beau- 
 mont never had any children : if he had been so blessed, 
 they, by familiarizing him with the spectacle of books ill 
 used — stained, torn, mutilated, &c. — would have low- 
 ered the standard of his requisitions. The short solution 
 of the whole case was — and it illustrated the nature of 
 his education — he had never lived in a regular family at
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 27 
 
 a time when habits are moulded. From boyhood to 
 manhood he had been sui juris. 
 
 Returnuig to Southey and Greta Hall, both the house 
 and the master may deserve a few words more of de- 
 scription. For the master, I have already sketched his 
 person ; and bis face I profess myself unable to describe 
 accurately. His hair was black, and yet his complexion 
 was fair ; his eyes I believe to be hazel and large ; but I 
 will not vouch for that fact : his nose aquiline ; and he 
 has a remarkable habit of looking up into the air, as if 
 looking at abstractions. The expression of his face was 
 that of a very acute and an aspiring man. So far, it 
 was even noble, as it conveyed a feeling of a serene and 
 gentle pride, habitually familiar with elevating subjects of 
 contemplation. And yet it was impossible that this pride 
 could have been offensive to anybody, chastened as it 
 was by the most unaffected modesty ; and this modesty 
 made evident and prominent by the constant expression of 
 reverence for the great men of the age, (when he hap- 
 pened to esteem them such,) and for all the great patriarchs 
 of our literature. The point in which Southey's manner 
 failed the most in conciliating regard, was, in all which 
 related to the external expressions of friendliness. No 
 man could be more sincerely hospitable — no man more 
 essentially disposed to give up even his time (the posses- 
 sion which he most valued) to the service of his friends. 
 But there was an air of reserve and distance about him — 
 the reserve of a lofty, self-respecting mind, but, perhaps, 
 a little too freezing — in his treatment of all persons who 
 were not among the corps of his ancient fireside friends. 
 Still, even towards the veriest strangers, it is but justice to 
 notice his extreme courtesy in sacrificing his literary 
 employments for the day, whatever they might be, to the
 
 28 LITERARY REMINISCENCES, 
 
 duty (for such he made it) of doing the honors of 'the 
 lake, and the adjacent mountains. 
 
 Southey was at that time, (1807,) and has continued 
 ever since, the most industrious of all literary men on 
 record. A certain task he prescribed to himself every 
 morning before breakfast. This could not be a very long 
 one, for he breakfasted at nine, or soon after, and never 
 rose before eight, though he went to bed duly at half-past 
 ten ; but, as I have many times heard him say, less than 
 nine hours' sleep he found insufficient. From breakfast 
 to a latish dinner (about half after five or six) was his 
 main period of literary toil. After dinner, according to 
 the accident of having or not having visiters in the house, 
 he sat over his wine ; or he retired to his library again, 
 from which, about eight, he was summoned to tea. But, 
 generally speaking, he closed his literary toils at dinner; 
 the whole of the hours after that meal being dedicated to 
 his correspondence. This, it may be supposed, was 
 unusually large, to occupy so much of his time, for his 
 letters rarely extended to any length. At that period, the 
 post, by way of Penrith, reached Keswick about six or 
 seven in the evening. And so pointedly regular was 
 Southey in all his habits, that, short as the time was, all 
 letters were answered on the same evening which brought 
 them. At tea, he read the London papers. It was per- 
 fectly astonishing to men of less methodical habits, to find 
 how much he got though of elaborate business by his 
 unvarying system of arrangement in the distribution of 
 his time. We often hear it said, in accounts of pattern 
 ladies and gentlemen, (what Coleridge used contemptu- 
 ously to style goody people,) that they found time for 
 everything; that business never interrupted pleasure; 
 that labors of love and charity never stood in the way of 
 courtesy or personal enjoyment. This is easy to say —
 
 •WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. ' 29 
 
 easy to put down as one feature of an imaginary portrait : 
 but I must say, that, in actual life, I have seen few such 
 cases. Soutliey, however, did find time for everything. 
 It moved the sneers of some people, that even his poetry 
 was composed according to a predetermined rule ; that so 
 many lines should be produced, by contract, as it were, 
 before breakfast; so many at such another definite inter- 
 val. And I acknowledge, that, so far, I went along with 
 the sneerers, as to marvel exceedingly how that could be 
 possible. But, if a priori, one laughed and expected to 
 see verses corresponding to this mechanic rule of con- 
 struction, a posteriori one was bound to judge of the 
 verses as one found them. Supposing them good, they 
 were entitled to honor, no matter for the previous reasons 
 which made it possible that they would not be good. And 
 generally, however undoubtedly they ought to have been 
 bad, the world has pronounced them good. In fact, they 
 are good ; and the sole objection to them is, that they are 
 too intensely ohjective — too much reflect the mind, as 
 spreading itself out upon external things — too little ex- 
 hibit the mind, as introverting itself upon its own thoughts 
 and feelings. This, however, is an objection, which only 
 seems to limit the range of the poetry — and all poetry is 
 limited in its range : none comprehends more than a sec- 
 tion of the human power. Meantime, the prose of 
 Southey was that by which he lived. The Quarterly 
 Review it was by which, as he expressed it to myself in 
 1810, he ' made the pot boil.'' 
 
 About the same time, possibly as early as 1808, (for 
 I think that I remember in that Journal an account of the 
 Battle of Vimiera,) Soutbey was engagg.d by an Edin- 
 burgh publisher, [Constable, was it not?] to write the 
 entire historical part of The Edinburgh Annual Register, 
 at a salary of ^400 per annum. Afterwards, the pub-
 
 30 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 lisher, who was intensely national, and, doubtless, never 
 from the first cordially relished the notion of importing 
 English aid into a city teeming with briefless barristers 
 and variety of talent, threV out a hint that perhaps he 
 might reduce the salary to .£300. Just about this time I 
 happened to see Southey, who said laughingly — 'If the 
 man of Edinburgh does this, I shall strike for an advance 
 of wages.' I presume that he did strike, and, like many 
 other ' operatives,' without effect. Those who work for 
 lower wages during a strike are called snobs * the men 
 who stand out being nobs. Southey became a resolute 
 nob ; but some snob was found in Edinburgh, some youth- 
 ful advocate, who accepted ^300 per annum, and thence- 
 forward Southey lost this part of his income. I once 
 possessed the whole work ; and in one part, viz. The Do' 
 meslic Chronicle, I know that it is executed with a most 
 culpable carelessness — the beginnings of cases being 
 given without the ends, the ends without the beginnings — 
 a defect but too common in public journals. The credit 
 of the work, however, was staked upon its treatment of 
 the current public history of Europe, and the tone of its 
 politics in times so full of agitation, and teeming with new 
 births in every year, some fated to prove abortive, but 
 others bearing golden promises for the human race. Now, 
 whatever might be the talent with which Southey's suc- 
 cessor performed his duty, there was a loss in one point 
 for which no talent of mere execution could make amends. 
 The very prejudices of Sou'hey tended to unity of feeling: 
 they were in harmony with each other, and grew out of a 
 strong moral feeling, which is the one sole secret for 
 giving interest to an historical narration, fusing the ir.co- 
 herent details into one body, and carrying the reader 
 
 * See the Evidence before the House of Commons' CommiUee.
 
 •WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 31 
 
 fluently along the else nnonotonous recurrences and un- 
 meaning details of military movements. Well or ill 
 directed, a strong moral feeling, and a profound sympathy 
 with elementary justice, is that which creates a soul under 
 what else may well be denominated, Miltonically, ' the 
 ribs of death.' 
 
 Now this, and a mind already made up even to obsti- 
 nacy upon all public questions, were the peculiar qualifi- 
 cations which Southey brought to the task — qualifications 
 not to be bought in any market, not to be compensated by 
 any amount of mere intellectual talent, and almost impos- 
 sible as the qualifications of a much younger man. As a 
 pecuniary loss, though considerable, Southey was not un- 
 able to support it ; for he had a pension from Government 
 before this time, and under the following circumstances : 
 — Charles Wynne, the brother of Sir Watkin, the great 
 autocrat of North Wales — that C. VV. who is almost 
 eqifally well known for his knowledge of Parliamentary 
 usage, which pointed him out to the notice of the House 
 as an eligible person to fill the office of speaker, and for 
 his unfortunately shrill voice, which chiefly it was that 
 defeated his claim — (in fact, as is universally known, his 
 brother and he, for different defects of voice and utterance, 
 are called Bubble and Squeak) — this C, VV. had believed 
 himself to have been deeply indebted to Southey's high- 
 toned moral example, and to his wise counsels, during the 
 time when both were students at Oxford, for the fortunate 
 direction given to his own wavering impulses. This sense 
 of obligation he endeavored to express, by settling a pen- 
 sion upon Southey from his own funds. At length, upon 
 the death of Mr. Pht, early in 1806, an opening was made 
 for the Fox and Grenville parties to come into office. 
 Charles Wj'nne, as a person connected by marriage with 
 the house of Grenville, and united with them in political
 
 32 LITERAEY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 opinions, shared in the golden shower ; he also received a 
 place; and, upon the strength of his improving prospects, 
 he married : upon which it occurred to Southey, that it 
 was no longer right to tax the funds of one who was now 
 called upon to support an establishment becoming his 
 rank. Under that impression, he threw up his pension ; 
 and upon their part, to express their sense of what they 
 considered a delicate and honorable sacrifice, the Gren- 
 villes placed Southey upon the national pension list. 
 
 What might be the exact color of Southey's political 
 creed in this year, 1807, it is difficult to say. The great 
 revolution, in his way of thinking upon such subjects, 
 with which he has been so often upbraided as something 
 equal in delinquency to a deliberate tergiversation or 
 moral apostasy, could not have then taken place ; and of 
 this I am sure, from the following little anecdote connected 
 with this visit : — On the day after my own arrival at 
 Greta Hall, came Wordsworth following upon my steps 
 from Penrith. We dined and passed that evening with 
 Mr. Southey. The next morning, after breakfast, pre- 
 viously to leaving Keswick, we were sitting in Southey's 
 library ; and he was discussing with Wordsworth the 
 aspect of public affairs : for my part, I was far too diffi- 
 dent to take any part in such a conversation, for I had no 
 opinions at all upon politics, nor any interest in public 
 affairs, further than that I had a keen sympathy with the 
 national honor, gloried in the name of Englishman, and 
 had been bred up in a frenzied horror of jacobinism. Not 
 having been old enough, at the first outbreak of the 
 French Revolution, to participate (as else, undoubtedly, I 
 should have done) in the golden hopes of its early dawn, 
 my first youthful introduction to foreign politics had been 
 in seasons and circumstances that taught me to approve of 
 all I heard in abhorrence of French excesses, and to wor-
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 33 
 
 ship the name of Pitt ; otherwise my whole heart had been 
 so steadily fixed on a different world from the world of our 
 daily experience that, for some years, I had never looked 
 into a newspaper ; nor, if I cared something for the move- 
 ment made by nations from year to year, did I care one 
 iota for their movement from week to week. Still, care- 
 less as I was on these subjects, it sounded as a novelty to 
 me, and one which I had not dreamed of as a possibility, 
 to hear men of education and liberal pursuits — men, 
 besides, whom I regarded as so elevated in mind, and one 
 of them as a person charmed and consecrated from error 
 — giving utterance to sentiments which seemed absolutely 
 disloyal. Yet now did I hear — and I heard with an emo- 
 tion of sorrow, but a sorrow that instantly gave way to a 
 conviction that it was myself who lay under a delusion, 
 and simply because 
 
 ' from Abelard it came ' — 
 
 opinions avowed most hostile to the reigning family ; not 
 personally to tliem, but generally to a monarcbical form of 
 government. And that I could not be mistaken in my 
 impression, that my memory cannot have played me false, 
 is evident, from one relic of the conversation which rested 
 upon my ear and has survived to this day — thirty and two 
 years from the time. It had been agreed, that no good 
 was to be hoped for, as respected England, until the royal 
 family should be expatriated ; and Southey, jestingly con- 
 sidering to what country they could be exiled, with mutual 
 benefit for that country and themselves, had supposed the 
 case — that, with a large allowance' of money, such as 
 might stimulate beneficially the industry of a rising colony, 
 they should be transported to New Sbuth Wales; which 
 project, amusing his fancy, he had, witH the readiness and 
 facility that characterizes his mind, thrown extempore into 
 
 vox.. II. 8
 
 34 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 verse ; speaking off, as an improvisatore, about eight or 
 ten lines, of which the three last I perfectly remember, 
 and they were these, (by the way I should have mentioned, 
 that they took the form of a petition addressed to the 
 King : -) 
 
 * Therefore, old George, by George we pray 
 
 Of thee forthwith to extend thy sway 
 
 Over the great Botanic Bay.' 
 
 The sole doubt I have about the exact words regard the 
 second line, which might have been (according to a 
 various reading which equally clings to my ear) — 
 
 ' That thou would'st please t' extend thy sway.' 
 
 But about the last I cannot be wrong; for I remember 
 laughing with a sense of something peculiarly droll in the 
 substitution of the stilled phrase — ' the great Botanic 
 Bay,'' for our ordinary week-day name Botany Bai/, so 
 redolent of thieves and pickpockets. 
 
 Southey walked with us that morning for about five 
 miles on our road towards Grasmere, which brought us to 
 the southern side of Shoulthwaite Moss, and into the 
 sweet solitary little vale of Legbesthwaite. And, by the 
 way, he took leave of us at the gate of a house, one 
 amongst the very few (five or six in all) just serving to 
 redeem that valley from absolute solitude, which some 
 years afterwards became, in a slight degree, remarkable 
 to me from two little incidents by which it connected 
 itself with my personal experiences. One was, perhaps, 
 scarcely worth recording. It was simply this — that 
 Wordsworth and myself having, through a long day's 
 rambling, alternately walked and rode with a friend of 
 his who happened to have a travelling carriage with him, 
 and who was on his way to Keswick, agreed to wait 
 hereabouts until Wordsworth's friend, in his abundant
 
 - •WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 35 
 
 kindness, should send back his carriage to take us, on our 
 return, to Grasmere, distant about eight miles. It was a 
 lovely summer evening; but, as it happened that we 
 ate our breakfast early, and had eaten nothing at all 
 throughout a long summer's day, we agreed to 'sorn' 
 upon the goodman of the house, whoever he might happen 
 to be, Catholic or Protestant, Jew, Gentile, or Mahometan, 
 and to take any bone that he would be pleased to toss to 
 such hungiy dogs as ourselves. Accordingly we repaired 
 to his gate ; we knocked, and forthwith it was opened to 
 us by a man-mountain, who listened benignantly to our 
 humble request and ushered us into a comfortable parlor. 
 All sorts of refreshments he continued to shower upon us 
 for a space of two hours: it became evident that our 
 introducer was the master of the house: we adored him in 
 our thoughts as an earthly providence to hungry way- 
 farers ; and we longed to make his acquaintance. But, 
 for some inexplicable reason, that must contmue to puzzle 
 all future commentators on Wordsworth and his history, 
 he never made his appearance. Could it be, we thought, 
 that, without the formality of a sign, he, in so solitary a 
 region, more than twenty-five miles distant from Kendal, 
 (the only town worthy of the name throughout the adjacent 
 country,) exercised the functions of a landlord, and that 
 we ought to pay him for his most liberal hospitality ? 
 Never was such a dilemma from the foundation of 
 Legbesthwaite. To err, in either direction, was damna- 
 ble : to go off without paying, if he tcerc an innkeeper, 
 made us swindlers; to offer payment if he were- not, and 
 supposing that he had been inundating us with his hospi- 
 table bounties, simply in the character of a natural-born 
 gentleman, made us the most unfeeling of mercenary 
 ruffians. In the latter case we might expect a duel ; in 
 the former, of course, the treadmill. We were dcliberat-
 
 36 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ing on this sad alternative, and I, for my part, was voting 
 in favor of the treadmill, when the sound of wheels was 
 heard, and, in one minute, the carriage of his friend drew 
 up to the farmer's gate ; the crisis had now arrived, and 
 we perspired considerably ; when in , came the frank 
 Cumberland lass who had been our attendant. To her 
 we propounded our difficulty — and lucky it was we did 
 so, for she assured us that her master was an awful man, 
 and would have ' brained ' us both if we had insulted him 
 with the offer of money. She, however, honored us by 
 accepting the price of some female ornament. 
 
 I made a memorandum at the time, to ascertain the 
 peculiar taste of this worthy Cumberland farmer, in order 
 that I might, at some future opportunity, express my thanks 
 to him for his courtesy ; but, alas ! for human resolutions, 
 I have not done so to this moment; and is it likely that 
 he, perhaps sixty years old at that time, (1^13,) is alive at 
 present, twenty-five years removed ? Well, he may be ; 
 though I think thai exceedingly doubtful, considering the 
 next anecdote relating to the same house : — Two, or, it 
 may be, three years after this time, I was walking to Kes- 
 wick, from my own cottage, in Grasmere. The distance 
 was thirteen miles; the time just nine o'clock; the night 
 a cloudy moonlight, and intensely cold. 1 took the very 
 greatest delight in these nocturnal walks, through the 
 silent valleys of Cumberland and Westmoreland ; and 
 often at hours far later than the present. What I liked in 
 this solitary rambling was, to trace the course of the even- 
 ing through its houseliold iiieroglyphics, from the windows 
 which I passed or saw ; to see the blazing fires shining 
 through the windows of houses, lurking in nooks far apart 
 from neighbors ; sometimes in solitudes that seemed 
 abandoned to the owl, to catch the sounds of household 
 mirth ; then, some miles further, to perceive the time of
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTIIEY. 37 
 
 going to bed ; then the gradual sinking to silence of the 
 house ; then the drowsy reign of the cricket ; at intervals, 
 to hear church-clocks or a little solitary chapel-bell, under 
 the brows of mighty hills, proclaiming the hours of the 
 night, and flinging out their sullen knells over the graves 
 where ' the rude forefathers of the hamlet slept' — where 
 the strength and the loveliness of Elizabeth's time, or 
 Cromwell's, and through so many fleeting generations 
 that have succeeded, had long ago sunk to rest. Such 
 was the sort of pleasure which I reaped in my nightly 
 walks — of which, however, considering the suspicions of 
 lunacy which it has sometimes awoke, the less 1 say, per- 
 haps, the better. Nine o'clock it was — and deadly cold 
 as ever March night was made by the keenest of black 
 frosts, and by the bitterest of north winds — when I drew 
 towards the gate of our huge and hospitable friend. A 
 little garden there was before the house ; and in the cen- 
 tre of this garden was placed an arm-chair, upon which 
 arm-chair was sitting composedly — but I rubbed my eyes, 
 doubting the very evidence of my own eyesight — a or the 
 huge man in his shirt-sleeves ; yes, positively not sunning 
 but mooning himself — apricating himself in the occasional 
 moonbeams ; and, as if simple star-gazing from a seden- 
 tary station were not sufficient on such a night, absolutely 
 pursuing his astrological studies, I repeat, in his shirt- 
 sleeves ! Could this be our hospitable friend, the man- 
 mountain ? Secondly, was it any man at all ? Might it 
 not be a scarecrow dressed up to frighten the birds ? But 
 from what — to frighten them from what at that season 
 of the year.? Yet, again, it might be an ancient scare- 
 crow — a superannuated scarecrow, far advanced in years. 
 But, still, why should a scarecrow, young or old, sit in an 
 arm-chair .' Suppose I were to ask. Yet, where was the 
 use of asking a scarecrow } And, if not a scarecrow, 
 
 146913
 
 38 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 where was the safety of speaking too inquisitively, on his 
 own premises, to a man-mountain ? The old dilemma of 
 the duel or the treadmill, if I should intrude upon his 
 grounds at night, occurred to me ; and I watched the 
 anomalous object in silence for some minutes. At length 
 the monster (for such at any rate it was, scarecrow or not 
 scarecrow) solemnly raised his hand to his face, perhaps 
 taking a pinch of snuff, and thereby settled one question. 
 But that settled, only irritated my curiosity the more ; 
 upon a second, what hallucination of the brain was it that 
 could induce a living man to adopt so very absurd a line 
 of conduct ? Once 1 thought of addressing him thus : — 
 Might I presume so far upon your known courtesy to way- 
 faring strangers, as to ask — Is it the Devil who prompts 
 you to sit in your shirt-sleeves, as if meditating a camisade, 
 or to woo al fresco pleasures on such a night as this ? 
 But as Dr. Y., on complaining that, whenever he looked 
 out of the window, he was sure to see Mr. X. lounging 
 about the quadrangle, was efTectually parried by Mr. X. 
 retorting — that, whenever he lounged in the quadrangle, 
 he was sure to see the Doctor looking out of the window ; 
 so did I anticipate a puzzling rejoinder from the former, 
 with regard to my own motives for haunting the roads as 
 a nocturnal tramper, without a rational object that I 
 could make intelligible. I thought, also, of the faie which 
 attended the Calendars, and so many other notorious char- 
 acters in the * Arabian Nights,' for unseasonable ques- 
 tions, or curiosity too vivacious. And, upon the whole, I 
 judged it advisable to pursue my journey in silence, con- 
 sidering the time of night, the solitary place, and the 
 fancy of our enormous friend for 'braining' those whom 
 he regarded as ugly customers. And thus it came about 
 that this one house has been loaded in my memoiy with a 
 double mystery, that too probably never can be explained :
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 39 
 
 and another torment had been prepared for the curious 
 of future ages. 
 
 Of Southey, meantime, I had learned, upon this brief 
 and hurried visit, so much in confirmation or in extension 
 of my tolerably just preconceptions, with regard to his 
 character and manners, as left me not a very great deal 
 to add, and nothing at all to alter, through the many years 
 which followed of occasional intercourse with his family, 
 and domestic knowledge of his habits. A man of more 
 serene and even temper, could not be imagined ; nor more 
 uniformly cheerful in his tone of spirits ; nor more unaf- 
 fectedly polite and courteous in his demeanor to strangers; 
 nor more hospitable in his own wrong — I mean by the 
 painful sacrifices, which hospitality entailed upon him, of 
 time, so exceedingly precious that, during his winter and 
 spring months of solitude, or whenever he was left abso- 
 lute master of its distribution, every half hour in the day 
 had its peculiar duty. In the still ' weightier matters of 
 the law,' in cases that involved appeals to conscience and 
 high moral principle, I believe Southey to be as exemplary 
 a man as can ever have lived. Were it to his own instant 
 ruin, 1 am satisfied that he would do justice and fulfil his 
 duty under any possible difficulties, and through the very 
 strongest temptations to do otherwise. For honor the 
 most delicate, for integrity the firmest, and for generosity 
 within the limits of prudence, Southey cannot well have 
 a superior; and, in the lesser moralities — those which 
 govern the daily habits, and transpire through the manners 
 — he is certainly a better man — that is, (with reference 
 to the minor principle concerned,) a more amiable man — 
 than Wordsworth. He is less capable, for instance, of 
 usurping an undue share of the conversation ; he is more 
 uniformly disposed to be charitable in his transient collo- 
 quial judgments upon doubtful actions of his neighbors;
 
 40 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 more gentle and winning in his condescensions to inferior 
 knowledge or powers of mind ; more willing to suppose it 
 possible that he himself may have fallen into an error; 
 more tolerant of avowed indifTerence towards his own 
 writings, (though by the way, I shall have something to 
 offer in justification of Wordsworth, upon this charge ;) 
 and, finally, if the reader will pardon a violent instance 
 of anti-climax, much more ready to volunteer his assist- 
 ance in carrying a lady's reticule or parasol. 
 
 As a more amiable man, (taking that word partly in the 
 French sense, partly also in the loftier English sense,) it 
 might be imagined that Southey would be a more eligible 
 companion than Wordsworth. But this is not so; and 
 chiefly for three reasons which more than counterbalance 
 Southey's greater amiability ; Jirst, because the natural 
 reserve of Southey, which I have mentioned before, makes 
 it peculiaily difficult to place yourself on terms of inti- 
 macy with him ; secondly, because the range of his con- 
 versation is more limited than that of Wordsworth — 
 dealing less with life and the interests of life — more 
 exclusively with books ; thirdly, because the style of his 
 conversation is less flowing and diffusive — less expansive 
 — more apt to clothe itself in a keen, sparkling, aphoris- 
 tic form — consequently much sooner and more frequently 
 coming to an abrupt close. A sententious, epigrammatic 
 form of delivering opinions has a certain effect of clench' 
 ivg a subject, which makes it difficult to pursue it without 
 a corresponding smartness of expression, and something 
 of the same antithetic point and equilibration of clauses. 
 Not that the reader is to suppose in Southey a showy 
 master of rhetoric and colloquial sword-play, seeking to 
 strike and to dazzle by his brilliant hits or adroit evasions. 
 The very opposite is the truth. He seeks, indeed, to be 
 effective, not for the sake of display, but as the readiest
 
 WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 41 
 
 means of retreating from difplay, and the necessity for 
 display : feeling that his station in literature and his 
 laurelled honors make him a mark for the curiosity and 
 interest of the company — that a standing appeal is con- 
 stantly turning to him for his opinion — a latent call 
 always going on for his voice on the question of the mo- 
 ment — he is anxious to comply with this requisition at as 
 slight a cost as may be of thought and time. His heart is 
 continually reverting to his wife, viz., his library ; and 
 that he may waste as little effort as possible upon his con- 
 versational exercises — that the little he wishes to say may 
 appear pregnant with much meaning — he finds it advan- 
 tageous, and, moreover, the style of his mind naturally 
 prompts him, to adopt a trenchant, pungent, aculeated 
 form of terse, glittering, stenographic sentences — sayings 
 which have the air of laying down the law without any 
 locus penilenticR or privilege of appeal, but are not meant 
 to do so : in short, aiming at brevity for the company as 
 well as for himself, by cutting ofT all opening for discussion 
 and desultory talk, through the sudden winding up that 
 belongs to a sententious aphorism. The hearer feels that 
 ' the record is closed ; ' and he has a sense of this result as 
 having been accomplished by something like an oracular 
 laying down of the law ex cathedra : but this is an indirect 
 collateral impression from Southey's manner, and far from 
 the one he meditates or wishes. An oracular manner he 
 does certainly affect in certain dilemmas of a languishing 
 or loitering conversation ; not the peremptoriness, mean- 
 time, not the imperiousness of the oracle is what he seeks 
 for, but its brevity, its dispatch, its conclusiveness. 
 
 Finally, as a fourth reason why Southey is less fitted 
 for a genial companion than Wordsworth, his spirits have 
 been, of late years, in a lower key than those of the 
 latter. The tone of Southey's animal spirits was never 
 
 •
 
 42 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 at any time raised beyond the standard of an ordinary 
 sympatliy; there was in him no tumult, no agitation of 
 passion; his organic and constitutional sensibilities were 
 healthy, sound, perhaps strong — but not profound, not 
 excessive. Cheerful he was, and animated at all times; 
 but he levied no tributes on the spirits or the feelings 
 beyond what all people could furnish. One reason why 
 his bodily temperament never, like that of Wordsworth, 
 threw him into a state of tumultuous excitement, which 
 required intense and elaborate conversation to work off 
 the excessive fervor, was, that, over and above his far 
 less fervid constitution of mind and body, Soulhey rarely 
 took any exercise; he led a life as sedentary, except for 
 the occasional excursions in summer, (extorted from his 
 sense of kindness and hospitality,) as that of a city 
 tailor. And it was surprising to many people, who did 
 not know by experience the prodigious effect upon the 
 mere bodily health of regular and congenial mental 
 labor, that Southey should be able to maintain health so 
 regular, and cheerfulness so uniformly serene. Cheerful, 
 however, he was, in those early years of my acquaint- 
 ance with him ; but it was manifest to a thoughtful 
 observer, that his golden equanimity was bound up in a 
 threefold chain, in a conscience clear of all offence, in 
 the recurring enjoyments from his honorable industry, and 
 in the gratification of his parental affections. If any one 
 chord should give way, there (it seemed) would be an 
 end to Southey's tranquillity. He had a son at that time, 
 Herbert* Southey, a child in petticoats when I first knew 
 
 * Why he was called Herbert, if my young readers inquire, I must 
 reply that I do not precisely know ; because I know of reasons too 
 many by half why he might have been so called. Derwent Coleridge, 
 the second son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and first cousin, of Herbert 
 Soulhey, was so called from the Lake of Keswick, commonly styled
 
 WOKDSWORTII AND SOUTIIEY. 43 
 
 him, very interesting even then, but annually putting 
 forth fresh blossoms of unusual promise, that made even 
 indifTerent people fear for the safety of one so finely 
 organized, so delicate in his sensibilities, and so prema- 
 turely accomplished. As to his father, it became evident, 
 that he lived almost in the light of young Herbert's 
 smiles, and that the very pulses of his heart played in 
 unison to the sound of his son's laughter. There was in 
 his manner towards this child, and towards this only, 
 something that marked an excess of delirious doating, 
 perfectly unlike the ordinary chastened movements of 
 Southey's affections ; and something also, which indicated 
 a vague fear about him ; a premature unhappiness, as if 
 already the inaudible tread of calamity could be per- 
 ceived, as if already he had lost him; which, for the 
 latter years of the boy's life, seemed to poison the 
 blessing of his presence. 
 
 A stronger evidence I cannot give of Southey's trem- 
 bling apprehensiveness about this child, than that the only 
 rude thing I ever knew him to do, the only discourteous 
 thing, was done on his account. A party of us, chiefly 
 composed of Southey's family and his visiters, were in a 
 sailboat upon the lake. Herbert was one of this party ; 
 and at that time not above five or six years old. In 
 landing upon one of the islands, most of the gentlemen 
 were occupied in assisting the ladies over the thwarts of 
 the boat; and one gentleman, merely a stranger, observ- 
 ing this, good-naturedly took up Herbert in his arms, and 
 
 Derwenl Water, which gave the title of Earl to the noble and thenoble- 
 niinde.i, though erring family of the Radcliffes, who gave up, like heroes 
 and martyrs, their lives and the finest estates in England, for one who 
 was incapalile of appreciating the service. One of the islands on this 
 lake is dedicated to St. Herbert, and this might have given a name to 
 Southey's first-born child. But it is more probable, that he derived this 
 name from Dr. Herbert, uncle to the laureate.
 
 44 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 was stepping with him most carefully from thwart to 
 thwart, when Southey, in a perfect frenzy of anxiety for 
 his boy, his 'moon' as he used to call him, ([ suppose 
 from some pun of his own, or some mistake of the child's 
 upon the equivocal word sun.) rushed forward, and tore 
 him out of the arms of the stranger without one word of 
 apology ; nor, in fact, under the engrossing panic of the 
 moment, lest an unsteady movement along with the rock- 
 ing and undulating of the boat should throw his little boy 
 overboard into the somewhat stormy waters of the lake, 
 did Southey become aware of his own exceedingly dis- 
 courteous action — fear for his boy quelled his very 
 power of perception. That the stranger, on reflection, 
 understood, a race of emotions travelled over his counte- 
 nance. I saw the whole, a silent observer from the shore. 
 First a hasty blush of resentment mingled with astonish- 
 ment : then a good-natured smile of indulgence to the 
 ndivele of the patenial feeling as displaying itself in the 
 act, and the accompanying gestures of frenzied impa- 
 tience ; finally, a considerate, grave expression of acqui- 
 escence in the whole act ; but with a pitying look towards 
 father and son, as too probably destined under such 
 agony of affection to trials perhaps insupportable. If I 
 interpreted aright the stranger's feelings, he did not read 
 their destinies amiss. Herbert became, with his growing 
 years, a child of more and more hope ; but, therefore, 
 the object of more and more fearful solicitude. He read, 
 and read ; and he became at last 
 
 ' A yery learned youth ' — 
 
 to borrow a line from his uncle's beautiful poem on the 
 wild boy, who fell into a heresy, whilst living under the 
 patronage of a Spanish grandee, and, finally, escaped 
 from a probable martyrdom, by sailing up a great
 
 "WORDSWORTH AND SOUTHEY. 45 
 
 American river wide as any soa, after which he was 
 never heard of affiii'i. The learned vouth of the river 
 Greta had an earlier and more sorrowful close to his 
 career. Possibly from want of exercise, combined with 
 inordinate exercise of the cerebral organs, a disease 
 gradually developed itself in the heart. It was not a 
 mere disorder in the functions, it was a disease in the 
 structure of the organ, and admitted of no permanent 
 relief, consequently of no hnal hope. He died ; and with 
 him died f6r ever the golden hopes, the radiant felicity, 
 and the internal serenity, of the unhappy father. It was 
 from Southey himself, speaking without external signs of 
 agitation, calmly, dispassionately, almost coldly, but with 
 the coldness of a settled despondency, that I heard, whilst 
 accompanying him through Grasmere on his road home- 
 wards to Keswick, from some visit he had been paying 
 to Wordsworth at Rvdal Mount, his settled feelings and 
 convictions as connected wiih that loss; for him, in this 
 world, he said, happiness there could be none; for that 
 his tenderest affections, the very deepest by many degrees 
 which he had ever known, were now buried in the grave 
 with his youthful and too brilliant Herbert.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SOUTIIEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE. 
 
 A CIRCUMSTANCE which, as much as anything, expound- 
 ed to every eye the characteristic distinctions between 
 Wordsworth and Southey, and would not suffer a stranger 
 to forget it for a moment, was the insignificant place and 
 consideration allowed to the small book-collection of the 
 former, contrasted with the splendid library of the latter. 
 The two or three hundred volumes of Wordsworth occu- 
 pied a little, homely, painted book-case, fixed into one of 
 two shallow recesses, formed on each side of the fireplace 
 by the projection of the chimney in the little sitting-room 
 up stairs, which he had already described as his half 
 kitchen and half parlor. They were ill bound, or not 
 bound at all — ia boards, sometimes in tatters ; many 
 were imperfect as to the number of volumes, mutilated as 
 to the number of pages ; sometimes, where it seemed 
 worth while, the defects being supplied by manuscript ; 
 sometimes not : in short, everything showed that the books 
 were for use, and not for show ; and their limited amount 
 showed that their possessor must have independent sources 
 of enjoyment to fill up the major part of his time. In 
 reality, when the weather was tolerable, I believe that 
 Wordsworth rarely resorted to his books, (unless, perhaps, 
 to some little pocket edition of a poet, which accompanied 
 him in his rambles,) except in the evenings, or after
 
 SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE. 47 
 
 he had tired himself by walking. On the other hand, 
 Southey's collection occupied a separate room, the largest, 
 and, every way, the most agreeable in the house ; and 
 this room was styled, and not ostentatiously, (for it really 
 merited that name,) the library. The house itself, Greta 
 Hall, stood upon a little eminence, (as I have before 
 mentioned,) overhanging the river Greta. There was 
 nothing remarkable in its internal arrangements ; in all 
 respects it was a very plain, unadorned family dwelling; 
 large enough, by a little contrivance, to accommodate two, 
 or, in some sense, three families, viz., Mr. Southey, and 
 his family; Mr. Coleridge and his; together with Mrs. 
 Lovell, who, when her son was with her, might be said to 
 cbmpose a third. Mrs. Coleridge, Mrs. Southey, and Mrs. 
 Lovell, were sisters; all having come originally from 
 Bristol ; and, as the different sets of children in this one 
 house had each three several aunts, all the ladies, by turns 
 assuming that relation twice over, it was one of Southey's 
 many amusing jests, to call the hill on which Greta Hall 
 was placed, the ant-hill. Mrs. Lovell was the widow of 
 Mr. Robert Lovell, who had published a volume of poems, 
 in conjunction with Southey, somewhere about the year 
 1797, under the signatures of Bion and Moschus. This 
 lady, having one only son, did not require any large suite 
 of rooms ; and the less so, as her son quitted her at an 
 early age, to pursue a professional education. The house 
 had, therefore, been divided (not by absolute partition into 
 two distinct* apartments, but by an amicable distribution 
 
 * ' Into two distinct apartments.' — The word aparimenl, nuMjiiiig, ia 
 effect, a comparUrient of a house, already includes, in its proper sense, a 
 suite of rooms ; and it is a mere vulgar error, arising out of il'.e amlii- 
 tious usage of lodging-house keepers, to talk of one family or an eslab- 
 lishmenl occupying apartments, in the plural. The Queen's apartment 
 at St. James's or at Versailles — not the (iueen's apartments — is the 
 correct expression.
 
 48 LITERACY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 of rooms) between the two families of Mr. Coleridge and 
 Mr. Southey ; Mr. Coleridge had a separate study, which 
 was distinguished by nothing except by an organ amongst 
 its furniture, and by a magnificent view from its window, 
 (or windows,) if that could be considered a distinction, in 
 a situation whose local necessities presented you vvith 
 magnificent objects in whatever direction you might hap- 
 pen to turn your eyes. 
 
 In the morning, the two families might live apart ; but 
 they met at dinner, and in a common drawing-room ; and 
 Southey's library, in both senses of the word, was placed 
 at the service of all the ladies alike. However, they did 
 not intrude upon him, except in cases where they wished 
 for a larger reception room, or a more interesting place 
 for suggesting the topics of conversation. Interesting this 
 room was, indeed, and in a degree not often rivalled. The 
 library — the collection of books, I mean, which formed 
 the most conspicuous part of its furniture within — was in 
 all senses a good one. The books were chiefly English, 
 Spanish, and Portuguese ; well selected, being the great 
 cardinal classics of the three literatures ; fine copies, and 
 decorated externally with a reasonable elegance, so as to 
 make them in harmony with the other embellishments of 
 the room. This effect was aided by the horizontal ar- 
 rangement upon brackets, of many rare manuscripts — 
 Spanish or Portuguese. Made thus gay within, this room 
 stood in little need of attractions from without. Yet, even 
 upon the gloomiest day of winter, the landscape from the 
 ditferent windows was too permanently commanding in its 
 grandeur, too essentially independent of the seasons or the 
 pomp of woods, to fail in fascinating the gaze of the cold- 
 est and dullest of spectators. The lake of Derwent VVater 
 in one direction, wilh its lovely islands — a lake about ten 
 miles in circuit, and shaped pretty much like a boy's kite ;
 
 SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE. 49 
 
 the lake of Bassinthwaite in another; the mountains of 
 Newlands arranging themselves like pavilions ; the gorge- 
 ous confusion of Borrowdale just revealing its sublime 
 chaos through the narrow vista of its gorge ; all these 
 objects lay in different angles to the front ; whilst the 
 sullen rear, not fully visible on this side of the house, 
 was closed for many a league by the vast and towering 
 masses of Skiddaw and Biencathara — mountains which 
 are rather to be considered as frontier barriers, and chains 
 of hilly ground, cutting the county of Cumberland into 
 great chambers and different climates, than as insulated 
 eminences, so vast is the area which they occupy; though 
 there are also such separate and insulated heights, and 
 nearly amongst the highest in the country, Southey's 
 lot had therefore fallen, locally considered, into a goodly 
 heritage. This grand panorama of mountain scenery, so 
 varied, so expansive, and yet having the delightful feeling 
 about it of a deep seclusion and dell-like sequestration 
 from the world — a feeling which, in the midst of so 
 expansive an area, spread out below his windows, could 
 not have been sustained by any barriers less elevated than 
 Glaramara, Skiddaw, or (which could be also descried) 
 * the mighty Helvellyn and Catchedicam ; ' this congrega- 
 tion of hill and lake, so wide, and yet so prison-like, in its 
 separation from all beyond it, lay for ever under the eyes 
 of Southey. His position locally, and, in some respects, 
 intellectually, reminded one of Gibbon : but with great 
 advantage in the comparison to Southey. The little town 
 of Keswick and its. adjacent lake bore something of the 
 same relation to mighty London that Geneva and its lake 
 may be thought to bear towards brilliant Paris. Southey, 
 like Gibbon, was a miscellaneous scholar; he, like Gib- 
 bon, of vast historical research; he, like Gibbon, signally 
 industrious, and patient, and elaborate in collecting tho 
 
 VOL. II. 4
 
 50 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 materials for his historical works. Like Gibbon, he had 
 dedicated a life of competent ease, in a pecuniary sense, 
 to literature ; like Gibbon, he had gathered to the shores 
 of a beautiful lake, remote from great capitals, a large, 
 or, at least, sufficient library ; (in each case, I believe, the 
 library ranged, as to numerical amount, between seven 
 and ten thousand ;) and, like Gibbon, he was the most 
 accomplished litterateur amongst the erudite scholars of 
 his time, and the most of an erudite scholar amongst the 
 accomplished litterateurs. After all these points of agree- 
 ment known, it remains as a pure advantage on the side 
 of Southey — a mere lucro ponatur — that he was a poet ; 
 and, by all men's confession, a respectable poet, brilliant 
 in his descriptive powers, and fascinating in his narration, 
 however much he might want of 
 
 • The vision and the faculty divine.' 
 
 It is remarkable amongst the scries of parallelisms that 
 have been or might be pui'sued between two men, both 
 had the honor of retreating from a parliamentary life ; 
 Gibbon, after some silent and inert experience of that 
 warfare ; Southey, with a prudent foresight of the ruin to 
 his health and literary usefulness, won from the experience 
 of his nearest friends. 
 
 I took leave of Southey in 1807, at the descent into the 
 vale of Legbesthwaite, as I have already noticed. One 
 year afterwards, I became a permanent resident in his 
 neighborhood ; and, although, on various accounts, my 
 intercourse with him was at no time very strict, partly 
 from the very uncongenial constitution of my own mind, 
 and the different direction of my studies, partly from my 
 reluctance to levy any tax on time so precious and so fully 
 employed, I was yet on such terms for the next ten or
 
 SOTTTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE. 51 
 
 eleven years, that I might, in a qualified sense, call myself 
 his friend. 
 
 Yes ! there were long years through which Southcy 
 might respect me, I him. But the years came — for I 
 have lived too long, reader, in relation to many things ! 
 and the report of me would have been better, or more 
 uniform at least, had I died some twenty years ago — the 
 years came, in which circumstances made me an Opium- 
 Eater; years through which a shadow as of sad. eclipse 
 sate and rested upon my faculties; years through which I 
 was careless of all but those who lived within 7ny inner 
 circle, within ' my heart of hearts ; ' years — ah ! heaven- 
 ly years ! — through which I lived, beloved, with thee, to 
 thee, for thee, by thee! Ah! happy, happy years! in 
 which I was a mere football of reproach, but in which 
 every wind and sounding hurricane of wrath or contempt 
 flew by like chasing enemies past some defying gates of 
 adamant, and left me too blessed in thy smiles — angel of 
 life! — to heed the curses or the mocking which some- 
 times I heard raving outside of our impregnable Eden, 
 What any man said of me in those days, what he thoucht', 
 did I ask ? did I care ? Then it was, or nearly then, that 
 I ceased to see, ceased to hear of Southey ; as much ab- 
 stracted from all which concerned the world outside, and 
 from the Southeys, or even the Coleridges, in its van, as 
 though I had lived with the darlings of my heart in the 
 centre of Canadian forests, and all men else in the centre 
 of Hindostan, 
 
 But before I part from Greta Hall and its distinguished 
 master, one word let me say, to protect myself from the 
 imputation of sharing in some peculiar opinions of Southcy 
 with respect to political economy, which have been but 
 too familiar to the world ; and some opinions of the world, 
 hardly less familiar, with respect to Southey himself and
 
 52 LITERARY REMIMSCENCES. 
 
 his accomplishments. Probably, with respect to the first, 
 before this paper will be made public, I shall have suffi- 
 ciently vindicated my own opinions in these matters by 
 a distinct treatment of some great questions which lie at 
 the base of all sound political economy ; above all, the 
 radical question of value, upon which no man has ever 
 seen the full truth, except Mr. Ricardo ; and, unfortu- 
 nately, he had but, little of the polemic * skill which is 
 required to meet the errors of his opponents. For it is 
 noticeable that the most conspicuous of those opponents, 
 viz. Mr. Malthus, though too much, I fear, actuated, by a 
 spirit of jealousy, and, therefore, likely enough to have 
 scattered sophistry and disingenuous quibbling over the 
 subject, had no need whatever of any further confusion 
 for darkening and perplexing his themes than what inevi- 
 tably belonged to his own most chaotic understanding. 
 He and Say, the Frenchman, were both plagued by un- 
 derstandings of the same quality — having a clear vision 
 in shallow waters, and thus misleading them into the 
 belief that they saw with equal clearness through the 
 remote and the obscure ; whereas, universally, their acute- 
 ness is like that o-f Ilobbes — the gift of shallowness, and 
 the result of not being subtle or profound enough to ap- 
 prehend the true locus of the difficulty ; and the barriers, 
 
 * ^ Polemic slull.' — The word polemic is falsely interpreted by tlie 
 majority of mere Ena;listi readers. Having seldom seen it used except 
 ill a ease of ilienlogiial controversy, they (ai:(y that it has some original 
 ami etymological appropriation to sucii a use ; whereas it expresses, 
 with regard to all siilijects, without restriction, the luiiciioiis of the 
 debater as opposed to those of the nrigirfal orator ; the fuiiciioiis of him 
 wiio meets error and unravels confusion or misrepresentaiitin, op| osed to 
 those of him who lays down the ahstract truth ; truth ahsohiie and 
 wilh'iut relation to the moJi«s of viewing it. As well might the word 
 li.idicdl Le limited to a political use as Polemic to controversial diviu- 
 iiy.
 
 SOTITHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE. 53 
 
 which to them limit the view, and give to it, together with 
 the contraction, all the distinctness and definite outline of 
 limitation, are, in nine cases out of ten, the product of 
 their own defective and aberrating vision, and not real 
 barriers at all. 
 
 Meantime, until I write fully and deliberately upon this 
 subject, I shall observe, simply, that all ' the Lake Poets,' 
 as they are called, were not only in error, but most pre- 
 sumptuously in error, upon these subjects. They were 
 ignorant of every principle belonging to every question 
 alike in political economy, and they were obstinately bent 
 upon learning nothing ; they were all alike too proud to 
 acknowledge that any man knew better than they, unless 
 it were upon some purely professional subject, or some 
 art remote from all intellectual bearings, such as conferred 
 no honor in its possession. Wordsworth was the least 
 tainted with error upon political economy; and that 
 because he rarely applied his thoughts to any question of 
 that nature, and, in fact, despised every study of a moral 
 or political aspect, unless it drew its materials from such 
 revelations of truth as could be won from the prima phi- 
 losophia of human nature approached with the poet's eye. 
 Coleridge was the one whom Nature and his own multi- 
 farious studies had the best qualified for thinking justly on 
 a theme such as this ; but he also was shut out from the 
 possibility of knowledge by presumption, and the habit of 
 despising all the analytic studies of his own day — a habit 
 for which he certainly had some warrant in the peculiar 
 feebleness of all that has offered itself for philosophy in 
 modern England. In particular, the religious discussions 
 of the age, which touch inevitably at every point upon 
 the profounder philosophy of man and his constitution, 
 had laid bare the weakness of his own age to Coleridge's 
 eye ; and, because all was hollow and trivial in this
 
 54 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 direction, he chose to think that it was so in every other. 
 And hence he has laid himself open to the just scoffs of 
 persons far inferior to himself. In a foot-note in some 
 late number of the Westminster Review, it is most truly- 
 asserted, (not in these words, but to this effect,) that 
 Coleridge's ' Table Talk ' exhibits a superannuation of 
 error fit only for two centuries before. And what gave 
 peculiar point to this display of ignorance was, that Cole- 
 ridge did not, like Wordsworth, dismiss political economy 
 from his notice disdainfully, as a puerile tissue of truisms, 
 or of falsehoods not less obvious, but actually addressed 
 himself to the subject : fancied he had made discoveries 
 in the science ; and even promised us a systematic work 
 on its whole compass. 
 
 To give a sample of this new and reformed political 
 economy, it cannot well be necessary to trouble the reader 
 with more than one chimera culled from those which Mr. 
 Coleridge first brought forward in his early model of 
 ' The Friend.' He there propounds, as an original 
 hypothesis of his own, that taxation never burthens a 
 people, or, as a mere possibility, can burthen a people, 
 simply by its amount. And why ? Surely it draws from 
 the purse of him who pays his quota, a sum which may 
 be very difficult or even ruinous for him to pay, were it 
 no more important in a public point of view than as so 
 much deducted from his own unproductive expenditure, 
 and which may happen to have even a national importance 
 if it should chance to be deducted from the funds destined 
 to productive industry. What is Mr. Coleridge's answer 
 to these little objections ? Why, thus : the latter case he 
 evades entirely, apparently not adverting to it as a case in 
 any respect distinguished from the other ; and this other 
 — how is that answered ? Doubtless, says Mr. Coleridge, 
 it may be inconvenient to John or Samuel that a sum of
 
 SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE. 55 
 
 money, otherwise disposable for their own separate uses, 
 should be abstracted for the purchase of bayonets, or 
 grape-shot; but with this, the public, the commonwealth, 
 have nothing to do, any more than with the losses at a 
 gaming-table, where A's loss is B's gain — the total funds 
 of the nation remaining exactly the same. It is, in fact, 
 nothing but the accidental distribution of the funds which 
 is affected — possibly for the worse, (no other 'worse,' 
 however, is contemplated than shifting it into hands less 
 deserving,) but, also by possibility, for the better; and 
 the better and the worse may be well supposed, in the 
 long run, to balance each other. And that this is Mr. 
 Coleridge's meaning cannot be doubted, upon looking 
 into his illustrative image in support of it : he says that 
 money raised by Government in the shape of taxes is 
 like moisture exhaled from the earth — doubtless, for the 
 moment injurious to the crops, but reacting abundantly 
 for their final benefit when returning in the shape of 
 showers. So natural, so obvious, so inevitable, by the 
 way, is this conceit, (or, to speak less harshly, this 
 hypothesis,) and so equally natural, obvious, and' inevita- 
 ble is the illustration from the abstraction and restoration 
 of moisture, the exhalations and rains which affect this 
 earth of ours, like the systole and diastole of the heart, 
 the flux and reflux of the ocean, that precisely the same 
 doctrine, and precisely the same exemplification of that 
 doctrine, is to be found in a Parliamentary speech,* of 
 some orator in the famous Long Parliament, about the 
 year 1642. And to my mind it was a bitter humiliation 
 to find, about 150 years afterwards, in a shallow French 
 work, the famous ' Compte Rendu ' of the French Chan- 
 
 * Reported at length in a small quarto vo'ume of the well known 
 quarto size so much in use for Tracts, Pamplilets, &.C., throughout the 
 life of Millou— 1603-73.
 
 56 LITERAKY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 cellor of the Exchequer, (Comptroller of the Finances) — 
 Neckar — in that work, most humiliating it was to me, on 
 a certain day, that I found this idle Coleridgian fantasy, 
 not merely repeated, as it had been by scores — not 
 merely anticipated by full twenty and two years, so that 
 these French people had been beforehand with him, and 
 had made Coleridge, to all appearance, their plagiarist, 
 but also (hear it, ye gods !) answered, satisfactorily 
 refuted, by this very feeble old sentimentalist, Neckar. 
 Yes; positively Neckar, the slipshod old system-fancier 
 and political driveller, had been so much above falling 
 into the shallow snare, that he had, on sound principles, 
 exposed its specious delusions. 
 
 Coleridge, the subtlest of men, in his proper walk, had 
 brought forward, as a novel hypothesis of his own, in 
 1810, what Neckar, the rickety old charlatan, had scarce- 
 ly condescended, in a hurried foot-note, to expose as a 
 vulgar error and the shallowest of sophisms, in 1787-88. 
 There was another enormous blunder which Coleridge 
 was constantly authorizing, both in his writings and his 
 conversation. Quoting a passage from Sir James Stuart, 
 in which he speaks of a vine-dresser as adding nothing to 
 the public wealth, unless his labor did something more 
 than replace his own consumption — that is, unless it 
 reproduced it together with a profit ; he asks contemp- 
 tuously, whether the happiness and moral dignity that 
 may have been exhibited in the vine-dresser's family are 
 to pass for nothing ? And then he proceeds to abuse the 
 economists, because they take no account of such impor- 
 tant considerations. Doubtless these are invaluable ele- 
 ments of social grandeur, in a total estimate of those 
 elements. But what has political economy to do with 
 them, a science openly professing to insulate and to treat 
 apart from all other constituents of national well-being,
 
 SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE. 57 
 
 those which concern the production and circulation of 
 Aveahh ? * So far from gaininjr anything by enlarging its 
 field in the way demanded by CoIcr:dge''s critic, political 
 economy would be as idly travelling out of the limits indi- 
 cated and held forth in its very name, as if logic were to 
 teach ethics, or ethics to teach diplomacy. With re- 
 spect to the Malthusian doctrine of population, it is diffi- 
 cult to know who was the true proprietor of the argu- 
 ments urged against it sometimes by Southey, sometimes 
 by Coleridge. Those used by Southey are chiefly to be 
 found up and down the Quarterly Review. But a more 
 elaborate attack was published by Hazlitt ; and this must 
 be supposed to speak the peculiar objections of Coleridge, 
 for he was in the habit of charging Hazlitt with havinff 
 pillaged his conversation, and occasionally garbled it 
 throughout the whole of this book. One single argument 
 there was, undoubtedly just, and it was one which others 
 stumbled upon no less than Coleridge, exposing the falla- 
 cy of the supposed different laws of increase for vegetable 
 and animal life. But though this frail prop withdrawn 
 
 * la fact, the exposure is as perfect in the case of an individual as in 
 that of a nation, and more easil5^ apprehended. Levy from an individual 
 clothier £loOO in taxes, and afterwards reiurn to him the whole of this 
 sum in payment for the clothing of a reg-iment. Then, supposing profits 
 to he at the rate of 15 per cent., he will have replaced £,loO of his pre- 
 vious loss ; even his gains will simply reinstate him in something that 
 he had lost, and the remaining £^50 will continue to he a dead loss ; 
 since the £SoO restored to him, exactly replaces, hy the terms of this 
 case, his dishursemenls in wages and materials ; if it did more, profits 
 would not he at 15 per cent., according to the supposition But Govern- 
 ment may spend more than the £lOOO with this clothier ; they may 
 spend j£lO,OUO. Douhtless. and in that case, on the same supposition as 
 to profits, he will receiv'e jEisoo as a nominal gain ; and £500 will he a 
 real gain, marked with the positive sign,(+.) Hut such a case would 
 only prove, that nine other tax-payers, to an equfil amount, had hecn left 
 ■without any reimhursemenl at all. Strange, that so clear a case for an 
 individual, should hecome obscure when it regards a nation.
 
 58 LITERARY KEMINISCENCES. 
 
 took away from Mr. Maltbus's theory all its scientific 
 rigor, the main practical conclusions were still valid as 
 respected any argument from the lakers ; for the strongest 
 of these arguments that ever came to my knowledge was 
 a mere appeal — not ad verecundiam, in the ordinary 
 sense of the phrase, but ad honestalem, as if it were 
 shocking to the honestum of Roman ethics, (the honnetete 
 of French minor ethics,) that the check derived from self- 
 restraint should not be supposed amply competent to re- 
 dress all the dangers from a redundant population, under 
 any certain knowledge generally diffused that such dan- 
 gers existed. But these are topics which it is sufficient in 
 this place to have noticed, currenie calamo. I was anx- 
 ious however to protest against the probable imputation, 
 that I, because generally so intense an admirer of these 
 men, adopted their blind and hasty reveries in political 
 economy. 
 
 There were (and perhaps more justly T might say there 
 are) two other notions currently received about Southey, 
 one of which is altogether erroneous, and the other true 
 only in a limited sense. The first is, the belief that he 
 belonged to what is known as the lake school in poetry ; 
 with respect to which all that I need say in this place, is 
 involved in his own declaration frankly made to myself in 
 Easedale, during the summer of 1812 ; that he considered 
 Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction, and still more his 
 principles as to the selection of subjects, and as to what 
 constituted a poetic treatment, as founded on error. 
 There is certainly some community of phraseology ' 
 between Southey and the other lakers, naturally arising 
 J out of their joint reverence for Scriptural language : this 
 ' I was a field in which they met in common: else it shows 
 but little discernment and power of valuing the essences 
 of things, to have classed Southey in the same school
 
 SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE. 59 
 
 with Wordsworth and Coleridge. The other popular 
 notion ahout Southey, which I conceive to be expressed 
 with much too little limitation, regards his style. He has 
 been praised, and justly, for his plain, manly, unafTected 
 English, until the parrot echoers of other men's judg- 
 ments, who adopt all they relish with undistinguishing 
 blindness, have begun to hold him up as a great master 
 of his own language, and a classical model of fine 
 composition. Now, if the error were only in the degree, 
 it would not be worth while to notice it ; but the truth is, 
 that Southey's defects in this particular power, are as 
 striking as his characteristic graces. Let a subject arise 
 — and almost in any path, there is a ready possibility 
 that it should — in which a higher tone is required, of 
 splendid declamation, or of impassionate fervor, and 
 Southey's style will immediately betray its want of the 
 loftier qualities as flagrantly as it now asserts its powers 
 in that unpretending form, which is best suited to his level 
 character of writing and his humbler choice of themes. 
 It is to mistake the character of Southey's mind, which 
 is elevated but not sustained by the higher modes of 
 enthusiasm, to think otherwise. Were a magnificent 
 dedication required, moving with a stately and measured 
 solemnity, and putting forward some majestic pretensions, 
 arising out of a long and laborious life ; were a pleading 
 required against some capital abuse of the earth — war, 
 slavery, oppression in its thousand forms ; were a Defen- 
 sio pro Populo Anglicano required ; Southey's is not the 
 mind, and, by a necessary consequence, Southey's is not 
 the style, for carrying such purposes into full and 
 memorable effect. His style is therefore good, because 
 it has been suited to his themes ; and those themes have 
 hitherto been either narrative, which usually imposes a 
 modest diction, and a modest structure of sentences, or
 
 60 LITEKARY EEBIINISCENCES. 
 
 argumentative in that class which is too overburthened 
 with details, with replies, with interruption, and every 
 mode of discontinuity, to allow a thought of eloquence, 
 or of the periodic style which a perfect eloquence instinc- 
 tively seeks. 
 
 I here close my separate notice of the Lake Poets — 
 meaning those three who were originally so denominated 
 — three men upon whom posterity, in every age, will 
 look back with interest as profound as, perhaps, belongs 
 to any other names of our era ; for it happens, not 
 unfrequently, that the personal interest in the author is 
 not in the direct ratio of that which belongs to his works: 
 and the character of an author, better qualified to com- 
 mand a vast popularity for the creations of his pen, is 
 oftentimes more of a universal character, less peculiar, 
 less fitted to stimulate the curiosity, or to sustain the 
 sympathy of the intellectual, than the profounder and 
 more ascetic solemnity of a Wordsworth, or the prodigal 
 and magnificent eccentricities of a Coleridge. With 
 respect to both of these gifted men, some interesting 
 notices still remain in arrear ; but these will more 
 properly come forward in their natural places, as they 
 happen to arise in after years in connection with my 
 own memoirs.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 
 
 I NOW resume my memoirs, from the moment of my 
 leaving VVordsworth's cottage, after one week of delight- 
 ful intercourse with him and his sister, about the twelfth of 
 November, 1807. 
 
 Soon after my return to Oxford, I received a letter from 
 Miss Wordsworth, asking for any subscriptions I might 
 succeed in obtaining, amongst my college friends, in aid 
 of the funds then raising in behalf of an orphan family, 
 who had become such by an affecting tragedy that had 
 occurred within a few weeks from my visit to Grasmere. 
 
 This calamitous incident, interesting for itself as well 
 as for having drawn forth some beautiful stanzas from 
 Wordsworth, had a separate and peculiar importance in 
 reference to my own life — having been the remote occa- 
 sion of another misfortune that brought to myself the first 
 deep draught from the cup of sorrow which it was des- 
 tined that I should drink. Miss Wordsworth drew up a 
 brief memoir of the whole affair. This, I believe, went 
 into the hands of the royal family ; at any rate, the 
 august ladies of that house (all or some of them) were 
 amongst the many subscribers to the orphan children ; 
 and it must be satisfactory to all who shared, and happen 
 to recollect their own share in that seasonable work of 
 charity, that the money then collected under the auspices 
 of the Wordsworths, proved sufficient, with judicious
 
 62 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 administration and superintendence from a committee of 
 the neiffhborino; ladies in Ambleside, to educate and settle 
 respectably, in useful callings, the whole of a very large 
 family, not one of whom, to my knowledge, has fared 
 otherwise than prosperously, or, to speak of the very low- 
 est case, decently in their subsequent lives, as men and 
 women, long since surrounded by children of their own. 
 Miss Wordsworth's simple but fervid memoir not being 
 within my reach at this moment, I must trust to my own 
 recollections and my own less personal impressions to 
 retrace the story ; which, after all, is not much of a story 
 to excite or to impress, unless for those who can find a 
 sufficient interest in the trials and unhappy fate of hard- 
 working peasants, and can reverence the fortitude which, 
 being lodged in so frail a tenement as the person of a little 
 girl, not much, if anything, above nine years old, could 
 face an occasion of sudden mysterious abandonment — of 
 uncertain peril — and could tower up, during one night, 
 into the perfect energies of womanhood — energies unsus- 
 pected even by herself — under the mere pressure of diffi- 
 culty, and the sense of new-born responsibilities awfully 
 bequeathed to her, and in the most lonely, perhaps, of all 
 English habitations. 
 
 The little valley of Easedale, which, and the neighbor- 
 hood of which, were the scenes of these interesting events, 
 is, on its own account, one of the most impressive soli- 
 tudes amongst the mountains of the lake district; and I 
 must pause to describe it. Easedale is impressive, firsts 
 as a solitude ; for the depth of the seclusion is brought 
 out and forced more pointedly upon the feelings by the 
 thin scattering of houses over its sides, and the surface of 
 what may be called its floor. These are not above five or 
 six at the most ; and one, the remotest of the whole, was 
 untenanted for all the thirty years of my acquaintance
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 63 
 
 with the place. Secondly, it is impressive from the exces- 
 sive loveliness which adorns its little area. This is broken 
 up into small fields and miniature meadows, separated not 
 — as too often happens, with sad injury to the beauty of 
 the lake country — by stone walls, but sometimes by little 
 hedge-rows, sometimes by little sparkling, pebbly ' beck,' 
 lustrous to the very bottom, and not too broad for a child's 
 flying leap ; and sometimes by wild self-sown woodlands 
 of birch, alder, holly, mountain ash, and liazcl, that mean- 
 der through the valley, intervening the different estates 
 with natural sylvan marches, and giving cheerfulness in 
 winter, by the bright scarlet of their barrier. It is the 
 character of all the northern English valleys, as I have 
 already remarked — and it is a character first noticed by 
 Wordsworth, that thev assume, in their bottom areas, 
 the level floor-like shape, making everywhere a direct 
 angle with the surrounding hills, and definitely marking 
 out the margin of their outlines ; whereas the Welsh val- 
 leys have too often the glaring imperfection of the basin 
 shape, which allows no sense of any absolute valley sur- 
 face : the hills are already commencing at the very centre 
 of what is called the level area. The little valley of 
 Easedale is, in this respect, as highly finished as in every 
 other ; and in the Westmoreland spring, which may be 
 considered May and the earlier half of June, whilst the 
 grass in the meadows is yet short from the habit of keep- 
 ingthe sheep on it until a much later period than elsewhere, 
 (viz., until the mountains are so far cleared of snow, and 
 the probability of storms, as to make it safe to send them 
 out on their summer migration,) the little fields in Ease- 
 dale have the most lawny appearance, and, from the 
 humidity of the Westmoreland* climate, the most verdant 
 
 * It is pretty generally known, perhaps, that Westmoreland and Devon- 
 shire are the two rainiest couiuiys iu England. At Kirkby, Lonsdale,
 
 / 
 
 f/^^ 
 
 64 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 that it is possible to imagine ; and on a gentle vernal day 
 — when vegetation has been far enough advanced to bring 
 out the leaves, an April sun gleaming coyly through the 
 clouds, and genial April rain gently pencilling the light 
 spray of the wood with tiny pearl drops — I have often 
 thought, whilst looking with silent admiration upon this 
 exquisite composition of landscape, with its miniature 
 fields running up like forest glades into miniature woods; 
 its little columns of smoke, breathing up like incense to 
 the household gods, from the hearths of two or three pic- 
 turesque cottages — abodes of simple primitive manners, 
 and what, from personal knowledge, I will call humble 
 virtue — whilst my eyes rested on this charming combina- 
 tion of lawns and shrubberies, I have thought that, if a 
 scene on this earth could deserve to be sealed up, like the 
 valley of Russelas, against the intrusion of the world — 
 if there were one to which a man would willingly surren- 
 der himself a prisoner for the years of a long life — that 
 it is this Easedale — which would justify the choice, and 
 recompense the sacrifice. I?ut there is a third advantage 
 possessed by tliis Easedale, above other rival valleys, in 
 the sublimity of its mountain barriers. In one of its many 
 rocky recesses is seen a ' force,' (such is the local name 
 for a cataract,) white with foam, descending at all seasons 
 with respectable strength, and, after the melting of snows, 
 with an Alpine violence. Follow the leading of this 
 * force' for three quarters of a mile, and you come to a 
 little mountain lake, locally termed a ' tarn,' * .the very 
 
 lyiiia; j'iU'>:i i'\e ou'er rnirnri:i nftlie F/ike district, o;ic fifih more rain is 
 coiiipiileil Id Tdl than in ih" ii ijiicenl iou;ities oii the same side of Eng- 
 land. Fiiii ii is also nntdiious, iliii the western side of the island uni- 
 versally is more rauiy than ihe east. Collins calls ii I lie Sliowery VVcst. 
 * A tani 1^ a lake, I'enerally (indeed always) a small onv : and s'lways, 
 as 1 think (hut this I have heard disputed,) lying ahove the livul of the
 
 KECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 65 
 
 finest and most gloonny sublime of its class. From this 
 tarn it was, I doubt not, though applying it to another, 
 that Wordsworth drew the circumstances of his general 
 description : — 
 
 ' Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud, 
 And mists that spread the flying shroud ; 
 
 And winds 
 That, if they could, would hurry past : 
 But that enormous barrier binds it fast. 
 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
 The rocks repeat the raven's croak. 
 In symphony austere.' 
 
 And far beyond this ' enormous barrier,' that thus imprisons 
 the very winds, tower upwards the aspiring heads (usually 
 enveloped in cloud and mist) of Glaramara, Bow Fell, 
 and the other fells of Langdale Head and Borrowdale. 
 Finally, superadded to the other circumstances of solitude, 
 arising out of the rarity of human life, and of the signs 
 which mark the goings on of human life — two other acci- 
 dents there are of Easedale, which sequester it from the 
 world, and intensify its depth of solitude beyond what 
 could well be looked for or thought possible in any vale 
 within a district so beaten by modern tourists. One is, 
 that it is a chamber within a chamber, or rather a closet 
 within a chamber — a chapel within a cathedral — a little 
 private oratory within a chapel. For Easedale is, in fact, 
 a dependency of Grasmere — a little recess lying within 
 the same general basin of mountains, but partitioned off 
 by a screen of rock and swelling uplands, so inconsidera- 
 
 inhabited valleys and the large lakes ; and subject to this further con- 
 dition, as first noticed by Wordsworth, that it has no main feeder. 
 Now, this latter accident of the tarn at once explains and authenticates 
 my account of the word, viz. — that it is the Danish word taaren, (a 
 trickling ;) a deposit of waters from the weeping of rain down the 
 smooth faces of the rocks. 
 
 VOL. II. 5
 
 66 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ble in height, that, when surveyed from the commanding 
 summits of Fairfield or Seat Sandal, they seem to subside 
 into the level area, and melt into the general surface. 
 But, viewed from below, these petty heights form a suffi- 
 cient partition ; which is pierced, however, in two points 
 — once by the little murmuring brook threading its silvery 
 line onwards to the lake of Grasmere, and again by a little 
 rough lane, barely capable (and I think not capable in all 
 points) of receiving a post-chaise. This little lane keeps 
 ascending amongst wooded steeps for a quarter of a mile ; 
 and then, by a downward course of a hundred yards or so, 
 brings you to a point at which the little valley suddenly 
 bursts upon you with as full a revelation of its tiny propor- 
 tions, as the traversing of the wooded back-grounds will 
 permit. The lane carries you at last to a little wooden 
 bridge, practicable for pedestrians ; but, for carriages, 
 even the doubtful road, already mentioned, ceases alto- 
 gether : and this fact, coupled with the difficulty of sus- 
 pecting such a lurking paradise from the high road through 
 Grasmere, at every point of which the little hilly partition 
 crowds up into one mass with the capital barriers in the 
 rear, seeming, in fact, not so much to blend with them as 
 to be a part of them, may account for the fortunate neg- 
 lect of Easedale in the tourist's route ; and also because 
 there is no one separate object, such as a lake or a splen- 
 did cataract, to bribe the interest of those who are hunting 
 after sights ; for the 'force' is comparatively small, and 
 the tarn is beyond the limits of the vale, as well as difficult 
 of approach. 
 
 One other circumstance there is about Easedale, which 
 completes its demarcation, and makes it as entirely aland- 
 locked little park, within a ring-fence of mountains, as 
 ever human art, if rendered capable of dealing with 
 mountains and their arrangement, could have contrived.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMEIIE. 67 
 
 The sole approach, as I have mentioned, is from Gras- 
 mere ; and some o?ie outlet there must inevitably be in 
 every vale that can be interesting to a human occupant, 
 since without water it would not be habitable : and runninjx 
 water must force an exit for itself, and, consequently, an 
 inlet for the world ; but, properly speaking, there is no 
 other. For, when you explore the remoter end of the 
 vale, at which you suspect some communication with the 
 w^orld outside, you find before you a most formidable 
 amount of climbing, the extent of which can hardly be 
 measured where there is no solitary object of human work- 
 manship or vestige of animal life, not a sheep-track even, 
 not a shepherd's hovel, but rock and heath, heath and 
 rock, tossed about in monotonous confusion. And, after 
 the ascent is mastered, you descend into a second vale — 
 long, narrow, sterile, known by the name of ' Far Ease- 
 dale : ' from which point, if you could drive a tunnel 
 below the everlasting hills, perhaps six or seven miles 
 might bring you to the nearest habitation of man, in Bor- 
 rowdale : but, crossing the mountains, the road cannot be 
 less than twelve or fourteen, and, in point of fatigue, at the 
 least twenty. This long valley, which is really terrific at 
 noon-day, from its utter loneliness and desolation, com- 
 pletes the defences of little sylvan Easedale. 'There is 
 one door into it from the Grasmere side ; but that door is 
 hidden; and on every other quarter there is no door at all, 
 nor any, the roughest, access, but what would demand a 
 day's walking. 
 
 Such is the solitude — so deep, so sevcntimcs guarded, 
 and so rich in miniature beauty — of Easedale; and in 
 this solitude it was that George and Sarah Green, two 
 poor and hard-working peasants, dwelt, with a numerous 
 family of small children. Poor as they were, they had 
 won the general respect of the neighborhood, from the
 
 68 LITERAKY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 uncomplaining firmness with which they bore the hard- 
 ships of their lot, and from the decent attire in which the 
 good mother of the family contrived to send out her 
 children to the Grasmere school. It is a custom, and &. 
 very ancient one, in Westmoreland — and I have seen the 
 same usage prevailing in southern Scotland — that any 
 sale by auction, whether of cattle, of farming produce, 
 farming stock, wood, or household furniture — and seldom 
 a fortnight passes without something of the sort — forms 
 an excuse for the good women, throughout the whole 
 circumference of perhaps a dozen valleys, to assemble at 
 the place of sale with the nominal purpose of aiding the 
 sale, or of buying something they may happen to want. 
 No doubt the real business of the sale attracts numbers ; 
 although of late years — that is, for the last twenty-five 
 years, through which so many sales of furniture the most 
 expensive, (hastily made by casual settlers, on the wing 
 for some fresher novelty,) — have made this particular 
 article almost a drug in the country ; and the interest in 
 such sales has greatly declined. But, in 1807, this fever 
 of founding villas or cottages ornees, was yet only 
 beginning; and a sale, except it were of the sort exclu- 
 sively interesting to farming men, was a kind of general 
 intimation to the country, from the owner of the property, 
 that he would, on that afternoon, be ' at home ' for all 
 comers, and hoped to see as large an attendance as 
 possible. Accordingly, it was the almost invariable 
 custom — and often, too, when the parties were far too 
 poor for such an effort of hospitality — to make ample 
 provision, not of eatables, but of liquor, for all who came. 
 Even a gentleman, who should happen to present himself 
 on such a festal occasion, by way of seeing the ' humors' 
 of the scene, was certain of meeting the most cordial 
 welcome. The good woman of the house more particu-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 69 
 
 larly testified her sense of the honor done to her house, 
 and was sure to seek out some cherished and solitary- 
 article of china — a wreck from a century hack — in 
 order that he, being a porcelain man amongst so many 
 deaf men and women, might have a porcelain cup to 
 drink from. 
 
 The main secret of attraction at these sales — many a 
 score of which I have attended — was the social rendez- 
 vous thus effected between parties so remote from each 
 other, (either by real distance, or by the virtual distance 
 which results from a separation by difficult tracts of hilly 
 country,) that, in fact, without some such common object, 
 and oftentimes something like a bisection of the interval 
 between them, they would not be likely to hear of each 
 other for months, or actually to meet for years. This 
 principal charm of the ' gathering,' seasoned, doubtless, 
 to many by the certain anticipation that the whole budget 
 of rural scandal would then and there be opened, was not 
 assuredly diminished to the men by the anticipation of 
 excellent ale, (usually brewed six or seven weeks before, 
 in preparation for the event,) and possibly of still more 
 excellent poio-soiody, (a combination of ale, spirits, and 
 spices ;) nor to the women by some prospect, not so 
 inevitably fulfilled, but pretty certain in a liberal house, 
 of communicating their news over excellent tea. Even 
 the auctioneer was always ' part and parcel ' of the 
 mirth ; he was always a rustic old humorist, a ' character,' 
 and a jovial drunkard, privileged in certain good-humored 
 liberties and jokes with all bidders, gentle or simple, and 
 furnished with an ancient inheritance of jests appropriate 
 to the articles offered for sale — jests that had, doubtless, 
 done their office from Elizabeth's golden days; but no 
 more, on that account, failed of their expected effect, 
 with either man or woman of this nineteenth century,
 
 70 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 than the sun fails to gladden the heart because it is that 
 same old obsolete sun that has gladdened it for thousands 
 of years. 
 
 One thing, however, in mere justice to the poor 
 indigenous Dalesmen of Westmoreland and Cumberland, 
 I am bound, in this place, to record, that, often as I have 
 been at these^ sales, and through many a year before even 
 a scattering of gentry began to attend, yet so true to the 
 natural standard of politeness was the decorum uniformly 
 maintained, even the old buffoon (as sometimes he was) 
 of an auctioneer never forgot himself so far as to found 
 upon any article of furniture a jest that could have called 
 up a painful blush in any woman's face. He might, per- 
 haps, go so far as to awaken a little rosy confusion upon 
 some young bride's countenance, when pressing a cradle 
 upon her attention : but never did I hear him utter, nor 
 would he have been tolerated in uttering a scurrilous or 
 disgusting jest, such as might easily have been suggested 
 by something offered at a household sale. Such jests as 
 these I heard, for the first time, at a sale in Grasmere 
 in 1814; and, I am ashamed to say it, from some 
 * gentlemen ' of a great city. And it grieved me to see 
 the effect, as it expressed itself upon the manly faces of 
 the grave Dalesmen — a sense of insult offered to their 
 women, who met in confiding reliance upon the forbear- 
 ance of the men, and upon their regard for the dignity of 
 the female sex, this feeling struggling with the habitual 
 respect they are inclined to show towards what they 
 suppose gentle blood and superior education. Taken 
 generally, however, these were the most picturesque and 
 festal meetings which the manners of the country pro- 
 duced. There you saw all ages and both sexes assem- 
 bled : there you saw old men whose heads would have 
 been studies for Guido : there you saw the most colossal
 
 KECOLLECTIONS OF GKASMERE. 71 
 
 and stately figures amongst the young men that Eng- 
 land has to show ; there the most beautiful young women. 
 There it was that sometimes I saw a lovelier face than 
 ever I shall see again: there it was that local peculiarities 
 of usage or of language were best to be studied ; there — 
 at least in the earlier years of my residence in that 
 district — that the social benevolence, the grave wisdom, 
 the innocent mirth, and the neighborly kindness of the 
 people, most delightfully expanded and expressed them- 
 selves with the least reserve. 
 
 To such a scene it was, to a sale of domestic furniture 
 at the house of some proprietor on the point of giving up 
 housekeeping, perhaps in order to live with a married son 
 or daughter, that George and Sarah Green set forward in 
 the forenoon of a day fated to be their last on earth. 
 The sale was to take place in Langdalehead ; to which, 
 from their own cottage in Easedale, it was possible in 
 daylight, and supposing no mist upon the hills, to find out 
 a short cut of not more than eight miles. By this route 
 they went ; and notwithstanding the snow lay on the 
 ground, they reached their destination in safety. The 
 attendance at the sale must have been diminished by the 
 rigorous state of the weather ; but still the scene was a 
 gay one as usual. Sarah Green, though a good and 
 worthy woman in her rnaturer years, had been imprudent 
 and — as the tender consideration of the country is apt to 
 express it — 'unfortunate' in her youth. She had an 
 elder daughter, who was illegitimate ; and I believe the 
 father of this girl was dead. The girl herself was grown 
 up; and the peculiar solicitude of poor Sarah's maternal 
 heart was at this time called forth on her behalf; she 
 wished to see her placed in a very respectable house, 
 where the mistress was distinguished for her notable 
 qualities and her success in forming good servants. This
 
 72 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 object, SO important to Sarah Green in the narrow range 
 of her cares, as in a more exalted family it might be to 
 obtain a ship for a lieutenant that had passed as master 
 and commander, or to get him 'posted' — occupied her 
 almost throughout the sale. A doubtful answer had been 
 given to her application ; and Sarah was going about the 
 crowd, and weaving her person in and out in order to lay 
 hold of this or that intercessor, who might have, or might 
 seem to have, some weight with the principal person 
 concerned. 
 
 This was the last occupation which is known to have 
 stirred the pulses of her heart. An illegitimate child is 
 everywhere, even in the indulgent society of Westmore- 
 land dalesmen, under some shade of discountenance ; so 
 that Sarah Green might consider her duty to be the 
 stronger toward the child of her ' misfortune.' And she 
 probably had another reason for her anxiety — as some 
 words dropped by her on this evening led people to 
 presume — in her conscientious desire to introduce her 
 daughter into a situation less perilous than that which had 
 compassed her own youthful steps with snares. If so, it 
 is painful to know that the virtuous wish, whose 
 
 ' vital -warmth 
 
 Gave the last human motion to the heart,' 
 
 should not have been fulfilled. She was a woman of 
 ardent and affectionate spirit, of which Miss Wordsworth's 
 memoir, or else her subsequent memorials in conversa- 
 tion, (I forget which,) gave some circumstantial and 
 affecting instances, which I cannot now recall with 
 accuracy. This ardor it was,, and her impassioned 
 manner, that drew attention to what she did ; for, other- 
 wise, she was too poor a person to be important in the 
 estimation of strangers, and, of all possible situations, to
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMEKE. 73 
 
 be important at a sale, where the public attention was 
 naturally fixed upon the chief purchasers, and the atten- 
 tion of the purchasers upon the chief competitors. 
 Hence it happened, that, after she ceased to challenge 
 notice by the emphasis of her solicitations for her 
 daughter, she ceased to be noticed at all ; and nothing 
 was recollected of her subsequent behavior until the time 
 arrived for general separation. This time was considera- 
 bly after sunset ; and the final recollections of the crowd 
 with respect to George and Sarah Green, were, that, upon 
 their intention beina; understood to retrace their morninsr 
 path, and to attempt the perilous task of dropping down 
 into Easedale from the mountains above Lan^dale Head, 
 a sound of remonstrance arose from many quarters. 
 However, at a moment when everybody was in the hurry 
 of departure — and, to persons of their mature age, the 
 opposition could not be very obstinate — party after party 
 rode off; the meeting melted away, or, as the northern 
 phrase is, scaled ; * and, at length, nobody was left of 
 any weight that could pretend to influence the decision of 
 elderly people. They quitted the scene, professing to 
 obey some advice or other upon the choice of roads ; but, 
 at as early a point as they could do so unobserved, began 
 to ascend the hills, everywhere open from the rude 
 carriage way. After this, they were seen no more. 
 They had disappeared into the cloud of death. Voices 
 were heard, some hours afterwards, from the mountains 
 — voices, as some thought, of alarm ; others said, no — 
 
 * Scaled — scale is a verb both active and neuter. I use it here as a 
 neuter verb, in the sense (a Cumberland sense) of separating to all the 
 thirty-two points of the compass. But by Shakspeare it is used in an 
 active or transitive sense. Speaking of some secret news, he says — 
 * We'll scale it a little more,' i. e., spread it in all directions.
 
 74 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 that it was only the voices of jovial people, carried by the 
 wind into uncertain regions. The result was, that no 
 attention was paid to the sounds. 
 
 That night, in little peaceful Easedale, six children sat 
 by a peat fire, expecting the return of their parents, upon 
 whom they depended for their daily bread. Let a day 
 pass, and they were starved. Every sound was heard with 
 anxiety; for all this was reported many a hundred times 
 to Miss Wordsworth, and those who, like myself, were 
 never wearied of hearing the details. Every sound, 
 every echo amongst the hills was listened to for five 
 hours — from seven to twelve. At length, the eldest 
 girl of the family — about nine years old — told her little 
 brothers and sisters to go to bed. They had been taught 
 obedience ; and all of them, at the voice of their eldest 
 sister, went off fearfully to their beds. What could be 
 their fears, it is difficult to say ! they had no knowledge 
 to instruct them in the dangers of the hills ; but the'eldest 
 sister always averred that they had a deep solicitude, as 
 she herself had, about their parents. Doubtless she had 
 communicated her fears to them. Some time, in the 
 course of the evening — but it was late and after mid- 
 night — the moon arose and shed a torrent of light upon 
 the Langdalo fells, which had already, long hours before, 
 witnessed in darkness the death of their parents. It may 
 be well here to cite Mr. Wordsworth's stanzas : — 
 
 ' Who weeps for strangers ? Many wept 
 For George and Sarah Green ; 
 "Wept for that pair's unhappy fate, 
 Whose graves may here be seen. 
 
 By night, upon these stormy fells, 
 
 Did wife and husband roam ; 
 Six little ones at home had left, . 
 
 And could not find that home.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMEKE. 75 
 
 For any dwelling-place of man 
 
 As vainly did tliey seek. 
 He perished ; and a voice was heard — 
 
 The widow's lonely shriek. 
 
 Not many steps, and she was left 
 
 A body without life — 
 A few short steps were the chain that bound 
 
 The husband to the wife. 
 
 Now do these sternly-featured hills 
 
 Look gently on this grave ; 
 And quiet now are the depths of air, 
 
 As a sea without a wave. 
 
 But deeper lies the heart of peace 
 
 In quiet more profound ; 
 The heart of quietness is here 
 
 Within this churchyard bound. 
 
 And from all agony of mind 
 It keeps them safe, and f;ir 
 [' , From fear and grief, and from all need 
 
 Of sun or guiding star. 
 
 darkness of the grave ! how deep, 
 
 After that living night — 
 That last and dreary living one 
 
 Of sorrow and affright ! 
 
 sacred marriage-bed of death. 
 
 That keeps them side by side 
 In bond of peace, in bond of love, 
 
 That may not be untied ! ' 
 
 That iiigbt, and the following morning, came a further 
 and a heavier fall of snow ; in consequence of which the 
 poor children were completely imprisoned, and cut off 
 from all possibility of communicating with their next 
 neighbors. The brook was too much for them to leap ; 
 and the little, crazy, wooden bridge could not be crossed 
 or even approached with safety, from the drifting of the
 
 76 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 snow having made it impossible to ascertain the exact 
 situation of some treacherous hole in its timbers, which, 
 if trod upon, would have let a small child drop through 
 into the rapid waters. Their parents did not return. For 
 some hours of the morning, the children clung to the 
 hope that the extreme severity of the night had tempted 
 them to sleep in Langdale ; but this hope forsook them as 
 the day wore away. Their father, George Green, had 
 served as a soldier, and was an active man, of ready 
 resources, who would not, under any circumstances, have 
 failed^ to force a road back to his family, had he been 
 still living ; and this reflection, or rather semi-conscious 
 feeling, which the awfulness of their situation forced 
 upon the minds of all but the mere infants, taught them 
 to feel the extremity of their danger. Wonderful it is to 
 see the effect of sudden misery, sudden grief, or sudden 
 fear, (where they do not utterly upset the faculties,) in 
 sharpening the intellectual perceptions. Instances must 
 have fallen in the way of most of us. And I have noticed 
 frequently that even sudden and intense bodily pain is 
 part of the machinery employed by nature for quickening 
 the development of the mind. The perceptions of in- 
 fants are not, in fact, excited gradatim and continuously, 
 but per saltum, and by unequal starts. At least, in the 
 case of my own children, one and all, I have remarked, 
 that, after any very severe fit of those peculiar pains to 
 which the delicate digestive organs of most infants are 
 liable, there always become apparent on the following day 
 a very considerable increase of vital energy and of viva- 
 cious attention to the objects around them. The poor 
 desolate children of Blentarn Ghyll,* hourly becoming 
 
 * Wordsworth's conjecture as to the origin of the name is probably 
 the true one. There is, at a little elevation above the place, a small 
 coacave tract of ground, shaped like the bed of a tara. Some causes
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 77 
 
 more ruefully convinced that they were orphans, gave 
 many evidences of this awaking power, as lodged, by a 
 providential arrangement, in situations of trial that most 
 require it. They huddled together, in the evening, round 
 their hearth-fire of peats, and held their little councils 
 upon what was to be done towards any chance — if 
 chance remained — of yet giving aid to their parents ; 
 for a slender hope had sprung up that some hovel or 
 sheep-fold might have furnished them a screen (or, in 
 Westmoreland phrase, a hield) against the weather quar- 
 ter of the storm, in which hovel they might be lying 
 disabled or snowed up ; and, secondly, as regarded them- 
 selves, in what way they were to make known their 
 situation, in case the snow should continue or increase ; 
 for starvation stared them in the face, if they should be 
 confined for many days to their house. 
 
 Meantime, the eldest sister, little Agnes, though sadly 
 alarmed, and feeling the sensation of eariness as twilight 
 came on, and she looked out from the cottage door to the 
 dreadful fells, on which, too probably, her parents were 
 lying corpses, (and possibly not many hundred yards from 
 their own threshold), yet exerted herself to take all the 
 measures which their own prospects made prudent. And 
 she told Miss Wordsworth, that, in the midst of the 
 oppression on her little spirit, from vague ghostly terrors, 
 she did not fail, however, to draw some comfort from the 
 consideration, that the very same causes which produced 
 their danger in one direction, sheltered them from danger 
 of another kind — such dangers as she knew, from books 
 
 having diverted tiie supplies of water, at some remote period, from the 
 little reservoir, the tarn has consequently disappeared ; hut the bed, and 
 other Indications of a tarn, (particularly a little ghyll, or steep rocky 
 cleft for discharging the water,) having remained as memorials that it 
 once existed, the country people have called it the 'Blind Tarn.
 
 78 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 that she had read, would have threatened a little desolate 
 flock of children in other parts of England ; that, if they 
 could not get out into Grasmere, on the other hand, bad 
 men, and wild seafaring foreigners, who sometinnes passed 
 along tiic high road in that vale, could not get to them ; and 
 that, as to their neighbors, so far from having anything to 
 fear in that quarter, their greatest apprehension was lest 
 they might not be able to acquaint them with their situation ; 
 but that, if that could be accomplished, the very sternest 
 amongst them were kind-hearted people, that would con- 
 tend with each other for the privilege of assisting them. 
 Somewhat cheered with these thoughts, and having caused 
 all her broihers and sisters — except the two little things, 
 not yet of a fit age — to kneel down and say the prayers 
 which they had been taught, this admirable little maiden 
 turned herself to every household task that could have 
 proved useful to them in a long captivity. First of all, 
 upon some recollection that the clock was nearly going 
 down, she wound it up. Next, she took all the milk which 
 remained from what her mother had provided for the 
 children's consumption during her absence, and for the 
 breakfast of the following morning — this luckily was still- 
 in sufficient plenty for two days' consumption, (skimmed 
 or ' blue ' milk being only one half-penny a quart, and the 
 quai't a most redundant one, in Grasmere) — this she took 
 and scalded, so as to save it from turning sour. That 
 done, she next examined the meal chest ; made the com- 
 mon oatmeal porridge of the country, (the burgoo of the 
 royal navy ;) but put all of the children, except the two 
 youngest, on short allowance ; and, by way of reconciling 
 them in some measure to this stinted meal, she found out 
 a little hoard of flour, part of which she baked for them 
 upon the hearth into little cakes ; and this unusual delicacy 
 persuaded them to think that they had been celebrating a
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 79 
 
 feast. Next, before night coining on should make it too 
 trying to her own feelings, or before fresh snow coming 
 on might make it impossible, she issued out of doors. 
 There her first task was, with the assistance of two 
 younger brothers, to carry in from the peatstack as many 
 peats as might serve them for a week's consumption. 
 That done, in the second place, she examined the potatoes, 
 buried in ' brackens,' (that is, withered fern :) these were 
 not many ; and she thought it better to leave them where 
 they were, excepting as many as would make a single 
 meal, under a fear that the heat of their cottage would 
 spoil them, if removed. 
 
 Having thus made all the provision in her power for 
 supporting their own lives, she turned her attention to the 
 cow. Her she milked ; but, unfortunately, the milk she 
 gave, either from being badly fed, or from some other 
 cause, was too triflinsr to be of much consideration 
 towards the wants of a large family. Here, however, 
 her chief anxiety was to get down the hay for the cow's 
 food from a loft above the outhouse ; and in this she suc- 
 ceeded but imperfectly, from want of strength and size to 
 cope with the difficulties of the case ; besides that the 
 increasing darkness by this time, together with the gloom 
 of the place, made it a matter of great self-conquest for 
 lier to work at all ; and, as respected one night at any 
 rate, she placed the cow in a situation of luxurious 
 warmth and comfort. Then retreating into the warm 
 house, and ' barring ' the door, she sat down to undress 
 the two youngest of the children ; them she laid carefully 
 and cosily in their little nests up stairs, and sang them to 
 sleep. The rest she kept up to bear her company until 
 the clock should tell them it was midnight ; up to which 
 time she had still a lingering hope that some welcome 
 shout from the hills above, which they were all to strain
 
 80 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 their ears to catch, might yet assure them that they were 
 not wholly orphans, even tliough one parent should have 
 perished. No shout, it may be supposed, was ever heard ; 
 nor could a shout, in any case, have been heard, for the 
 night was one of tumultuous wind. And though, amidst 
 its ravings, sometimes they fancied a sound of voices, 
 still, in the dead lulls that now and then succeeded, they 
 heard nothing to confirm their hopes. As last services to 
 what she might now have called her own little family, 
 Agnes took precautions against the drifting of the snow 
 within the door and the imperfect window, which had 
 caused them some discomfort on the preceding day ; and, 
 finally, she adopted the most systematic and elaborate 
 plans for preventing the possibility of their fire being 
 extinguished, which, in the event of their being thrown 
 upon the ultimate resource of their potatoes, would be 
 absolutely (and in any event nearly) indispensable to 
 their existence. 
 
 The night slipped away, and another morning came, 
 bringing with it no better hopes of any kind. Change 
 there had been none but for the worse. The snow had 
 greatly increased in quantity ; and the drifts seemed far 
 more formidable. A second day passed like the first ; 
 little Agnes still keeping her little flock quiet, and tolera- 
 bly comfortable ; and still calling on all the elders in 
 succession, to say their prayers, morning and night. 
 
 A third day came ; and whether it was on that or on 
 the fourth, I do not now recollect; but on one or other 
 there came a welcome gleam of hope. The arrangement 
 of the snow drifts had shifted during the night : and 
 though the wooden bridge was still impracticable, a low 
 wall had been exposed, over which, by a very considerable 
 circuit, and crossing the low shoulder of a hill, it seemed 
 possible that a road might be found into Grasmere. In
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 81 
 
 some walls it was necessary to force gaps; but this was 
 effected without much difficulty, even by children ; for 
 the Westmoreland walls are always ' open,' that is, unce- 
 mented with mortar; and the push of a stick will readily 
 detach so much from the upper part of an old crazy field 
 wall, as to lower it sufficiently for female or for childish 
 steps to pass. The little boys accompanied their sister 
 until she came to the other side of the hill, which, lying 
 more sheltered from the weather, and to windward, offered 
 a path onwards comparatively easy. Here they parted ; 
 and little Agnes pursued her solitary mission to the near- 
 est house she could find accessible in Grasmere. 
 
 No house could have proved a wrong one in such a 
 case. Miss Wordsworth and I often heard the description 
 renewed, of the horror which, in an instant, displaced the 
 smile of hospitable greeting, when litde weeping Agnes 
 told her sad tale. No tongue can express the fervid sym- 
 pathy which travelled through the vale, like the fire in an 
 American forest, when it was learned that neither George 
 nor Sarah Green had been seen by their children since the 
 day of the Langdale sale. Within half an hour, or little 
 more, from the remotest parts of the valley — some of 
 them distant nearly two miles from the point of rendez- 
 vous — all the men of Grasmere had assembled at the 
 little cluster of cottages called ' Kirktown,' from their 
 adjacency to the venerable parish church of St. Oswald. 
 There were at the time I settled in Grasmere, (viz. in the 
 Spring of 1809, and, therefore, I suppose at this time, fif- 
 teen months previously,) about sixty-three households in 
 the vale ; and the total number of souls was about two 
 hundred and sixty-five ; so that the number of fighting men 
 would be about sixty or sixty-six, according to the com- 
 mon way of computing the proportion ; and the majority 
 were so athletic and powerfully built, that,, at the village 
 
 VOL. II. 6
 
 IB2 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 games of wrestling and leaping, Professor Wilson, and 
 some visiters of his and mine, scarcely one of whom was 
 under five feet eleven in height, with proportionable 
 breadth, seem but middle sized men amongst the towering 
 forms of the Dalesmen. Sixty at least, after a short con- 
 sultation as to the plan of operations, and for arranging 
 the kind of signals by which they were to communicate 
 from great distances, and in the perilous events of mists, 
 or snow storms, set off, with the speed of Alpine hunters, 
 to the hills. The dangers of the undertaking were con- 
 eiderable, under the uneasy and agitated state of the 
 •weather ; and all the women of the vale were in the great- 
 test anxiety, until night brought them back, in a body, un- 
 successful. Three days at the least, and I rather think five, 
 the search was ineffectual ; which arose partly from the 
 great extent of the ground to be examined, and pa,rtly 
 from the natural mistake made of ranging almost exclu- 
 sively on the earlier days on that part of the hills over 
 which the path of Easedale might be presumed to have 
 been selected under any reasonable latitude of circuitous- 
 ness. But the fact is, when the fatal accident (for such it 
 has often proved) of a permanent mist surprises a man on 
 the hills, if he turns and loses his direction, he is a lost 
 man ; and without doing this so as to lose the power of 
 s'orienter in one instant, it is well known how difficult it 
 is to avoid losing it insensibly and by degrees. Baffling 
 snow showers are the worst kind of mists. And the poor 
 Greens had, under that kind of confusion, wandered many 
 a mile out of their proper track. 
 
 The zeal of the people, meantime, was not in the least 
 ;abated, but rather ■quickened, by the wearisome disap- 
 .pointments ; every hour of daylight was turned to ac- 
 count ; no man of the valley ever came home to dinner; 
 ^nd the reply of a young shoemaker, on the fourth night's
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 83 
 
 return, speaks sufficiently for the unabated spirit of the 
 vale. Miss Wordsworth asked what he would do on the 
 next morning. ' Go up again, of course,' was his answer. 
 But what if to-morrow also should turn out like all the 
 rest ? ' Why go up in stronger force on the next day.' 
 Yet this man was sacrificing his own daily earnings with- 
 out a chance of recompense. At length sagacious dogs 
 were taken up ; and, about noonday, a shout from an 
 aerial height, amongst thick volumes of cloudy vapor, 
 propagated through repeating bands of men from a dis- 
 tance of many miles, conveyed as by telegraph the news 
 that the bodies were found. George Green was found 
 lying at the bottom of a precipice, from which he had 
 fallen. Sarah Green was found on the summit of the 
 precipice; and, by laying together all the indications of 
 wlifit had passed, the sad hieroglyphics of their Tast 
 agonies, it was conjectured that the husband had desired 
 his wife to pause for a few minutes, wrapping her, mean- 
 time, in his own great coat, whilst he should go forward 
 and reconnoitre the ground, in order to catch a sight of 
 some object (rocky peak, or tarn, or peat-field) which 
 miiiht ascertain their real situation. Either the snow 
 above, already lying in drifts, or the blinding snow storms 
 driving into his eyes, must have misled him as to the 
 nature of the circumjacent ground ; for the precipice over 
 which he had fallen was but a few yards from the spot in 
 which he had quitted his wife. The depth of the descent, 
 and the fury of the wind, (almost always violent on these 
 cloudy altitudes,) would prevent any distinct communica- 
 tion between the dying husband below and his despairing 
 wife above ; but it was believed by the shepherds, best 
 acquainted with the ground and the range of sound as 
 regarded the capacities of the human ear, under the pro- 
 bable circumstances of the storm, that Sarah might have
 
 84 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 caught, at intervals, the groans of her unhappy partner, 
 supposing that his death were at all a lingering one. 
 Others, on the contrary, supposed her to have gathered 
 this catastrophe rather from the want of any sounds, and 
 from his continued absence, than from any one distinct 
 or positive expression of it; both because the smooth and 
 unruffled surface of the snow where he lay seemed to 
 argue that he had died without a struggle, perhaps without 
 a groan, and because that tremendous sound of ' hurtling' 
 in the upper chambers of the air, which often accompanies 
 a snow storm, when combined with heavy gales of wind, 
 would utterly oppress and stifle (as they conceived) any 
 sounds so feeble as those from a dying man. In any 
 case, and by whatever sad language of sounds or signs, 
 positive or negative, she might have learned or guessed 
 her loss, it was generally agreed that the wild shrieks 
 heard towards midnight in Langdale * Head announced 
 the agonizing moment which brought to her now widowed 
 heart the conviction of utter desolation and of final aban- 
 donment to her own fast-fleeting energies. It seemed 
 probable that the sudden disappearance of her husband 
 from her pursuing eyes would teach her to understand his 
 fate ; and that the consequent indefinite apprehension of 
 
 * I once heard, also, in talking with a Langdale family upon this 
 tragic tale, that the sounds had penetrated into the valley of Little 
 Langdale ; which is possible enough. For although this interesting 
 recess of the entire Langdale hasin (which bears somewhat of ihe same 
 relation to Great Langdale that Easedale bears to Grasmere) does, iu 
 fact, lie beyond Langdale Head by the entire breadth of that dale, yet 
 from the singular accident of having its area raised far above the level 
 of the adjacent vales, one most solitary section of Little Langdale (iu 
 which lies a liny lake, and on the banks of that lake dwells one solitary 
 family) being exactly at right angles both to Langdale Head and to the 
 other conn.plementary section of the Lesser Langdale, is brought into a 
 pobiiion and an elevation virtually much nearer to objects (especially to 
 audible objects) on the Langdale Fells.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMEKE. 85 
 
 instant death lying all around the point on which she sat, 
 had kept her stationary to the very attitude in which her 
 husband left her, until her failing powers and the increas- 
 ing bitterness of the cold, to one no longer in motion, 
 would soon make those changes of place impossible, 
 which, at any rate, had appeared too dangerous. The 
 footsteps in some places, wherever drifting had not oblite- 
 rated them, yet traceable as to the outline, though partially 
 filled up with later falls of snow, satisfactorily showed that 
 however much they might have rambled, after crossing 
 and doubling upon their own paths, and many a mile 
 astray from their right track, still they must have kept 
 together to the very plateau or shelf of rock at which their 
 wanderings had terminated ; for there were evidently no 
 steps from this plateau in the retrograde order. 
 
 By the time they had reached this final stage of their 
 erroneous course, all possibility of escape must have been 
 lono- over for both alike : because their exhaustion must 
 have been excessive before they could have reached a 
 point so remote and high ; and, unfortunately, the direct 
 result of all this exhaustion had been to throw them farther 
 oflT their home, or from 'any dwelling-place of man,' than 
 they were at starting. Here, therefore, at this rocky pin- 
 nacle, hope was extinct for either party. But it was the 
 impression of the vale, that, perhaps within half an hour 
 .before reaching this fatal point, George Green might, had 
 his conscience or his heart allowed him in so base a deser- 
 tion, have saved himself singly, without any very great 
 difficulty. It is to be hoped, however — and, for my part, 
 I think too well of human nature to hesitate in believing 
 — that not many, even amongst the meaner-minded and 
 the least generous of men, could have reconciled them- 
 selves to the abandonment of a poor fainting female com- 
 panion in such circumstances. Still, though not more
 
 86 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 than a most imperative duty, it was one (I repeat) which 
 most of his associates believed to have cost him (perhaps 
 consciously) his life. For his wife not only must have 
 disabled him greatly by clinging to his arm for support; 
 but it was known, from her peculiar character and man- 
 ner, that she would be likely to rob him of his coolness 
 and presence of mind by too painfully fixing his thoughts, 
 where her own would be busiest, upon their helpless little 
 family. ' Stung with the thoughts of home' — to borrow 
 the fine expression of Thomson in describing a similar 
 case — alternately thinking of the blessedness of that 
 warm fireside at Blentarn Ghyll, which was not again 
 to spread its genial glow through her freezing limbs, and 
 of those darling little faces which, in this world, she was 
 to see no more ; unintentionally, and without being aware 
 even of that result, she would rob the brave man (for 
 such he was) of his fortitude, and the strong man of his 
 animal resources. And yet — (such, in the very opposite 
 direction, was equally the impression universally through 
 Grasmere) — had Sarah Green foreseen, could her affec- 
 tionate heart have guessed even the tenth part of that love 
 and neighborly respect for herself, which soon afterwards 
 expressed themselves in showers of bounty to her children; 
 could she have looked behind the curtain of destiny suffi- 
 ciently to learn that the very desolation of these poor 
 children which wrung her maternal heart, and doubtless 
 constituted to her the sting of death, would prove the 
 signal and the pledge of such anxious guardianship as not 
 many rich men's children receive, and that this overflow- 
 ing ofTering to her own memory would not be a hasly or 
 decaying tribute of the first sorrowing sensibilities, but 
 would pursue her children steadily until their hopeful 
 settlement in life — or anything approaching this, to have 
 known or have guessed, would have caused her (as all
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 81| 
 
 said who knew her) to welcome the bitter end by which 
 such privileges were to be purchased. 
 
 The funeral of the ill-fated Greens was, it may be sup- 
 posed, attended by all the vale : it took place about eight 
 days after they were found ; and the day happened to be in 
 the most perfect contrast to the sort of weather which pre- 
 vailed at the time of their misfortune ; some snow still 
 remained here and there upon the ground : but the azure 
 of the sky was unstained by a cloud ; and a golden sun- 
 light seemed to sleep, so balmy and tranquil was the 
 season, upon the very hills where they had wandered — 
 then a howling wilderness, but now a green pastoral lawn, 
 in its lower ranges, and a glittering expanse, smooth, ap- 
 parently, and not difficult to the footing, of virgin snow, in 
 its higher. George Green had, I believe, an elder family by 
 a former wife ; and it was for some of these children, who 
 lived at a distance, and who wished to give their attend- 
 ance at the grave, that the funeral was delayed. After 
 this solemn ceremony was over — at which, by the way, I 
 then heard Miss Wordsworth say that the grief of Sarah's 
 illegitimate daughter was the most overwhelming she had 
 ever witnessed — a regular distribution of the children was 
 made amongst the wealthier families of the vale. There 
 had already, and before the funeral, been a perfect strug- 
 gle to obtain one of the children, amongst all who had any 
 facilities for discharging the duties of such a trust ; and 
 even the poorest had put in their claim to bear some part 
 in the expenses of the case. But it was judiciously de- 
 cided, that none of the children should be entrusted to any 
 persons who seemed likel}'-, either from old age, or from 
 slender means, or from nearer and more personal respon- 
 sibilities, to be under the necessity of devolving the trust, 
 sooner or later, upon strangers, who might have none of 
 that interest in the children which attached, in their minds,
 
 88 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 the Grasmere people to the circumstances that made them 
 orphans. Two twins, who had naturally played together 
 and slept together from their birth, passed into the same 
 family : the others were dispersed ; but into such kind- 
 hearted and intelligent families, with continued opportuni- 
 ties of meeting each other on errands, or at church, or at 
 sales, that it was hard to say which had the happier fate. 
 And til us in so brief a period as one fortnight, a house- 
 hold that, by health and strength, by the humility of pov- 
 erty, and by innocence of life, seemed sheltered from all 
 attacks but those of time, came to be utterly broken up. 
 George and Sarah Green slept in Grasmere churchyard, 
 never more to know the want of ' sun or guiding star.' 
 Their children we're scattered over wealthier houses than 
 those of their poor parents, through the vales of Grasmere 
 or Rydal ; and Blentarn Ghyll, after being shut up for a 
 season, and ceasing for months to send up its little slender 
 column of smoke at morning and evening, finally passed 
 into the hands of a stranger. 
 
 The VVordsworths, meantime, were so much interested 
 in the future fortunes and the suitable education of the 
 children — feeling, no doubt, that, when both parents, in 
 any little sequestered community, such as that of Gras- 
 mere, are suddenly cut off by a tragical death, the chil- 
 dren, in such a case, become, in all reason and natural 
 humanity, a bequest to the other members of that com- 
 munity — that tliey energetically applied themselves to 
 the task of raising funds by subscription ; most of which, 
 it is true, might not be wanted until future years should 
 carry one after another of the children successively into 
 different trades or occupation ; but they well understood, 
 that more, by tenfold, would be raised under an imme- 
 diate appeal to the sympathies of men, whilst yet burning 
 fervently towards the sufferers in this calamity, than if
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASBIERE. 89 
 
 the application were delayed until the money should be 
 needed. I have mentioned that the Royal Family were 
 made acquainted with the details of the case ; that they 
 were powerfully affected by the story, especially by the 
 account of little Agnes, and her premature assumption of 
 the maternal character ; and that they contributed most 
 munificently. For my part, I could have obtained a good 
 deal from the careless liberality of Oxonian friends to- 
 wards such a fund. But finding, or rather knowing pre- 
 viously how little, in such an application, it would aid me 
 to plead the name of Wordsworth as the mover of the 
 subscription, (a name that 7ioiv would stand good for some 
 thousands of pounds in that same Oxford — so passes the 
 injustice as well as the glory of this world !) — knowing 
 this, 1 did not choose to trouble anybody ; and the more 
 so as Miss Wordswortb, upon my proposal to write to 
 various ladies, upon whom I knew that I could rely for 
 their several contributions, wrote back to me, desiring that 
 I would not ; and upon this satisfactory reason — that the 
 fund had already swelled under the Royal patronage, and 
 the interest excited by so much of the circumstances as 
 could be reported in hurried letters, to an amount beyond 
 what was likely to be wanted for persons whom there was 
 no good reason for pushing out of the sphere to which 
 their birth had called them. The parish even was liable 
 to give aid ; and, in the midst of Royal bounty, this was 
 not declined. Finally, to complete their own large share 
 in the cliarhy, the Wordsworths took into their own family 
 one of the children, a girl, Sarah by name ; the least 
 amiable, I believe, of the whole ; so, at least, I imagined ; 
 for this girl it was, and her criminal negligence, that in 
 years to come inflicted the first heavy wound that I sus- 
 tained in my affections, and first caused me to drink 
 deeply from the cup of grief.
 
 90 LITERARY REBIINISCENCES. 
 
 In taking leave of this subject, I may mention, by the 
 way, that accidents of this nature are not by any means 
 so uncommon, in the mountainous districts of Cumberland 
 and Westmoreland, as the reader might infer from the in- 
 tensity of the excitement which waited on the catastrophe 
 of the Greens. In that instance, it was not the simple 
 death by cold upon the hills, but the surrounding circum- 
 stances, which invested the case with its agitating power : 
 the fellowship in death of a wife and husband ; the general 
 impression that the husband had perished in his generous 
 devotion to his wife, (a duty certainly, and no more than 
 a duty, but still, under the instincts of self-preservation, a 
 generous duty ;) sympathy with their long agony, as ex- 
 pressed by their long ramblings, and the earnestness of 
 their efforts to recover their home ; awe for the long con- 
 cealment which rested upon their fate ; and pity for the 
 helpless condition of the children, so young, and so instan- 
 taneously made desolate, and so nearly perishing through 
 the loneliness of their situation, co-operating with stress of 
 weather, had they not been saved by the prudence and 
 timely exertions of a little girl, not much above eight years 
 old; — these were the circumstances and accessary ad- 
 juncts of the story which pointed and sharpened the public 
 feelings on that occasion. Else the mere general case of 
 perishing upon the mountains is not, unfortunately, so 
 rare, in any season of the year, as, for itself alone, to com- 
 mand a powerful tribute of sorrow from the public mind. 
 Natives as well as strangers, shepherds as well as tour- 
 ists, have fallen victims, even in summer, to the mislead- 
 ing and confounding effects of deep mists. Sometimes 
 they have continued for days to wander unconsciously in 
 a small circle of two or three miles, never coming within 
 hall of a human dwellinsr, until exhaustion has forced them 
 into a sleep which has proved their last. Sometimes a
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 91 
 
 sprain or injury, that disabled a foot or a leg, has destined 
 them to die by the shocking death of hunger.* Sometimes 
 
 * The case of Mr. Gougli, who perished in ihe bosom of Helvellyn, 
 and was supposed hy some to have been disabled by a sprain of the 
 ankle, whilst others believed him to liave received that injury and his 
 death simultaneously, in a fall from the lower shelf of a precipice, 
 became well known to the public, in all its details, from the accident of 
 having been recorded in verse by two writers nearly at the same time — 
 by Sir Walter Scolt, and by Wordsworth. But here, again, as in the 
 case of the Greens, it was not the naked fact of his death amongst the 
 solitudes of the mountains that would have won the public attention, or 
 have obtained the honor of a metrical commemoration — indeed, to say 
 the truth, the general sympathy with this tragic event was not derived 
 chiefly from the unhappy tourist's melancholy end. for that was too 
 shocking to be even hinted at by either of the two writers, (in fact, there 
 was too much reason to fear that it had been the lingering death of 
 famine) — not the personal sufferings of the principal figure in the little 
 drama — but the sublime and mysterious fidelity of the secondary 
 figure, his dog ; this it was which won the imperishable remembrance 
 of the vales, and which accounted for the profound interest that imme- 
 diately gathered round the incidents — an interest that still continues to 
 hallow the memory of the dog. Not the dog of Athens, nor the dog of 
 Pompeii, so well deserve the immortality of history or verse. Mr. 
 Gough was a young man, belonging to the Society of ' Friends,' who 
 took an interest in the mountain scenery of the lake district, both as a 
 lover of the picturesque, and as a man of science. It was in this latter 
 character, 1 believe, that he had ascended Helvellyn at the time when 
 he met his melancholy end. From his local familiarity with the 
 ground — for he had been an annual visitant to the lakes— he slighted 
 the usual precaution of taking a guide ; and, proliably, under any clear 
 state of the atmosphere, he might have found the attendance of such a 
 person a superfluous restraint upon the freedom of his motions, and of 
 his solitary thoughts. Mist, unfortunately — impenetrable volumes of 
 mist — came floating over (as so often they do) from the gloomy falls 
 that compose a common centre for Easedale, Langdale, Eskdale, Bor- 
 rowdale, Wasldale, Gatesgarthdale, (pronounced Keskadale,) and En- 
 nesdale. Ten or fi.fteen minutes afford ample time for this aerial 
 navigation: within that short interval, sunlight, moonlight, starlight, 
 alike disappear ; all paths are lost ; vast precipices are concealed, or 
 filled up by treacherous draperies of vapor ; the points of the compass 
 are irrecoverably confounded ; and one vast cloud, too ofien the cloud of 
 death even to the experienced shepherd, sits like a vast pavilion upon
 
 92 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 a fall from the summit of awful precipices has dismissed 
 them from the anguish of perplexity in the extreme, from 
 the conflicts of hope and fear, and in the same moment 
 perhaps from life. Sometimes, also, the mountainous 
 
 the summits and the gloomy coves of Helvellyn. Mr. Gough ought to 
 have allowed for this not unfrequent accident, and fpr its bewildering 
 effects, under which all local knowledge (even that of shepherds) be- 
 comes in an instant unavailing. What was the course and succession 
 of his dismal adventures, after he became hidden from the world by the 
 vapory screen, could not be ever deciphered even by the most sagacious 
 of mountaineers, although, in most cases, they manifest an Indian truth 
 of eye, together with an Indian felicity of weaving all the signs that the 
 eye can gather into a significant tale, by connecting links of judgment 
 and natural inference, especially where the whole case ranges within 
 certain known limits of time and of space ; but in this case two accidents 
 forbade the application of their customary skill to the circumstances. 
 One was, the want of snow at the time, to receive the impression of his 
 feet ; the other, the unusual length of time through which his remains 
 lay undiscovered. He had made the ascent at the latter end of October 
 — a season when the final garment of snow, which clothes Helvellyn 
 from the setting in of winter to the sunny days of June, has frequently 
 not made its appearance. He was not discovered until the following 
 spring, when a shepherd, traversing the coves of Helvellyn or of Fair- 
 field in quest of a stray sheep, was struck by the unusual sound (and its 
 echo from the neighboring rocks) of a short, quick bark, or cry of dis- 
 tress, as if from a dog or young fox. Mr. Gough had not been missed: 
 for those who saw or knew of his ascent from the Wyburn side of the 
 mountain, took it for granted that he had fulfilled his intention of 
 descending in the opposite direction into the valley of Paiterdale, or 
 into the Duke of Norfolk's deer-park on Ulleswater, or possibly into 
 Matterdale; and that he had finally quilted the country ])y way of Pen- 
 rith. Having no reason, therefore, to expect a domestic animal in a 
 region so far from human habitations, the shepherd was the more sur- 
 prised at the sound, and its continued iteration. He followed its guid- 
 ing, and came to a deep hollow, near the awful curtain of rock called 
 SLrlding-E Igc. There, at the foot of a tremendous precipice, lay the 
 body of the unfortunate tourist ; and, watching by his side, a meagre 
 shadow, literally reduced to a skin and to bones that could be counted, 
 (for it is a matter of absolute demonstration that he never could have 
 obtained either food or shelter through his long winter's imprisonment,) 
 sate this most faithful of servants — mounting guard upon his master's
 
 RECOLtECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 93 
 
 solitudes have been made the scenes of remarkable sui- 
 cides : in particular, there was a case, a little before I 
 came into the country, of a studious and meditative young 
 boy, who found no pleasure but in books, and the search 
 after knowledge. He languislied, with a sort of despairing 
 nympholepsy, after 'intellectual pleasures — for which he 
 felt too well assured that his term of allotted time, the 
 short period of years through which his relatives had been 
 willing to support him at St. Bees, was rapidly drawing to 
 an end. In fact, it was just at hand ; and he was sternly 
 required to take a long farewell of the poets and geome- 
 tricians for whose sublime contemplations he hungered and 
 thirsted. One week was to have transferred him to some 
 huxtering concern, which not in any spirit of pride he 
 ever affected to despise, but which in utter alienation of 
 heart he loathed — as one whom nature, and his own 
 diligent cultivation of the opportunities recently open to 
 him for a brief season, had dedicated to another yoke. He 
 mused — revolved his situation in his own mind — com- 
 puted his power to liberate himself from the bondage of 
 dependency — calculated the chances of his ever obtaining 
 this liberation, from change in the position of his family, 
 or revolution in his fortunes — and, finally, attempted con- 
 jecturally to determine the amount of effect which his new 
 and illiberal employments might have upon his own mind 
 in weaning him from his present elevated tasks, and unfit- 
 ting him for their enjoyment in distant years, when cir- 
 
 honored body, and protecting it (as he had done effectually) from all 
 violation liy ihe birds of prey which haunt the central solitudes of Hel- 
 vellyn : — 
 
 ' How nourish'd through that length of time 
 He knows — who gave that love sublime, 
 And sense of loyal duty — great 
 Beyond all humaa estimate.'
 
 94 LITERARY REMINISCENCES, 
 
 cumstances might again place it in his power to indulge 
 them. 
 
 These meditations were, in part, communicated to a 
 friend ; and in part, also, the result to which they brought 
 him. That this result was gloomy, his friend knew ; but 
 not, as in the end it appeared, that it was despairing. 
 Such, however, it was : and, accordingly, having satisfied 
 himself that the chances of a happier destiny were for him 
 slight or none — and having, by a last fruitless effort, 
 ascertained that there was no hope whatever of mollifying 
 his relatives, or of obtaining a year's delay of his sentence 
 
 — he walked quietly up to the cloudy wilderness within 
 Blencathara ; read his jEschylus, (perhaps in those appro- 
 priate scenes of the Prometheus, that pass amidst the wild 
 valleys of the Caucasus, and below the awful summits, 
 untrod by man, of the ancient Elborus ;) read him for the 
 last time ; for the last time fathomed the abyss-like sub- 
 tilties of his favorite geometrician, the mighty Apollonius ; 
 for the last time retraced some parts of the narrative, so 
 simple in its natural grandeur, composed by that imperial 
 captain, the most majestic man of ancient history — 
 
 ' The foremost man of all this world,' 
 
 in the confession of his enemies — the first of the Cocsars. 
 These three authors — ^Eschylus, Apollonius, and Ctesar 
 
 — he studied until the daylight waned, and the stars began 
 to appear. Then he made a little pile of the three vol- 
 umes that serve3 him for a pillow ; took a dose, such as 
 he had heard would be sufficient, of laudanum ; laid his 
 head upon the records of the three mighty spirits of elder 
 times; and, with his face upturned to the heavens and the 
 stars, slipped quietly away into a sleep upon which no 
 morning ever dawned. The laudanum — whether it were 
 from the effect of the open air, or from soi^e peculiarity of
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 95 
 
 temperament — hud not produced ssickness in the first 
 stage of its action, nor convulsions in the last. But from 
 the serenity of his countenance, and from the tranquil 
 maintenance of his original supine position — for his head 
 was still pillowed upon the three intellectual Titans, 
 Greek, and Roman, and his eyes were still directed 
 towards the stars — it would appear that he had died 
 placidly, and without a struggle. In this way, the im- 
 prudent boy, who, like Chatterton, would not wait for the 
 change that a day might bring, obtained the liberty he 
 sought ; and whatsoever, in his last scene of life, was not 
 explained by the objects and the arrangement of the 
 objects about him, found a sufficient solution in previous 
 conversations with various acquaintances, and in his con- 
 fidential explanations of his purposes, which he had com- 
 municated, so far as he felt it safe, to his only friend. 
 
 Reverting, however, from this little episode to the more 
 ordinary case of shepherds, whose duties, in searching 
 after missing sheep, or after sheep surprised by sudden 
 snow-drifts, are too likely, in all seasons of severity, to 
 bring them within reach of dangers which, in relation to 
 their natural causes, must probably for ever remain the 
 same ; and it seems the more surprising, and the more to 
 be deplored, that no effort has been made, or at least none 
 commensurate to the evil — none upon a scale that can 
 be called national — to apply the resources of art and 
 human contrivance, in any one of many possible modes, to 
 the relief of a case which, in some years, has gone near 
 to the depopulation of a whole pastoral hamlet, as respects 
 the most vigorous .and hopeful part of its male population; 
 and which annually causes, by its mere contemplation, the 
 heartache to many a young wife, and many an anxious 
 mother. In reality, amongst all pastoral districts, whei'e 
 the field of their labor lies in mountainous tracts, an
 
 96 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 allowance is as regularly made for the loss of human life, 
 in severe autumns or springs — by accidents, owing to 
 mists or storms suddenly enveloping the hills, and surpris- 
 ing the shepherds — as for the loss of sheep: some pro- 
 portion out of each class is considered as a kind of tithe- 
 offering to the stern goddess of calamity, and in the light 
 of a ransom for those who escape. Grahame, the excel- 
 lent author of the ' Sabbath,' says that (confining himself 
 to Scotland) he has known winters in which a siugie parish 
 lost as many as ten shepherds. And this mention of 
 Grahame reminds me of a most useful and feasible plan 
 proposed by him for obviating the main pressure of such 
 situations, amidst snow and solitude, and night. I call it 
 feasible with good reason; for Grahame, who doubtless 
 had made the calculations, declares that, for so trifling a 
 sum as a few hundred pounds, every square mile in the 
 southern counties of Scotland, (that is, I presume, through- 
 out the Lowlands,) might be fitted up with his apparatus ; 
 and, when that sum is compared with the lavish expendi- 
 ture upon lifeboats, it will appear trivial indeed. He pre- 
 faces his plan by one general remark, to which I believe 
 that every mountaineer will assent, viz. that the vast 
 majority of deaths in such cases is owing to the waste of 
 animal power in trying to recover the right direction ; and, 
 probably, it would be recovered in a far greater number of 
 instances, were the advance persisted in according to any 
 unity of plan : but partly the distraction of mind, and ir- 
 resolution, under such circumstances, cause the wanderer 
 frequently to change his direction voluntarily, according 
 to any new fancy that starts up to beguile him ; and partly, 
 he changes it often insensibly and unconsciously, from the 
 same cause which originally led him astray. Obviously, 
 therefore, the primary object should be, to compensate the 
 loss of distinct vision — which, for the present, is irrcpara-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 97 
 
 ble in that form — by substituting an appeal to another 
 sense. That error which h-is been caused by the obstruc- 
 tion of the eye, ttiay be corrected by the sounder informa- 
 tion of the ear. Let crosses, such as are raised for other 
 purposes in Catholic lands, be planted at intervals, suppose 
 of one mile, in every direction. ' Snow storms,' says Gra- 
 hame, 'are almost always accompanied with wind. Sup- 
 pose, then, a pole, fifteen feet high, well fixed in the 
 ground, with two cross spars placed near the bottom, to 
 denote the airts, (or points of the compass;) a bell hung 
 at the top of this pole, with a piece of flat wood (attached 
 to it) -projecting upwards, would ring with the slightest 
 breeze. As they would be purposely made to have dif- 
 ferent tones, the shepherd would soon be able to distin- 
 guish one from another. He could never be more than a 
 mile frjin one or other of them. On coming to the spot, 
 he would at once know the points of the compass, and of 
 course, the direction in which his home lay.' This is part 
 of the" note attached to the ' Winter Sabbath Walk,' and 
 particularly referring to the following picturesque pas- 
 sages : — 
 
 ' Now is the time 
 To visit Nature in her gnuid attire; 
 Though perilous the mountainous ascent, 
 A noble recompense the danger brings. 
 ITow beautiful the plain stretch'J far below ! 
 Unvaried though it be, save by yon stream 
 AVitli azure windings, or the leafless wood. 
 But what the beauty of the plain conipar'd 
 To tliat sublimity which reigns enthrou'd, 
 Holding joint rule with sclitude divine, 
 Anicng yon rocky fells that bid defiance 
 To steps the most adventurously bold ? 
 There silence dwells profound ; or, if the cry 
 Of liigh-pois'd eagle break at times the calm, 
 The mantled echoes no response return. 
 VOL. IX. 7
 
 98 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 But let me now explore the deep-sunk dell. 
 No foot-print, save the covey's or the flock's. 
 Is seen along the rill, where marshy springs 
 Still rear the grassy blade of vivid green. 
 Beware, ye shepherds, of these treacherous haunts; 
 Nor linger there too long : the wintry day 
 Soon closes ; and full oft a heavier fall, 
 Heaped by the blast, fills up the shelter'd glen, 
 While, gurgling deep below, the buried rill 
 Mines for itself a snow-covered way. then 
 Your helpless charge drive from the tempting spot; 
 And keep them on the bleak hill's stormy side. 
 Where night-winds sweep the gathering drift away.' 
 
 A more useful suggestion was never made. Many 
 thousands of lives would be saved in each century by the 
 general adoption of Mr. Grahame's plan ; and two or three 
 further hints may be added. 1. Before these crosses can 
 be sown as plentifully as he proposes, it will, in a large 
 majority of cases, answer the same end, to make such an 
 approximation to liis plan as would not cost, perhaps, more 
 than one quarter of the first expense, viz., by placing 
 the crosses at such distances that the bell mi^ht make itself 
 heard : suppose the intervals to be four miles, then the great- 
 est possible distance from the sound would be two miles ; 
 and so far a bell might send its sound upon the breeze, for 
 there will be always some of these crosses to windward. 
 2. They might be made of cast-iron — as one means of 
 ensuring their preservation. 3. There might be a box, or 
 little cell attached, capable of receiving one person ; this 
 should be suspended at a height, suppose of eight feet, from 
 the ground ; and the entrance should be by a little ladder 
 leading into the box through an orifice from below; which 
 orifice should be covered by a little door or lid — one that 
 should open inwards when pressed by the head of the 
 ascending person. Finally, in a country where mile? 
 stones and guide-posts are often wantonly mutilated or
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GRASMERE. 99 
 
 destroyed, it may be thought that these crosses would not 
 long be in a condition to do their office; in particular, that 
 the bells would be detached and carried off. But it should 
 be remembered, that even mile-stones on the most public 
 roads have ceased to be injured since they have been made 
 of iron ; that these crosses never would be in a populous 
 region, but exactly in the most solitary places of the island ; 
 and that in any case where they ceased to be solitary, 
 there the crosses would cease to be necessary. 
 
 Another protecting circumstance would rise out of the 
 simplicity of manners, which is pretty sure to prevail in a 
 mountainous region, and the pious tenderness universally 
 felt towards those situations of peril, which are incident to 
 all alike — men and women, parents and children, the 
 strong and the weak. The crosses, I would answer for it, 
 whenever they are erected, will be protected by a super- 
 stition, such as that which in Holland consecrates the loss 
 of a stork, and in most countries of some animal or other. 
 But it would be right to strengthen this feeling, by in- 
 stilling it as a principle of duty, in the catechisms of 
 mountainous regions : and, perhaps, also, to invest this 
 duty with a religious sanctity, at the approach of every 
 winter, there might be read from the altar a solemn com- 
 mination, such as that which the English Church appoints 
 for Ash-VVednesday — 'Cursed is he that removeth his 
 neighbor's landmark,' &c., &c., to which might now be 
 added — 'Cursed is he that causeth the steps of tho 
 wayfarer to go astray, and layeth snares for the belated 
 traveller in the wilderness; cursed is he that removeth 
 the bell from the snow-cross.' And every child might 
 learn to fear a judgment of retribution upon its own steps 
 in case of any such wicked action, by reading the tale of 
 him, who, in order 
 
 ' To plague the Abbot of Aberbrotliocb,'
 
 100 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 removed the bell from the Inchcape rock ; which same 
 rock, in after days, and for want of this very warning 
 bell, inflicted miserable ruin upon himself, his ship, and 
 his unoifending crew. Warning sentences should also be 
 inscribed upon all the four faces of the little cell, that 
 nobody might offend in a spirit of jest or forgetful ness ; 
 and as the century advanced, a memorial list, (like the 
 Roman votive tahlels, suspended on the walls of temples,) 
 should be firmly attached to the cross, of all who had 
 benefited by its shelter. The mere fact of having 
 ascended the ladder being taken as sufficient evidence 
 that a sanctuary had been found necessary. The sanctity 
 of the place might, in one generation, be so far improved 
 as to protect a small supply of brandy and biscuit, to be 
 lodged there on the coming on of winter. If a few 
 rockets, and some apparatus for lighting a match were 
 also left accessible in some of the remoter solitudes, the 
 storm-bound and exhausted wanderer would, besides 
 recruiting his strength, find it possible to telegraph his 
 situation to some one of the neighboring valleys. Once 
 made sacred from violation, these crosses might after- 
 wards be made subjects of suitable ornament ; that is to 
 say, they might be madc^as picturesque in form, and 
 color, and material, as the crosses of Alpine countries, or 
 the guide-posts of England often are. The associated 
 circumstances of storm and solitude, of winter, of night, 
 and wayfaring, would give dignity to almost any form 
 which had become familiar to the eye as the one appro- 
 priated to thi^ purpose ; and the particular form of a 
 cross or crucifix, besides its own beauty, would suggest to 
 the mind a pensive allegoric memorial of that spiritual 
 asylum, offered by the same emblem to the poor erring 
 roamer in our human pilgrimage, whose steps are beset 
 with other snares, and whose lieart is made anxious by
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF GKASMEKE. 101 
 
 another darkness, and another storm — the darkness of 
 guih, or the storm of allliction. If iron was found too 
 costly, it might be used only for the little cell ; and the 
 rest of the structure might be composed with no expense 
 at all, except the labor, (and that would generally be 
 given by public contribution of the neighborhood,) from 
 the rude undressed stones which are always found lying 
 about in such situations, and which are so sufficient for 
 all purposes of strength, that the field-walls, and by far 
 the greater number of the dwelling-houses in Westmore- 
 land, are built of such materials, and, until late years, 
 without mortar.* But, whatever were the materials, the 
 name of these rural guides and asylums — 'storm- 
 crosses' — would continually remind both the natives and 
 strangers of their purpose and functions — functions that, 
 in the process of time, would make them as interesting to 
 the imagination and to the memory, as they would, in 
 fact, be useful and hope-sustaining to the shepherd sur- 
 prised by snow, and the traveller surprised by night. 
 
 * This recent chan2[e in the art of rustic masonry by the adoption of 
 mortar, does not mark any advance in that art, iiut, on the coinrary, a 
 decay of skill and care. Twenty years ago, when 'dry' wails were in 
 general use except for a superior class of houses, it was necessary to 
 supply the want of mortar hy a much nicer adaptation of the stones to 
 each other. But now this care is regarded as quite superfluous ; for the 
 largest gaps and cavities amongst the stones are filled up with mortar; 
 meantime, the walls built in this way are not so impervious either to 
 rain or wind as those upon the old patent construction of the past gene- 
 ration.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE SARACEN'S HEAD. 
 
 My first visit to the Wordsworths had been made in 
 November, 1807; but, on that occasion, from the neces- 
 sity of saving the Michaelmas term at Oxford, for which I 
 had barely left myself time, I stayed only one week. On 
 the last day, I witnessed a scene, the first and the last of 
 its kind that ever I did witness, almost too trivial to men- 
 tion, except for the sake of showing what things occur in 
 the realities of experience, which a novelist could not 
 venture to imaaine. Wordsworth and his sister were 
 under an ensagement of some standing to dine on that 
 day with a literary lady about four miles distant ; and, as 
 the southern mail, which I was to catch at a distance of 
 eighteen miles, would not pass that point until long after 
 midnight, Miss Wordsworth proposed that, rather than pass 
 my time at an inn, I should join the dinner party ; a pro- 
 posal rather more suitable to her own fervent and hospita- 
 ble temper, than to the habits of our hostess, who must 
 (from what I came to know of her in after years) have 
 looked upon me as an intruder. Something had reached 
 Miss Wordsworth of her penurious menage, but nothin 
 that approached the truth. I was presented to the lady, 
 whom we found a perfect has bleu of a very commonplace 
 order, but having some other accomplishments beyond her 
 slender acquaintance with literature. Our party consisted 
 
 or
 
 THE Saracen's head. 103 
 
 of six — our hostess, who might be fifty years of age ; a 
 pretty timid young woman, who was there in the character 
 of a humble friend ; some stranger or other ; the Words- 
 worths, and myself. The dinner was the very humblest 
 and simplest I had ever seen — in that there was nothing 
 to offend — I did not then know tliat the lady was very rich 
 — but also it was flagrantly insufficient in quantity. Dinner, 
 however, proceeded ; when, without any removals, in 
 came a kind of second coarse, in the shape of a solitary 
 pheasant. This, in a cold manner, she asked me to try ; 
 but we, in our humility, declined for the present ; and also 
 in mere good-nature, not wishing to expose too palpably 
 the insufficiency of her dinner. May I die the death of a 
 traitor, if she did not proceed, without further question to 
 any one of us, (and as to the poor young companion, no 
 form of even invitation was conceded to her,) and, in the 
 eyes of us all, ate up the whole bird, from alpha to omega. 
 Upon my honor, I thought to myself, this is a scene I 
 would not have missed. It is well to know the possibilities 
 of human nature. Could she have a bet depending on 
 the issue, and would she explain all to us as soon as she 
 had won her wager ? Alas ! no explanation ever came, 
 except, indeed, that afterwards her character, put en 
 evidence upon a score of occasions, too satisfactorily 
 explained everything. No; it was, as Mr. Coleridge ex- 
 presses it, a psychological curiosity — a hollow thing — 
 and only once matched in all the course of my reading, in 
 or out of romances ; but that once, I grieve to say it, was 
 by a king, and a sort of hero. 
 
 The Duchess of Marlborough it is, who reports the 
 shocking anecdote of William III., that actually Princess 
 Anne, his future wife, durst not take any of the green 
 peas brought to the dinner table, when that vegetable 
 happened to be as yet scarce and premature. There was
 
 104 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 a gentleman ! And such a lady had we for our hostess. 
 However, we all observed a suitable gravity ; but after- 
 wards, when we left the house, the remembrance affected 
 us differcn'.ly : Miss Wordsworth laughed with undissem- 
 bled glee ; but VVordswcjrth thought it too grave a matter 
 for laughing — he was thoroughly disgusted; and said 
 repeatedly, a person cannot be honest, positively not 
 honest, who is capable of such an act. The lady is dead, 
 and I shall not mention her name: she lived only to 
 gratify her selfish propensities ; and two little anecdotes 
 may show the outrageous character of her meanness. I 
 was now on the debtor side of her dinner account, and, 
 therefore, in a future year she readily accepted an invita- 
 tion to come and dine with me at my cottage. But, on a 
 subsequent occasion, when 1 was to have a few literary 
 people at dinner, whom I knew that she greatly wished to 
 meet, she positively replied thus : — ' No ; I have already 
 come with my young lady to dine with you ; that puts me 
 on the wrong side by one ; now if I were to come again, 
 
 as I cannot leave Miss behind, I shall then be on the 
 
 wrong side by three ; and that is more than I could find 
 opportunities to repay before I go up to London for the 
 winter.' ' Very well,' I said, ' give me 3s. and that will 
 settle the account.' She laughed, but positively persisted 
 in not coming until after dinner, notwithstanding she had 
 to drive a distance of ten miles. 
 
 The other anecdote is worse. She was exceedingly 
 careful of her health; and not thinking it healthy to drive 
 about in a close carriage, which, besides, could not have 
 suited the narrow mountain tracks, to which her sketching 
 habits attracted her, she shut up her town carriage for the 
 summer, and jobbed some little open car. Being a very 
 large woman, and, moreover, a masculine woman, with a 
 bronzed complexion, and always choosing to wear, at
 
 THE Saracen's head. 105 
 
 night, a turban, round hair that was as black as that of the 
 ' Moors of Malabar,' siie presented an exact likeness of 
 a Saracen's Head, as painted over inn-doors ; whilst the 
 timid and delicate young lady by her side, looked like 
 ' dejected Pity ' at the side of ' Revenge,' when as- 
 suming the war-denouncing trumpet. Some Oxonians 
 and Cantabs, who, at different times, were in the habit 
 of meeting this oddly assorted party in all nooks of 
 the country, used to move the question, whether the 
 poor horse or the young lady had the worst of it ? 
 At length the matter was decided : the horse was fast 
 going off this sublunary stage ; and the Saracen's Head 
 was told as much, and with this little addition — that 
 his death was owins: infer alia to starvation. Her answer 
 was remarkable: — 'But, my dear madam, that is his 
 master's fault; I pay so much a-day — he is to keep the 
 horse,' That might be, but still the horse was dying — 
 and dying in the way stated. The Saracen's Head per- 
 sisted in using him under those circumstances — such was 
 her 'bond' — and, in a short time, the horse actually 
 died. Yes, the horse died — and died of starvation — or 
 at least of an illness caused originally by starvation : for 
 so said, not merely the whole population of the little 
 neighboring town, but also the surgeon. Not long after, 
 however, the lady, the Saracen's Head, died herself; but 
 I fear, not of starvation ; for, though something like it 
 did prevail at her table, she prudently reserved it all for 
 her guests ; in fact, I never heard of such vigilant care, 
 and so much laudable exertion, applied to the promotion of 
 health : yet all failed, and in a degree which confounded 
 people's speculations upon the subject — for she did not 
 live much beyond sixty ; whereas everybody supposed 
 that the management of her physical system entitled her
 
 106 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 to outwear a century. Perhaps the prayers of horses 
 might avail to order it otherwise. 
 
 But the singular thing about this lady's mixed and con- 
 tradictory character, was, that in London and Bath, where 
 her peculiar habits of life were naturally less accurately 
 known, she maintained the reputation of one who united 
 the accomplishments of literature and art with a remarka- 
 ble'depth of sensibility, and a most amiable readiness to 
 enter into the distresses of her friends, by sympathy the 
 most cordial, and consolation the most delicate. More 
 than once I have seen her name recorded in printed books, 
 and attended with praises that tended to this effect. I 
 have seen letters also, from a lady in deep affliction, which 
 spoke of the Saracen's Head as having paid her the first 
 visit from which she drew any effectual consolation. Such 
 are the erroneous impressions conveyed by biographical 
 memoirs ; or, which is a more charitable construction of 
 the case, such are the inconsistencies of the human heart ! 
 And certainly there was one fact, even in her Westmore- 
 land life, that did lend some countenance to the southern 
 picture of her amiableness — and this lay in the cheerful- 
 ness with which she gave up her time {time, but not much 
 of her redundant money) to the promotion of the charita- 
 ble schemes set on foot by the neighboring ladies ; some- 
 times for the education of poor children, sometimes for 
 the visiting of the sick, dzc, &c. 1 have heard several of 
 those ladies express their gratitude for her exertions, and 
 declare that she was about their best member. But their 
 horror was undisguised when the weekly committee came, 
 by rotation, to hold its sittings at her little villa ; for, as 
 the business occupied them frequently from eleven o'clock 
 in the forenoon to a late dinner hour, and as many of them 
 had a fifteen or twenty miles' drive, they needed some 
 refreshments : but these were, of course, a ' great idea '
 
 THE Saracen's head. 107 
 
 at the Saracen's Head ; since, according to the epigram 
 which iUustrates the maxim of Tacitus, that omne ignotum 
 pro magnifico, and, applying it to the case of a miser's 
 horse, terminates by saying, ' What vast ideas must he 
 have of oats!' — upon the same principle, these poor 
 ladies, on these fatal committee days, never failed to form ■ 
 most exaggerated ideas of bread, butter, and wine. And 
 at length, some, more intrepid than the rest, began to 
 carry biscuits in their mufTs, and, with the conscious 
 tremors of school girls, (profiting by the absence of the 
 mistress, but momentarily expecting detection,) they em- 
 ployed some casual absence of their unhostly hostess in 
 distributing and eating their hidden ' viaticum.' How- 
 ever, it must be acknowledged, that time and exertion, and 
 the sacrifice of more selfish pleasure during the penance 
 at the school, were, after all, real indications of kindness 
 to her fellow-creatures; and, as I wish to part in peace, 
 even with the Saracen's Head, I have reserved this anec- 
 dote to the last ; for it is painful to have lived on terms of 
 good nature, and exchanging civilities, with any human 
 being, of whom one can report absolutely no good thing ; 
 and I sympathize heartily with that indulgent person of 
 whom it is somewhere recorded, that upon an occasion 
 when the death of a man happened to be mentioned, who 
 was unanimously pronounced a wretch without one good 
 quality, ' monsirum nuUd virlute redemptum,'' he ventured, 
 however, at last, in a deprecatory tone to say — ' Well, he 
 did whistle beautifully, at any rate.' 
 
 Talking of ' whistling,' reminds me to return from my 
 digression ; for on that night, the 12th of November, 
 1807, and the last of my visits to the Wordsworths, I took 
 leave of them in the inn at Ambleside, about ten at night ; 
 and the post-chaise in which I crossed the country to catch 
 the mail, was driven by a postilion who whistled so
 
 108 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 delightfully, that, for the first time in my life, T became 
 aware of the prodigious powers which are lodged poten- 
 tially in so despised a function of the vocal organs. For 
 the whole of the long ascent up Orrest Head, which 
 obliged him to walk his horses for a full half-mile, he 
 made the woods of Windermere rinu with the canorous 
 sweetness of his half flute half clarionet music ; but, in 
 fact, the subtle melody of the effect placed it in power far 
 beyond either flute or clarionet. A year or two after- 
 wards, I heard a fellow-servant of this same postilion's, 
 a black, play with equal superiority of effect upon the 
 jaw's harp ; making that, which in most hands is a mere 
 monotonous jarring, a dull reverberating vibration, into a 
 delightful lyre of no inconsiderable compass. We have 
 since heard of, some of us have heard, the chinchopper. 
 Within the last hundred years, we have had the ^olian 
 harp, (first mentioned and described in the 'Castle of 
 Indolence,' which I think was first published entire about 
 1738 ;) then the musical glasses ; then the celestina, to 
 represent the music of the spheres, introduced by Mr. 
 Walker, or some other lecturing astronomer; and many 
 another fine effect obtained from trivial means. But, at 
 this moment, I recollect a performance perhaps more 
 astonishing than any of them ; a Mr. Worgman, who had 
 very good introductions, and very general ones, (for he 
 was to be met within a few months in every part of the 
 island,) used to accompany himself on the piano, weaving 
 extempore long tissues of impassioned music, that were 
 called his own, but which, in fact, were all the better for 
 not being such, or at least for continually embodying 
 passages from Handel and Pergolesi. To this substratum 
 of the instrumental music, he contrived to adapt some 
 unaccountable and indescribable choral accompaniment, a 
 pomp of sound, a tempestuous blare of harmony ascending
 
 THE Saracen's head. 109 
 
 in clouds, not from any ore, but apparently from a band 
 of Mr. Worgman's ; for sometimes it was a trumpet, 
 sometimes a kettle-drum, sometimes a cymbal, sometimes 
 a bassoon, and sometimes it was all of these at once. 
 
 ' And now 'twas like all instruments ; 
 
 And now it was a flute ; 
 And now it was an angel's voice, 
 
 Tiiat maketh the heavens be mute.' 
 
 X 
 
 In this case, I presume, that ventriloquism must have had 
 something to do with the effect; but whatever it were, the 
 power varied greatly with the state of his spirits, or with 
 some other fluctuating causes in the animal economy. 
 However, the result of all these experiences is, that I shall 
 never more be surprised at any musical effects, the very 
 greatest drawn from whatever inconsiderable? or appa- 
 rently inadequate means ; not even if the butcher's instru- 
 ment, the marrow-bones and cleaver, or any of those 
 culinary instruments so pleasantly treated by Addison in 
 the ' Spectator,' such as the kitchen dresser and thumb, 
 the tongs and shovel, the pepper and salt-box, should be 
 exalted, by some immortal butcher or inspired scullion, 
 into a sublime harp, dulcimer, or lute, capable of wooing 
 St. Cecilia to listen, able even 
 
 ' To raise a mortal to the skies, 
 Or draw an angel down.' 
 
 That night, as I was passing under the grounds of 
 EUeray, then belonging to a Westmoreland 'statesman,' 
 a thought struck me, that I was now traversing a road 
 with which, as yet, I was scarcely at all acquainted, but 
 which, in years to come, might perhaps be as familiar to 
 my eye as the rooms of my own house ; and possibly that 
 I might traverse them in company with faces as yet not 
 even seen by me, but in those future years dearer than
 
 110 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 any which I had yet known. In this prophetic glimpse 
 there was nothing very marvellous ; for what could be 
 more natural than that I should come to reside in the 
 neighborhood of the Wordsworths, and that this might 
 lead to my forming connections in a country which I 
 should consequently come to know so well ? I did not, 
 however, anticipate so definitely and circumstantially as 
 all this ; but generally I had a dim presentiment that here, 
 on this very road, I should often pass, and in company 
 that now, not even conjecturally delineated or drawn out 
 of the utter darkness in which they were as yet reposing, 
 would hereafter plant memories in my heart, the last that 
 will fade from it in the hour of death. Here, afterwards, 
 at this very spot, or a little above it, but on this very 
 estate, which from local peculiarities of ground, and of 
 sudden angles, was peculiarly kenspeck, i. e., easy of 
 recognition, and could have been challenged and identified 
 at any distance of years ; here afterwards lived Professor 
 Wilson, the only very intimate male friend I have had ; 
 here too, it was, my M., that, in long years afterwards, 
 through many a score of nights — nights often dark as 
 Erebus, and amidst thunders and lightnings the most sub- 
 lime — we descended at twelve, one, and two o'clock at 
 night, speeding from Kendal to our distant home, twenty 
 miles away. Thou wert at present a child not nine years 
 old, nor had I seen thy face, nor heard thy name. But 
 within nine years from that same night, thou wert seated 
 by my side; — and, thenceforwards, through a period of 
 fourteen years, how often did we two descend, hand 
 Rocked in hand, and thinking of things to come, at a pace 
 of hurricane ; whilst all the sleeping woods about us 
 re-echoed the uproar of trampling hoofs and groaning 
 wheels. Duly as we mounted the crest of Orrest Head, 
 mechanically and of themselves almost, and spontaneously,
 
 THE Saracen's head. Ill 
 
 without need of voice or spur, according to Westmoreland 
 usage, the horses flew off into a gallop, like the pace of a 
 swallow.* It was a railroad pace that we ever maintained ; 
 objects were descried far ahead in one moment, and in 
 the next were crovvdins: into the rear. Three miles and a 
 half did this storm flight continue, for so long the descent 
 lasted. Then, for many a mile, over undulating ground, 
 did we ultimately creep and fly, until again a long precip- 
 itous movement, again a storm gallop, that hardly suffered 
 the feet to touch the ground, gave warning that we drew 
 near to that beloved cottage ; warning to us — warning to 
 them — 
 
 ' the silence that is here 
 
 Is of the grave, and of austere 
 But happy feelings of the dead.' 
 
 Sometimes the nights were bright with cloudless moon- 
 light, and of that awful breathless quiet which often broods 
 over vales that are peculiarly landlocked, and which is, 
 or seems to be, so much more expressive of a solemn 
 hush and a Sabbath-like rest from the labors of nature, 
 than I remember to have experienced in flat countries : — 
 
 ' It is not quiet — is not peace — 
 But something deeper far than these.' 
 
 And on such nights it was no sentimental refinement, but 
 a sincere and hearty feeling, that, in wheeling past the 
 
 * It may be supposed, not literally, for the swallow, (or at least that 
 species called the swift,) has been known to fly at the rate of 30u miles 
 an hour. Very prohahly, however, this pace was not dertuced from an 
 entire hour's performance, hut estimated liy proportion from a fli<;ht of 
 one or two minutes. An interesting anecdote is told hy the gi'iiilcman 
 (1 believe the Rev. E. Stanley) who described in Blackicood's Mugazine 
 llie opening of the earliest English railway — viz. : that a bird (snipe 
 was it, or fieldfare, or plover?) ran, or rather flew, a race with the 
 engine for three or four ndles, until finding itself likely to be beaten, it 
 then suddeuly wheeled away into the moors.
 
 112 LITERARY REMIMSCENCES. 
 
 village churchyard of Stavely, something like an outrage 
 seemed offered to the sanctity of its graves, by the uproar 
 of our career. Sometimes the nights were of that pitchy 
 darkness which is more palpable and unfathomable wher- 
 ever hills intercept the gleaming of light which other- 
 wise is usually seen to linger about the horizon in the 
 northern quarter ; and then arose in perfection that strik- 
 ing effect, when the glare of lamps searches for one 
 moment every dark recess of the thickets, forces them 
 into sudden, almost daylight revelation, only to leave them 
 within the twinkling of the eye in darkness more pro- 
 found; making them, like the snow-flakes falling upon a 
 cataract, ' one moment bright, then gone for ever.' But, 
 dark or moonlight alike, in every instance throiJghout so 
 long a course of years, the road was entirely our own for 
 the whole twenty miles. After nine o'clock, not many 
 people are abroad ; after ten, absolutely none, upon the 
 roads of Westmoreland ; a circumstance which gives a 
 peculiar solemnity to a traveller's route amongst these 
 quiet valleys upon a summer evening of latter May, of 
 June, or early July ; since, in a latitude so much higher 
 than that of London, broad daylight prevails to an hour 
 long after nine. Nowhere is the holiness of vesper hours 
 more deeply felt. And now, in 1839, from all these fly- 
 \n^ journeys and their stinfrins remembrances, hardiv a 
 wreck survives of what composed their living equipage : 
 the men who chiefly drove in those days (for I have ascer- 
 tained it) are gone ; the horses are gone ; darkness rests 
 upon all, except myself. I, wo is me ! am the solitary 
 survivor from scenes that now seem to me as fugitive as 
 the flying lights from our lamps as they shot into the forest 
 recesses. God forbid that on such a theme I should seem 
 to affect sentimental ism. It is from overmastering recol- 
 lections that I look back on those distant days ; and chiefly
 
 THE Saracen's head. 113 
 
 I have suffered myself to give way before the impulse 
 that haunts me, of reverting to those bitter, bittpr thoughts, 
 in order to notice one singular waywardness or caprice 
 (as it might seem) incident to the situation, which, I doubt 
 not, besieges many more people than myself : it is, that I 
 find a more poignant suffering, a pang more searching, in 
 going back, not to those enjoyments themselves, and the 
 days when they were within my power, but to times an- 
 terior, when as yet they did not exist ; nay, when some 
 who were chiefly concerned in them as parties, had not 
 even been born. No night, I might almost say, of my 
 whole life, remains so profoundly, painfully, and patheti- 
 cally imprinted on my remembrance, as this very one, 
 on which I tried prelusively, as it were, that same road 
 in solitude, and lulled by the sweet carollings of the pos- 
 tilion, which, after an interval of ten years, and through 
 a period of more than equal duration, it was destined that 
 1 should so often traverse in circumstances of happiness 
 too radiant, that for me are burned out forever. Cole- 
 ridn-e told me of a similar case that had fallen within his 
 knowledge, and the impassioned expression which the 
 feelinss belonging to it drew from a servant woman at 
 Keswick : — She had nursed some boy, either of his or of 
 Mr. Southey's ; the boy had lived apart from the rest of 
 the family, secluded with his nurse in her cottage ; she 
 was doatingly fond of him ; lived, in short, hij him, as 
 well as for him ; and nearly ten years of her life had 
 been exalted into one golden dream by his companionship. 
 At length came the day which severed the connection ; 
 and she, in the anguish of the separation, bewailing her 
 future loneliness, and knowing too well that education and 
 the world, if it left him some kind remembrances of her, 
 never could restore him to her arms the same fond loving 
 boy that felt no shame in surrendering his whole heart to 
 
 VOL. II. 8
 
 114 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 caressing and being caressed, did not revert to any day or' 
 season of her ten years' happiness, but went back to the 
 very day of his arrival, a particular Thursday, and to an 
 hour when, as yet, she had not seen him, exclaiming — 
 * O that Thursday ! O that it could come back ! that 
 Thursday when the chaise-wheels were ringing in the 
 streets of Keswick ; when yet I had not seen his bonny 
 face ; but when he was coming ! ' 
 
 Ay, reader, all this may sound foolishness to you, that 
 perhaps never had a heartache, or that may have all your 
 blessings to come. But now let me return to my narra- 
 tive. After about twelve months' interval, and therefore 
 again in November, but November of the year 1808, I 
 repeated by visit to Wordsworlh, and upon a longer scale. 
 I found him removed from his cottage to a house of con- 
 siderable size, about three-quarters of a mile distant, called 
 Allan Bank. This house had been very recently erected, 
 at an expense of about =€1500, by a gentleman from Liv- 
 erpool, a merchant, and also a lawyer in some department 
 or other. It was not yet completely finished ; and an odd 
 accident was reported to me as having befallen it in its 
 earliest stage. The walls had been finished, and this 
 event was to be celebrated at the village inn with an 
 ovation^ previously to the triumph that would follow on 
 the roof-raising. The workmen had all housed themselves 
 at the Red Lion, and were beginning their carouse, when 
 up rode a traveller, who brought them the unseasonable 
 news, that, whilst riding along the vale, he had beheld the 
 downfall of the whole building. Out the men rushed, 
 lioping that this might be a hoax ; but too surely they 
 found his report true, and their own festival premature. A 
 little malice mingled unavoidably with the laughter of the 
 Dalesmen ; for it happened that the Liverpool gentleman 
 had offered a sort of insult to the native artists, by bring-
 
 THE SARACEn's HEAD. 115 
 
 ing down both masons and carpenters from his own town ; 
 an unwise i)l;ui, for they were necessarily unacquainted 
 wiili many points of local skill ; and it was to some 
 ignorance in their mode of laying the stones that the 
 accident was due. The house had one or two capital 
 defects — it was cold, damp, and, to all appearance, 
 incurably smoky. Upon this latter defect, by the way, 
 Wordsworth founded a claim, not for diminution of rei'.t, 
 but absolutely for entire immunity from any rent at all. 
 It was truly comical to hear him argue the point with the 
 Liverpool proprietor, Mr. C. lie went on dilating on the 
 liardship of living in such a house ; of the injury, or 
 suffering, at least, sustained by the eyes ; until, at last, he 
 had drawn a picture of himself as a very ill used man; 
 and I seriously expected to hear him sum up by demand- 
 intr a round sum for damages. Mr. C. was a very good- 
 natured man, calm, and gentlemanlike in his manners. 
 He had also a considerable respect for Wordsworth, 
 derived, it may be supposed, not from his writings, but 
 from the authority (which many more besides him could not 
 resist) of his conversation. However, he looked grave 
 and perplexed. Nor do I know how the matter ended ; 
 but I mention it as an illustration of Wordsworth's keen 
 spirit of business. Whilst foolish people supposed him a 
 mere honeyed sentimentalist, speaking only in zephyrs 
 and bucolics, he was in fact a somewhat hard pursuer of 
 what he thought fair advantages. 
 
 In the February which followed, I left Allan Bank ; but 
 upon Miss Wordsworth's happening to volunteer the task of 
 furnishing for my use the cottage so recently occupied by 
 her brother's family, I took it upon a seven years' lease. 
 And thus it happened — this I mean was the mode of it, 
 (for, at any rate, I should have settled somewhere in tho 
 country,) that I became a resident in Grasmere.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 
 
 In February, as I have said, of 1809, 1 quitted Allan 
 Bank; and, from that time until the depth of summer, 
 Miss Wordsworth was employed in the task she had 
 volunteered, of renewing and furnishing the little cottage 
 in which I was to succeed the illustrious tenant who had, 
 in my mind, hallowed the rooms by a seven years' occu- 
 pation, during, perhaps, the happiest period of his life 
 — the early years of his marriage, and of his first 
 acquaintance with parental affections. Cottage, immortal 
 in my remembrance ! as well it might be; for this cottage 
 I retained through just seven-and-twenty years : this was 
 the scene of struggles the most tempestuous and bitter 
 within my own mind : this the scene of my despondency 
 and unhappiness: this the scene of my happiness — a 
 happiness which justified the fiiith of man's earthly lot, 
 as, upon the whole, a dowry from heaven. It was, in its 
 exterior, not so much a picturesque cottage — for its 
 outline and proportions, its windows and its chimneys, 
 were not sufficiently marked and effective for the pic- 
 turesque * — as it was lovely : one gable end was, indeed. 
 
 *The i:lea of the picturesque is one which did not exist at all until 
 the post-Christian ages ; neither amongst the Grecians nor amongst the 
 Romans ; and Ihcrrforc, as respects one reason, it was, that the art of 
 landscape painting did not esist (except in a Chinese infancy, and as a
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 117 
 
 most gorgeously appareled in ivy, and so far picturesque ; 
 but the principal side, or what might be called front, as it 
 presented itself to the road, and was most illuminated by 
 windows, was embossed — nay, it might be said, smothered 
 — in roses of different species, amongst which the moss 
 and the damask prevailed. These, together with as much 
 
 mere irick of inventive ingenuity) amongst the finest artists of Greece. 
 What is picturesque, as placed in relation to the beautiful and the sub- 
 lime? It is (to di'fiiie it by the very shortest form of words) the char- 
 acteristic, pu>hed into a sensible excess. The prevailing character of 
 any natural object, no matter how little attractive it may be for beauty, 
 is always interesting for itself, as the character and hieroglyphic symbol 
 of the purposes pursued by Nature in the determination of its form, 
 style of motion, texture of superficies, relation of parts, &c. 
 
 Thus, for example, an expression of dulness and sonmolent torpor 
 does not ally itself with grace or elegance ; but, in combination with 
 strength and other qualities, it may compose a character of serviceable 
 and patient endurance, as in the cart-horse, having unity in itself, and 
 tending to one class of uses sufficient to mark it out by circumscription 
 for a distinct and separate contemplation. Now, in combination with 
 certain counteracting circumstances, as with the momentary energy of 
 some great effort, much of this peculiar character might be lost, or de- 
 feated, or dissipated. On that account, the skilful observer will seek 
 out circumstances that are in harmony with the principal tendencies and 
 assist them ; such, suppose, as a state of lazy relaxation from labor, and 
 the fall of heavy drenching rain ciusing the head to droop, and the 
 shaggy mane, together with the fetlocks, to weep. These, and other 
 circumstances of attitude, &c., bring out the character or prevailing 
 tendency of the animal in some excess; and, in such a case, we call the 
 resulting effect to the eye — picturesque : or, in fact, characleresquc. Ira 
 extending this speculation to objects of art and human purposes, there 
 is something more required of subtle investigation. Meantime, it is 
 evident that neither the sublime nor tjie beautiful depends upon any 
 secondary interest of a purpose or of a character expressing that purpose. 
 They (confining the case to visual objects) court the primary interest 
 involved in that (form, color, texture, attitude, motion.) which forces 
 admiration, which fascinates the eye, for itself, and without a question 
 of any distinct purpose: and, instead of character— that is, discrimi- 
 nating and separating expression, tending to the special and the indi- 
 vidual— they both agree in pursuing the Catholic — the Normal — the' 
 Ideal.
 
 118 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 jessamine and honeysuckle as could find room to flourish, 
 were not only in themselves a most interesting garniture 
 for a humble cottage wall, but they also performed the 
 acceptable service of breaking the unpleasant glare that 
 would else have wounded the eye, from the whitewash ; a 
 glare which, having been renewed amongst tlie general 
 preparations against my coming to inhabit the house, could 
 not be sufficiently subdued in tone for the artist's eye 
 until the storm of several winters had weather-stained 
 and tamed down its brilliancy. The Westmoreland 
 cottages, as a class, have long been celebrated for their 
 picturesque forms, and very justly so : in no part of the 
 world are cottages to be found more strikingly interesting 
 to the eye by their general outlines, by the sheltered 
 porches of their entrances, by their exquisite chimneys, by 
 their rustic windows, and by the distribution of the parts. 
 These parts are on a larger scale, both as to number and 
 size, than a stranger would expect to find as dependencies 
 and out-houses attached to dwelling-houses so modest ; 
 chiefly from the necessity of making provision, both in 
 fuel for themselves, and in hay, straw, and brackens for 
 the cattle against the long winter. But, in praising the 
 Westmoreland dwellings, it must be understood that only 
 those of the native Dalesmen are contemplated ; for as to 
 those raised by the alien intruders — 'the lakers,' or 
 'foreigners' as they are sometimes called by the old 
 indigenous possessors of the soil — these being designed 
 to exhibit 'a taste ' and an eye for the picturesque, are 
 pretty often mere models of deformity, as vulgar and as 
 silly as it is well possible for any object to be, in a case 
 where, after all, the workman, and obedience to custom, 
 and the necessities of the ground, &c., will often step in 
 to compel the archilects into common sense and propriety. 
 The main defect in Scottish scenery, the eyesore that
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 119 
 
 disfigures so many charming combinations of landscape, 
 is the otTensive style of the rural architecture ; but still, 
 even where it is worst, the mode of its offence is not by 
 affectation and conceit, and preposterous attempts at 
 realizing sublime, Gothic, or castellated effects in little 
 gingerbread ornaments, and 'tobacco pipes,' and make- 
 believe parapets, and towers like kitchen or hot-houso 
 flues ; but in the hard undisguised pursuit of mere coarse 
 uses and needs of life. 
 
 Too often, the rustic mansion, that should speak of 
 decent poverty and seclusion, peaceful and comfortable, 
 wears the most repulsive air of town confinement and 
 squalid indigence ; the house being built of substantial 
 stone, three stories high, or even four, the roof of massy 
 slate ; and everything strong which respects the future 
 outlay of the proprietor — everything frail which respects 
 the comfort of the inhabitants : windows broken and 
 stuffed up with rags or old hats ; steps and door en- 
 crusted with dirt; and the whole tarnished with smoke. 
 Poverty — how diflerent the face it wears looking with 
 meagre staring eyes from such a city dwelling as this, 
 and when it peeps out, with rosy cheeks, from amongst 
 clustering roses and woodbines, at a little lattice, from a 
 little one-story cottage ! Are, then, the main character- 
 istics of the Westmoreland dwelling-houses imputable to 
 superior taste ? By no means. Spite of all that I have 
 heard Mr. Wordsworth and others say in maintaining 
 that opinion, I, for my part, dp and must hold, that the 
 Dalesmen produce- none of the happy effects which fre- 
 quently arise in their domestic architecture under any 
 search after beautiful forms, a search which they despise 
 with a sort of Vandal dignity ; no, nor with any sense or 
 consciousness of their success. How then ? Is it acci- 
 dent — mere casual good luck — that has brought forth,
 
 120 LITERAKY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 for instance, so many exquisite forms of chimneys ? Not 
 so ; but it is this : it is good sense, on the one hand, 
 bendino; and conformino; to the dictates or even the 
 suggestions of the climate, and the local circumstances of 
 rocks, water, currents of air, &.c. ; and, on the other hand, 
 wealth sufficient to arm the builder with all suitable means 
 for giving effect to his purpose, and to evade the necessity 
 of make-shifts. But the radical ground of the interest 
 attached to Westmoreland cottage architecture, lies in its 
 submission to the determining agencies of the surrounding 
 circumstances; such of them, I mean, as are permanent, 
 and have been gathered from long experience. The 
 porch, for instance, which does so much to take away from 
 a house the character of a rude box, pierced with holes 
 for air, light, and ingress, has evidently been dictated by 
 the sudden rushes of wind through the mountain ' ghylls,' 
 which make some kind of protection necessary to the 
 ordinary door ; and this reason has been strengthened in 
 cases of houses near to a road, by the hospitable wish t(f 
 provide a sheltered seat for the wayfarer ; most of these 
 porches being furnished with one in each of the two 
 recesses, to the right and to the left. 
 
 The long winter again, as f have already said, and the 
 artificial prolongation of the winter, by the necessity of 
 keeping the sheep long upon the low grounds, creates a 
 call for large out-houses ; and these, for the sake of 
 warmth, are usi^ally placed at right angles to the house ; 
 which the effect of making a much larger system of parts 
 than would else arise. But perhaps the main feature, 
 which gives character to the pile of building, is the roof, 
 and, above all, the chimneys. It is the remark of an 
 accomplished Edinburgh artist, H. W. Williams, in the 
 course of his strictures* upon the domestic architecture 
 
 * Travels ia Italy, Greece, and the louiaa Islands, vol. i. p. 74, 75.
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 121 
 
 of the Italians, and especially of the Florentines, that the 
 character of buildings, in certain circumstances, ' depends 
 wholly or chiefly on the form of the roof and the 
 chimney. This,' he goes on, ' is particularly the case in 
 Italy, where more variety and taste is displayed in the 
 chimneys than in the buildings to which they belong. 
 These chimneys are as peculiar and characteristic as 
 palm trees in a tropical climate.' Again, in speaking of 
 Calabria and the Ionian Islands, he says — 'We were 
 forcibly struck with the consequence which the beauty of 
 the chimneys imparted to the character of the whole 
 building.' Now, in Great Britain, he complains, with 
 reason, of the very opposhe result; not the plain building 
 ennobled by the chimney ; but the chimney degrading the 
 noble building; and in Edinburgh, especially, where the 
 homely and inelegant appearance of the chimneys con- 
 trasts most disadvantageously and offensively with the 
 beauty of the buildings which they surmount.' Even 
 here, however, he makes an exqgption for some of the old 
 buildings, ' whose chimneys,' he admits, ' are very taste- 
 fully decorated, and contribute essentially to the beauty 
 of the general effect.' It vi^ probable, therefore, and 
 many houses of the Elizabethan era confirm it, that a 
 better taste prevailed, in this point, amongst our ancestors, 
 both Scottish and English ; that this elder fashion trav- 
 elled, together with many other usages, from the richer 
 parts of Scotland to the Borders, and thence to the vales 
 of Westmoreland ; where they have continued to pre- 
 vail, from their affectionate adhesion to all patriarchal 
 customs. Some undoubtedly, of these Westmoreland 
 forms have been dictated by the necessities of the 
 weather, and the systematic energies of human skill, from 
 age to age, applied to the very difficult task of training 
 smoke into obedience, under the peculiar difficulties pre-
 
 122 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 sented by the sites of Westmoreland houses. These are 
 chosen, generally speaking, with the same good sense and 
 regard to domestic comfort, as the primary consideration 
 (without, however, disdainfully slighting the sentiment, 
 whatever it were, of peace, of seclusion, of gaiety, of 
 solemnity, the special ' religio loci') which seems to have 
 guided the choice of those wlio founded religious houses. 
 
 And here, again, by the way, appears a marked dif- 
 ference between the Dalesmen and the intrusive gentry 
 — not creditable to the latter. The native Dalesmen, well 
 aware of the fury with which the wind often gathers and 
 eddies about any eminence, however trifling its elevation, 
 never thinks of planting his house there : whereas the 
 stranger, singly solicitous about the prospect or the range 
 of lake which his gilt saloons are to command, chooses 
 his site too often upon points better fitted for a temple of 
 Eolus than a human dwelling-place; and he belts his 
 house with balconies and verandas that a mountain gale 
 often tears away in mockery. The Dalesman, wherever 
 his choice is not circumscribed, selects a sheltered s|)Ot, 
 (a xvray* for instance,) which protects him from the wind 
 altogether, upon one or two quarters, and on all quarters 
 from its tornado violence : he takes good care, at the same 
 time, to be within a few feet of a mountain beck : a caution 
 so little heeded by some of the villa founders, that abso- 
 lutely, in a country surcharged with water, they have some- 
 times found themselves driven, by sheer necessity, to the 
 after-thought of sinking a well. The very best situation, 
 however, in other res[)ects, may be bad in one ; and some- 
 times find its very advantages, and the beetling crags which 
 protect its rear, obstructions the most permanent to the 
 ascent of smoke ; and it is in the contest with these natural 
 
 * Wrnie is ihe old Danish, or Icelandic word for angle. Hence the 
 many ' wrays ' in the lake district.
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 123 
 
 bafilinji; repellents of tlie smoke, and in tlie variety of arti- 
 fices for modifying its vertical, or for accomplishing its 
 lateral escape, that have arisen the large and graceful vari- 
 ety of chimney models. My cottage, wanting this primary 
 feature of elegance in the constituents of Westmoreland 
 cottage architecture, and wanting also another very in- 
 teresting feature of the elder architecture, annually be- 
 coming more and more rare, viz., the outside gallery, 
 (which is sometimes merely of wood, but is much more 
 striking when provided for in the original construction of 
 the house, and completely enfonce in the masonry,) could 
 not rank high amongst the picturesque houses of the 
 country ; those, at least, which are such by virtue of their 
 architectural form. It was, however, very irregular in its 
 outline to the rear, by the aid of one little projecting 
 room, and also of a stable and little barn, in immediate 
 contact with the dwelling-house. It had, besides, the great 
 advantage of a varying height : two sides being about 
 fifteen or sixteen feet high from the exposure of both 
 stories; whereas the other two being swathed about by a 
 little orchard that-rose rapidly and unequally towards the 
 vast mountain range in the rear, exposed only the upper 
 story ; and, consequently, on those sides the elevation 
 rarely rose beyond seven or eight feet. All these acci- 
 dents of irregular form and outline, gave to the house 
 some little pretensions to a picturesque character ; whilst 
 its 'separable accidents' (as the logicians say) — its 
 bowery roses and jessamine clothed it in loveliness — its 
 associations with Wordsworth — crowned it, to my mind, 
 with historical dignity; and, finally, my own twenty-seven 
 years off'-and-on connection with it, have, by ties personal 
 and indestructible, endeared it to my heart so unspeakably 
 beyond all other houses, that even now I rarely dream 
 through four nights running, that I do not find myself
 
 124 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 (and others beside) in some one of those rooms ; and, 
 most probably, the last cloudy delirium of approaching 
 death will re-install me in some chamber of that same 
 humble cottage. ' What a talc,' says Foster, the eloquent 
 essayist — ' what a tale could be told by many a room, 
 were the walls endowed with memory and speech ! ' or, 
 in the more impassioned expressions of Wordsworth — 
 
 ' Ah ! what a lesson to a thouglitless man 
 
 if any gladsome field of earth 
 
 Could render back the siglis to which it hath responded, 
 Or echo the sad steps by wliich it hath been trod ! ' 
 
 And equally affecting it would be, if such a field or such 
 a house could render up the echoes of joy, of festal music, 
 of jubilant laughter — the innocent mirth of infants, or 
 the gaiety, not less innocent, of youthful mothers — 
 equally affecting would be such a reverberation of for- 
 gotten household happiness, with the re-echoing records 
 of sighs and groans. And few indeed are the houses that, 
 within a period no longer than from the beginning of the 
 century to 1835 (so long was it either mine or W^ords- 
 worth's) have crowded such ample materia.ls for those 
 echoes, whether sorrowful or joyous. 
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 
 
 My cottage was ready in the summer ; but I was play- 
 ing truant amongst the valleys of Somersetshire ; and, 
 meantime, different families, throughout the summer, bor- 
 rowed the cottage of the Wordsworths as my friends ; they 
 consisted chiefly of ladies ; and some, by the delicacy of 
 their attentions to the flowers, &c., gave me reason to con- 
 sider their visit during my absence as a real honor ; others 
 — such is the difference of people in this world — left the 
 rudest memorials of their careless habits impressed upon
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 125 
 
 house, furniture, garden, &c. In November, at last, I^ 
 the long-expected, made my appearance ; some little sen- 
 sation did really and naturally attend my coming, for most 
 of the draperies belonging to beds, curtains, &c., had 
 been sewed by the young women of that or the adjoining 
 vales, Tbis had caused me to be talked of. Many had 
 seen me on my visit to the VVordsworths. Miss Words- 
 worth had introduced the curious to a knowledge of my 
 age, name, prospects, and all the rest of what can be inter- 
 esting to know. Even the old people of the vale were a 
 little excited. by the accounts (somewhat exaggerated, per- 
 haps) of the never ending books that continued to arrive in 
 packing-cases for several months in succession. Nothing 
 in these vales so much fixes the attention and respect of 
 the people as the reputation of being a ' far learnM ' man. 
 So far, therefore, 1 had already bespoke the favorable 
 opinion of the Dalesmen. And a separate kind of interest 
 arose amongst mothers and daughters, in the knowledge 
 that I should necessarily want what — in a sense somewhat 
 different from the general one — is called a ' housekeeper;' 
 that is, not an upper servant to superintend others, but one 
 who could undertake, in her own person, all the duties of 
 the house. It is not discreditable to these worthy people 
 that several of the richest and most respectable families 
 were anxious to secure the place for a daughter. Had I 
 been a dissipated young man, 1 have good reason to know 
 that there would have been no canvassing at all for the 
 situation. But partly my books spoke for the character of 
 my pursuits with these simple-minded people — partly the 
 introduction of the Wordsvvorths guaranteed the safety of 
 such a service. Even then, had I persisted in my original 
 intention of bringing a man-servant, no respectable young 
 woman would have accepted the place. As it was, and it 
 being understood that I had renounced this intention, many,
 
 126 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 in a gentle, diffident way, applied for the place, or their 
 parents on their behalf. And 1 mention the fact, because 
 it illustrates one feature in the manners of this primitive 
 and peculiar people, the Dalesmen of Westmoreland. 
 However wealthy, they do not think it degrading to permit 
 even the eldest daughter to go out a few years to service. 
 The object is not to gain a sum of money in wages, but 
 that sort of household experience which is supposed to be 
 unattainable upon a suitable scale out of a gentleman's 
 family. So far was this carried, that, amongst the offers 
 made to myself, was one from a young woman whose 
 family was amongst the very oldest in the country, and who 
 was at that time under an cn2:agement of marriage to the 
 very richest young man in the vale. She and her future 
 husband had a reasonable prospect of possessing ten thou- 
 sand pounds in land ; and yet neither her own family nor 
 lier husband's objected to her seeking such a place as I 
 could offer. Her character and manners, I ought to add, 
 were so truly excellent, and won respect so inevitably from 
 everybody, that nobody could wonder at the honorable 
 confidence reposed in her by her manly and spirited young 
 lover. The issue of the matter, as respected my service, 
 was, why I do not know, that Miss VVordsworth did not 
 accept of her; and she fulfilled her purpose in another 
 fartiily, a very grave and respectable one, in Kendal. She 
 staved about a couple of year's, returned, and married the 
 young man to whom she had engaged herself, and is now 
 the prosperous mother of a fine hand.jome family ; and 
 she together with her mother-in-law, are the two leadinst 
 matrons of the vale. 
 
 It was on a November night, about ten o'clock, that 1 
 first found myself installed in a house of my own — this 
 cottage, so memorable from its past tenant to all men, S(3 
 memorable to myself from all which has since past in con-
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 127 
 
 ncction with it. A writer in The Qitarlcrhj Eeview, in 
 noticing the autobiography of Dr. Watson, the Bishop of 
 Llandalf, has thought fit to say lliat tlic lakes, of course, 
 afforded no society capable of appreciating this common- 
 pUice, coarse-minded man of talents. The person who 
 said this I understand to have been Dr. Whittakcr, the re- 
 spectable antiquary. Now, that the reader may judge of 
 the propriety witli which this was asserted, I sliall slightly 
 rehearse the muster-roll of our lake society, as it existed at 
 the time when I seated myself in my Grasmere cottage. 
 I will undertake to say, that the meanest person in the 
 whole scattered community was more extensively accom- 
 plished than the good bishop, was more conscientiously true 
 to his duties, and had more varied powers of conversation. 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, then living at Allan Bank, in 
 Grasmere, I will not notice in such a question. Southey, 
 living thirteen miles off, at Keswick, I have already noticed ; 
 and he needs no proneur. I will begin with Windermere. 
 At Clappersgate, a little hamlet of perhaps six houses, on 
 its north-wfcst angle, and about five miles from my cottage, 
 resided two Scottish ladies, daughters of Dr. C\illen, the 
 famous physician and nosologist. They were universally 
 beloved for their truly kind dispositions, and the firm inde- 
 pendence of their conduct. They had been reduced from 
 great affluence to a condition of rigorous poverty. Their 
 father had made what should have been a fortune by his 
 practice. The good doctor, however, was careless of his 
 money in proportion to the facility with which he made it. 
 All was put into a box, open to the whole family. Breach 
 of confidence, in the most thoughtless use of this money, 
 there could be none ; because no restraint in that point, 
 beyond what honor and good sense imposed, was laid upon 
 any of the elder children. Under such regulations, it may 
 be imagined that Dr. CuUen would not accumulate any
 
 128 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 very large capital ; and, at his death, the family, for the 
 first time, found themselves in embarrassed circumstances. 
 Of the two daughters who bejonged to our lake population, 
 one had married a Mr. Millar, son to the celebrated pro- 
 fessor Millar .of Glasgow. This gentleman had died in 
 America ; and Mcs. Millar was now a childless widow. 
 The other still remained unmarried. Both were equally 
 independent ; and independent even w!th regard to their 
 nearest relatives ; for, even from their brother — who had 
 risen to rank and affluence as a Scottish judge, under 
 the title of Lord Cullen — they declined to receive assist- 
 ance ; and except for some small addition made to their 
 income by a novel called ' Home,' [in as many as seven 
 volumes, I really believe,] by Miss Cullen, their expenditure 
 was rigorously shaped to meet that very slender income, 
 which they drew from their shares of the patrimonial 
 wrecks. More honorable and modest independence, or 
 poverty more gracefully supported, I have rarely known. 
 Meantime, these ladies, though literary and veiy agree- 
 able in conversation, could not be classed with what now 
 began to be known as the lake community of literati ; for 
 they took no interest in any one of the lake poets; did not 
 affect to take any ; and I am sure they were not aware of 
 so much value in any one thing these poets had written, as 
 could make it worth while even to look into their books ; 
 and accordingly as well-bred women, they took the same 
 course as was pursued for several years by Mrs. Flannah 
 More, viz., cautiously to avoid mentioning their names in 
 my presence. This was natural enough in women who 
 had probably built their early admiration upon French 
 models, (for Mrs. Millar used to tell me that she regarded 
 the ' Mahomet' of Voltaire as the most perfect of liuman 
 cotnpositions,) and still more so at a period when almost 
 all the world had surrendered their opinions and their
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 129 
 
 literary consciences (so to speak) into the keeping of The 
 Edinhurgh Rcvicio ; in whose favor, besides, those ladies 
 had the pardonable prepossessions of national pride, as a 
 collateral guarantee of that implicit faith, which, in those 
 days, stronger-minded people than they took a pride in 
 professing. Still, in defiance of prejudices mustering so 
 strongly to support their blindness, and the still stronger 
 support which this blindness drew from their total igno- 
 rance of everything either done or attempted by the lake 
 poets, these amiable women persisted in one uniform tone 
 of courteous forbearance, as often as any question arose to 
 implicate the names either of Wordsworth or Coleridge \, 
 any question about them, their books, their families, or 
 anything that was theirs. They thought it strange, indeed, 
 (for so much I heard by a circuitous course,) that promis- 
 ing and intellectual young men — men educated at great 
 universities, such as Mr. Wilson of Elleray, or myself, or 
 a few others who had paid us visits, — should possess so 
 deep a veneration for these writers ; but evidently this was 
 an infatuation — a craze, originating, perhaps, in personal 
 connections; and, as the craze of valued friends, to be 
 treated with tenderness. For us therefore — for our sakes 
 — they took a religious care to suppress all allusion to 
 these disreputable names ; and it is pretty plain how sincere 
 their indifference must have been with regard to these 
 neighboring authors, from the evidence of one fact, viz., 
 that when, in 18 IQ, Mr. Coleridge began to issue, in weekly 
 numbers, his Friend, which, by the prospectus, held forth 
 a promise of meeting all possible tastes — literary, philoso- 
 phic, pfjlitical — even this comprehensive field of interest, 
 combined with the adventitious attraction (so very unusual, 
 and so little to have been looked for in that thinly-peopled 
 region) of a local origin, from the bosom of those very 
 hills, at the foot of which (though on a different side), they 
 
 VOL. II. 9
 
 130 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 were themselves living, failed altogether to stimulate their 
 torpid curiosity; so perfect was their persuasion before- 
 hand, that no good thing could by possibility come out of 
 a community that had fallen under the ban of the Edin- 
 burgh critics. 
 
 At the same time, it is melancholy to confess that, partly 
 from the dejection of Coleridge ; his constant immersion 
 in opium at that period ; his hatred of the duties he had 
 assumed, or at least of their too frequent and periodical 
 recurrence; and partly also from the bad selection of topics 
 for a miscellaneous audience ; from the heaviness and ob- 
 scurity with which they were treated ; and from the total 
 want of variety ; in consequence of defective arrangements 
 on his part for ensuring the co-operation of his friends ; 
 no conceivable act of authorship that Coleridge could have 
 perpetrated, no possible overt act of dulness and somnolent 
 darkness that he could have authorized, was so well fitted 
 to sustain the impression, with regard to him and his friends, 
 that had pre-occupied these ladies' minds. Hales conjilen- 
 tern reum ! I am sure they would exclaim ; not perhaps 
 confessing to that form of delinquency which they had been 
 taught to expect — trivial or extravagant sentimentalism ; 
 Germanity alternating with tumid inanity ; not this, but 
 something quite as bad or worse, viz., palpable dulness — 
 dulness that could be felt and handled — rayless obscurity 
 as to the thoughts — and communicated in language that, 
 according to the Bishop of LlandafPs complaint, was not 
 always English. For, though the particular words cited 
 for blame were certainly known to the vocabulary of meta- 
 physics, and had even been employed by a writer of Queen 
 Anne's reign, (Leibnitz,) who, if any, had the gift of 
 translating dark thoughts into plain ones — still it was 
 intolerable, in point of good sense, that one who had to 
 win hh way into the public ear, should begin by bringing,
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 131 
 
 before a popular and miscellaneous aud'ence, themes that 
 could require such startling and revolting words. The 
 Delphic Oracle was the kindest of the nicknames which 
 the literary taste of Windermere conferred upon the new 
 journal. This was the laughing suggestion of a clever 
 young lady, a daughter of the Bishop of Llandaff, who 
 stood in a neutral position with regard to Coleridge. But 
 others there were amongst his supposed friends, who felt 
 even more keenly than this young lady, the shocking 
 want of adaptation to his audience in the choice of matter; 
 and, even to an audience better qualified to meet such 
 matter, the want of adaptation in the mode of publication, 
 viz., periodically, and by weekly recurrence ; a mode of 
 soliciting the public attention which even authorizes the 
 expectation of current topics — topics arising each with 
 its own week or day. One in particular I remember, of 
 these disapproving friends ; a Mr. Blair, an accomplished 
 scholar, and a frequent visiter at Elleray, who started the 
 playful scheme of a satirical rejoinder to Colerido-e's 
 Friend, under the name of The Enemy, which was to 
 follow always in the wake of its leader, and to stimulate 
 Coleridge, [at the same time that it amused the public,] by 
 attic banter, or by downright opposition, and showing fiwht 
 in good earnest. It was a plan that might have done good 
 service to the world, and chiefly through a seasonable 
 irritation (never so much wanted as then) applied to 
 Coleridge's too lethargic state: in fact, throughout life, it 
 is most deeply to be regretted that Coleridge's powers and 
 peculiar learning were never forced out into a large display 
 by intense and almost persecuting opposition. However, 
 this scheme, like thousands of other day-dreams and 
 bubbles that rose upon the breath of morning spirits and 
 buoyant youth, fell to the ground ; and, in the meantime, 
 no enemy to The Friend appeared that was capable of
 
 132 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 matching The Friend when left to itself and its own care- 
 less or vagrant guidance. The Friend ploughed heavily 
 along for nine-and-twenty numbers; and our fair recusants 
 and non-conformists in all that regarded the lake poetry 
 or authorship, the two Scottish ladies of Clappersgate, 
 found no reasons for changing their opinions ; but con- 
 tinued, for the rest of my acquaintance with them, to 
 practise the same courteous and indulgent silence, when- 
 ever the names of Coleridge or Wordsworth happened to 
 be mentioned. . 
 
 In taking leave of these Scottish ladies, it may be in- 
 teresting to mention that, previously to their final farewell 
 lo our lake society, upon taking up their permanent 
 residence in York, (which step they adopted — partly, I 
 believe, to enjoy the more diversified society which that 
 great city yields, and, at any rate, the more accessible 
 society than amongst mountain districts — partly with a 
 view to the cheapness of that rich district in comparison 
 with our stei'ile soil, poor towns, and poor agriculture,) 
 somewhere about the May or June of 1810, I think — they 
 were able, by a long preparatory course of economy, to 
 invite to the English lakes a family of foreigners — what 
 shall I call them } — a family of Anglo-Gallo-Americans, 
 from the Carolinas. The invitation had been of old 
 standing, and offered, as an expression of gratitude, from 
 these ladies, for many hospitalities and friendly services 
 rendered by the two heads of that family to Mrs. Millar, 
 in former years, and under circumstances of peculiar 
 trial. Mrs. Millar had been hastily summoned from Scot- 
 land to attend her husband at Charleston ; him, on her 
 arrival, she found dying ; and, whilst overwhelmed by 
 this sudden blow, it may be imagined that the young 
 widow would find trials enough for her fortitude, without 
 needing any addition to the load, from friepdlincss amongst
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 133 
 
 a nation of stranccers, and from total solitude. These evils 
 were spared to Mrs. Millar, through the kind ofTices and 
 disinterested exertions of an American gentleman, (French 
 by birth, but American by adoption,) M. Simond, who 
 took upon himself the cares of superintending Mr. Millar's 
 funeral through all its details; and, by this most season- 
 able service, secured to the heai't-stricken widow that most 
 welcome of privileges in all situations, the privilege of 
 unmolested privacy : for assuredly the heaviest aggrava- 
 tion of such bereavements lies in the necessity, too often 
 imposed by circumstances, upon him or upon her, who 
 may happen to be the sole responsible representative, 
 and, at the same time, the dearest friend of the deceased, 
 of superintending the funeral arrangements. In the very 
 agonies of a new-born grief, whilst the heart is yet raw 
 and bleeding, the mind not yet able to comprehend its 
 loss, the very light of day hateful to the eyes ; the neces- 
 sity, even at such a moment arises, and without a day's 
 delay, and of facing strangers, talking with strangers, 
 discussing the most empty details, with a view to the most 
 sordid of considerations — cheapness, convenience, custom, 
 and local prejudice; and, finally, talking about whom? 
 why, the very child, husband, wife, who has just been 
 torn away ; and this, too, under a consciousness that the 
 being so hallowed is, as to these strangers, an object 
 equally indifferent w'ith any one person whatsoever that 
 died a thousand years ago. Fortunate, indeed, is that 
 person who has a natural friend, or, in default of such a 
 friend, who finds a volunteer stepping forward to relieve 
 him from a conflict of feeling so peculiarly unseasonable. 
 Mrs. Millar never forgot the service which had been ren- 
 dered to her; and she was happy when M. Simond, who 
 had become a wealthy citizen of America, at length held 
 out the prospect of coming to profit by her hospitable
 
 134 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 attentions, amongst that circle of friends with whom she 
 and her sister had surrounded themselves in so interesting 
 a part of England. 
 
 M. Simond had been a French emigrant ; not, T believe, 
 so far connected with the privileged orders of his country, 
 or with any political party, as to be absolutely forced out 
 of France by danger or by panic ; but he had shared in 
 the feelings of those who were. Revolutionary France, 
 in the anarchy of the transition state, and still heaving to 
 and fro with the subsiding shocks of the great earthquake, 
 did not suit him : there was neither the polish which he 
 sought in its manners, nor the security which he sought 
 in its institutions. England he did not love ; but yet, if 
 not England, some country which had grown up from 
 English foundations was the country for him ; and, as he 
 augured no rest for France, through some generations to 
 come, but an endless succession of revolution to revolu- 
 tion, anarchy to anarchy, he judged it best that, having 
 expatriated himself and lost one country, he should 
 solemnly adopt another. Accordingly, he became an 
 American citizen. English he already spoke with pro- 
 priety and fluency. And, finally, he cemented his English 
 connections by marrying an English lady, the niece of 
 John Wilkes. 'What John Wilkes?' asked a lady, one 
 of a dinner-party at Calgarth, (the house of Dr. Watson, 
 the celebrated Bishop of Llandaff,) upon the banks of 
 Windermere. — ' What John Wilkes ? ' re-echoed the 
 Bishop, with a vehement intonation of scorn ; ' What 
 John Wilkes, indeed ! as if there ever was more than one 
 John Wilkes — fama super ccLhera notos ! ' — ' O, my 
 Lord, I beg your pardon,' said an old lady, nearly con- 
 nected with the Bishop, ' there were two ; 1 knew one of 
 them : he was a little, ill-looking man, and he kept the 
 Blue Boar at .' — ' At Flamborough Head ! ' roared
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 135 
 
 the Bishop, with a savage expression of disgust. The 
 old lady, suspecting that some screw was loose in the 
 matter, thought it prudent to drop the contest; but she 
 murmured, sotto voce, ' No, not at Flamborough Head, 
 but at Market Drayton.' Madame Simond, then, was the 
 niece, not of the ill-looking host of the Blue Boar, but of 
 tJie Wilkes, so memorably connected with the parvanimi- 
 ties of the English government at one period ; with the 
 casuistry of our English constitution, by the questions 
 raised in his person as to the effects of expulsion from 
 the House of Commons, &c. &c. ; and, finally, witli the 
 history of English jurisprudence, by his intrepidity on 
 the matter of general warrants. M. Simond's party, when 
 at length it arrived, consisted of two persons besides him- 
 self, viz., his wife, the niece of Wilkes, and a young lady 
 of eighteen, standing in the relation of grand-niece to 
 the same memorable person. This young lady, highly 
 pleasing in her person, on quitting the lake district, went 
 northwards, with her party, to Edinburgh, and there 
 became acquainted with Mr. Francis Jeffrey, the present 
 Lord Jeffrey, who naturally enough fell in love with her, 
 followed her across the Atlantic, and in Charleston, I 
 believe, received the honor of her hand in marriage. 
 
 I, as one of Mrs. Millar's friends, put in my claim to 
 entertain her American party in my turn. One long 
 summer's day, they all came over to my cottage in Gras- 
 mere ; and as it became my duty to do the honors of our 
 vale to the strangers, 1 thought that I could not discharge 
 the duty in a way more likely to interest them all, than 
 by conducting them through to Grasmere into the little 
 inner chamber of Easedale ; and there, within sight of 
 the solitary cottage, Blentarn Ghyll, telling them the 
 story of the Greens ; because, in this way, I had an op- 
 portunity, at the same time, of showing the scenery from
 
 136 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 some of the best points, and of opening to them a few 
 glimpses of the character and customs which distinguish 
 this section of the English yeomanry from others. The 
 story did certainly interest them all ; and thus far I suc- 
 ceeded in my duties as Cicerone and Amphytrion of the 
 day. Rut throughout the rest of our long morning's 
 ramble, I remember that accident, or, possibly the polite- 
 ness of M. Simond and his French sympathy with a 
 young man's natural desire to stand well in the eyes of a 
 handsome young woman, so ordered it, that I had con- 
 stantly the honor of being Miss Wilkes' immediate com- 
 panion, as the narrowness of the path pretty generally 
 threw us into ranks of two and two. Having, therefore, 
 through so many hours, the opportunity of an exclusive 
 conversation with this young lady, it would have been 
 my own fault had I failed to carry off an impression of 
 her great good sense, as well as her amiable and spirited 
 character. Certainly I did mon possible to entertain her, 
 both on her own account and as the visiter of my Scottish 
 friends. But, in the midst of all my efforts, I had the 
 mortification to feel that I was rowing against the stream ; 
 that there was a silent body of prepossession against the 
 whole camp of the lakers, which nothing could unsettle. 
 Miss Wilkes naturally looked up, with some feelings of 
 respect, to M. Simond, who, by his marriage with her 
 aunt, had become her own guardian and protector. Now, 
 M. Simond, of all the men in the world, was the last who 
 could have appreciated an English poet. He had, to 
 begin with, a French inaptitude for apprehending poetry 
 at all ; any poetry, that is, which transcends manners and 
 the interests of social life. Then, unfortunately, not 
 merel)' through what he had not, but equally through 
 what he had, this cleverish Frenchman was, by whole 
 diameters of the earth, remote from the station at which he
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 137 
 
 could comprehend Wordsworth, He was a thorough 
 knowing man of the world, keen, sharp as a razor, and 
 valuing nothing but the tangible and the ponderable. He 
 had a smattering of mechanics, of physiology, geology, 
 mineralogy, and all other ologies whatsoever; he had, 
 besides, at his fingers' ends, a huge body of statistical 
 facts — how many people did live, could live, ought to 
 live, in each particular district of each manufacturing 
 county ; how many old women of eighty-three there 
 ought to be to so many little children of one ; how many 
 murders ought to be committed in a month by each town 
 of five thousand souls ; and so on ad infinitum. And to 
 such a thin shred had his old French politeness been worn 
 down by American attrition, that his thin lips could, with 
 much ado, contrive to disguise his contempt for those who 
 failed to meet him exactly upon his own field, with ex- 
 actly his own quality of knowledge. Yet, after all, it 
 was but a little case of knowledge, that he had packed up 
 neatly for a make-shift ; just what corresponds to the little 
 assortment of razors, tooth-brushes, nail-brushes, hair- 
 brushes, cork-screw, gimlet, &c. &c., which one carries 
 in one's trunk, in a red Morocco case, to meet the casual- 
 ties of a journey. The more one was indignant at being 
 the object of such a man's contempt, the more heartily 
 did one disdain his disdain, and recalcitrate his kicks. 
 
 On the single day which- Mrs. Millar could spare for 
 Grasmere, I had taken care to ask Wordsworth amongst 
 those who were to meet the party. Wordsworth came ; 
 but, by instinct, he and Monsieur Simond knew and re- 
 coiled from each other. They met, they saw, they inter- 
 despised. Wordsworth, on his side, seemed so heartily 
 to despise M. Simond, that he did not stir or make an 
 effort to right himself under any misapprehension of the 
 Frenchman, but coolly acquiesced in any and every infer-
 
 138 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ence wliich he might be pleased to draw ; whilst M. 
 Simond, double-charged with contempt from The Edin- 
 burgh Rci'ieio, and from the report (I cannot doubt) of 
 his present hostess, manifestly thought Wordsworth too 
 abject almost for the trouble of too openly disdaining him. 
 More than one of us could have done justice on this 
 malefactor, by meeting M. Simond on his own ground, and 
 taking the conceit out of him most thoroughly. I was one 
 of those; for I had the very knowledge, or some of it, 
 that he most paraded. But one of us was lazy ; another 
 thought it not tanti ; and I, for my part, in my own house, 
 could not move upon such a service. And in those days, 
 moreover, when as yet I loved Wordsworth not less than I 
 venerated him, a success that would have made him suffer 
 in any man's opinion by comparison with myscilf, would 
 have been painful to my feelings. Never did party meet 
 more exquisitely ill-assorted ; never did party separate 
 with more exquisite and cordial disgust, in its principal 
 members, towards each other. I mention the case at all, 
 in order to illustrate the abject condition of worldly 
 opinion in which Wordsworth then lived. Perhaps his ill 
 fame was just then in its meridian; for M. Simond, soon 
 after, published his English tour in two octavo volumes; 
 and, of course, he goes over his residence at the lakes ; 
 yet it is a strong fact that, according to my remembrance, 
 he does not vouchsafe to mention such a person as 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 One anecdote, before parting with these ladies, I will 
 mention as received from Miss Cullen on her personal 
 knowledge of the fact. There are stories current which 
 resemble this; but wanting that immediate guarantee for 
 their accuracy which, in this case, I at least was obliged 
 to admit, in the attestation of so perfectly veracious a 
 reporter as this excellent lady. A female friend of her
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 
 
 139 
 
 own, a person of family and consideration, being on tho 
 eve of underUdving a visit to a remote part of tlie kingdom^ 
 dreamed that, on reaching the end of her journey, and 
 drawing up to the steps of the door, a footman, with a 
 very marked and forbidding expression of countenance, 
 his complexion pale and bloodless, and his manners sullen, 
 presented himself to let down the steps of her carriage. 
 This same man, at a subsequent point of her dream, ap- 
 peared to be stealing up a private staircase, with some 
 murderous instruments in bis hands, towards a bed-room 
 door. This dream was repeated, I think, twice. Some 
 time after, the lady, accompanied by a grown-up daughter, 
 accomplished her journey. Great was the shock which 
 awaited her on reaching her friend's house : a servant, 
 corresponding in all points to the shadowy outline of 
 her dream, equally bloodless in complexion, and equally 
 gloomy in manner, appeared at her carriage door. The 
 issue of the story was — that upon a particular night, 
 after a stay of some length, the lady grew unaccountably 
 nervous; resisted her feelings for some time; but at 
 length, at the entreaty of her daughter, who slept in the 
 same room, suffered some communication of the case to 
 be made to a gentleman resident in the house, who had 
 not yet retired to rest. This gentleman, struck by the 
 dream, and still more on recalling to mind some suspicious 
 preparations, as if for a hasty departure, in which he had 
 detected the servant, waited in concealment until three 
 o'clock in the morning — at which time hearing a stealthy 
 step moving up the staircase, he issued with fire-arms, and 
 met the man at the lady's door, so equipped as to leave no 
 doubt of his intentions ; which possibly contemplated only 
 robbing of the lady's jewels, but possibly also murder in a 
 case of extremity. There are other stories with some of 
 the same circumstances ; and, in particular, I remember
 
 140 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 one very like it in Dr. Abercrombie's ' Inquiries Concern- 
 ing the Intellectual Powers,' [1830,] p. 283. But in this 
 version of Dr. Abercrombie's, (supposing it another ver- 
 sion of the same story,) the striking circumstance of 
 anticipating the servant's features is omitted ; and in no 
 version, except this of Miss Cullen's, have I heard the 
 names mentioned both of the parties to the affair, and 
 also of the place at which it occurred.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 
 
 Immediately below the little village of Clappersgate, in 
 which the Scottish ladies resided — Mrs. Millar and Mrs. 
 Cullen — runs the wild mountain river called the Brathay^ 
 which, descending from Langdale head, and soon after 
 becoming confluent with the Rothay, (a brook-like stream 
 that comes originally from Easedale, and lakes its course 
 through the two lakes of Grasmere and Rydal,) finally 
 composes a considerable body of water, that flows along, 
 deep, calm, and steady — no longer brawling, bubbling, 
 tumultuous — into the splendid lake of Windermere, the 
 largest of our English waters ; or, if not, at least the 
 longest, and of the most extensive circuit. Close to this 
 little river, Brathay, on the farther side, as regards Clap- 
 persgate, (and what, though actually part and parcel of a 
 district that is severed by the sea, or by Westmoreland, 
 from Lancashire proper, is yet, from some old legal usage, 
 denominated the Lancashire side of the Brathay,) stands 
 a modest family mansion, called Low Brathay, by way of 
 distinction from another and a larger mansion, about a 
 quarter of a mile beyond it, which, standing upon a little 
 eminence, is called High Brathay. 
 
 In this house of Low Brathay lived, and continued to 
 live, for many years, (in fact, until misery, in its sharpest
 
 142 LITEKARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 form, drove him from his licarlh and his household hap» 
 
 piqess,) Charles L , the younger ; — on his own 
 
 account, and for his personal qualities, worthy of a sepa- 
 rate notice in any biography, howsoever sparing in its 
 digressions ; but, viewed in reference to his fortunes, 
 amongst the most interesting men I have known. Never 
 do I reflect upon his hard fate, and the bitter though 
 mysterious persecution of body which pursued him, 
 dogged him, and thickened as life advanced, but I feel 
 gratitude to Heaven for my own exemption from suffering 
 in tliat particular form ; and, in the midst of afflictions, 
 of which two or three have been most hard to bear, 
 because not unmingled with pangs of remorse for the 
 share which I myself may have had in causing them — 
 
 still, by comparison with the lot of Charles L , I 
 
 acknowledge my own to have been happy and serene. 
 Ah'eady, on my first hasty visit to Grasmere in 1807, I 
 
 found Charles L settled with his family at Brathay, 
 
 and a resident there, I believe, of some standing. It was 
 on a wet gloomy evening ; and Miss Wordsworth and I 
 were returning from an excursion to Esthwaite AVater, 
 when, suddenly, in the midst of blinding rain, without 
 previous notice, she said — Pray, let us call for a few 
 minutes at this house. A garden gate led us into a little 
 shrubbery, chiefly composed of lawns beautifully kept, 
 through which ran a gravel road, just wide enough to 
 admit a single carriage. A minute or so saw us housed 
 in a small comfortable drawing-room, but with no signs of 
 liviniT creatures near it; and, from the accident of double 
 doors, all covered with baize, being scattered about the 
 house, the whole mansion seemed the palace of silence, 
 though populous, I understood, with childi'en. In no long 
 
 time appeared Mr. L ; soon followed by his youthful 
 
 wife, both radiant with kindness ; and it may be sujjposed
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 143 
 
 that we were not suffered to depart for some liours. I 
 call Mrs. L youthful ; and so I might call her hus- 
 band ; for both were youthful, considered as the parents of 
 a numerous family, six or seven children then living — 
 
 Charles L himself not being certainly more than 
 
 twenty-seven, and his ' Sophia ' perhaps not tvvcnty- 
 five. 
 
 On that short visit I saw enough to interest me in both ; 
 and two years after, when I became myself a permanent 
 resident in Grasmere, the connection between us became 
 close and intimate. My cottage stood just five miles 
 from Brathay ; and there were two mountain roads which 
 shortened the space between us, though not the time nor 
 the toil. But, notwithstanding this distance, often and 
 often, upon the darkest nights, for many years, I used to 
 go over about nine o'clock, or an hour later, and sit with 
 
 him till one. Mrs. L was simply an amiable young 
 
 woman, of pleasing person, perfectly well principled, and, 
 as a wife and mother, not surpassed by anybody I have 
 known in either of those characters. In 'fisi-ire she some- 
 what resembled the ever memorable and most excellent 
 ]\Irs. Jordan: she was exactly of the middle heiglit, and 
 having that slight degree of cmhonpoint, even in youth, 
 which never through life diminishes or increases. Her 
 complexion may be imagined, from the circumstances of 
 her hair being tinged witli a slight and not unpleasing 
 shade of red. Finally, in manners, she was remarkably 
 self-possessed, free from all awkard embarrassment, and 
 (to an extent which some people would wonder at in one 
 who had been brought up, 1 believe, wholly in a great 
 commercial town) perfectly lady-like. So much descrip- 
 tion is due to one, who, though no authoress, and never 
 making the slightest pretension to talents, was too much 
 connected subsequently with the lakers to be passed over
 
 144 '"literary reminiscences. 
 
 in a review of their community. Ah ! gentle lady ! your 
 head, after struggling through many a year with strange 
 calamities, has found rest at length ; but not in English 
 ground, or amongst the mountains which you loved : at 
 Versailles it is, and perhaps within a stone's throw of that 
 Mrs. Jordan whom in so many things you resembled, and 
 most of all in the misery which settled upon your latter 
 years. There you lie, and for ever, whose blooming 
 matronly figure rises up to me at this moment from a 
 depth of thirty years ! and your children scattered into all 
 lands. 
 
 But for Charles L , he, by his literary worlcs, is so 
 
 far known to the public, that, on his own account, he 
 merits some separate notice. His poems do not place 
 him in the class of powerful poets ; they are loosely 
 conceived — faultily even at times — and not finished in 
 the execution. But they have a real and a mournful 
 merit under one aspect, which might be so presented to 
 the general reader as to win a peculiar interest for many 
 of them, and for some a permanent place in any judicious 
 thesaurus — such as we may some day hope to see drawn 
 ofi", and carefully filtered, from the enormous mass of 
 poetry produced since the awakening era of the French 
 Revolution. This aspect is founded on the relation which 
 they bear to the real events and the unexaggerated afflic- 
 tions of his own life. The feelings which he attempts to 
 express were not assumed for effect, nor drawn by sug- 
 gestion from others, and then transplanted into some ideal 
 experience of his own. They do not belong to the mimetic 
 poetry so extensively cultivated, but they were true solitary 
 sighs, wrung from his own meditative heart by excess of 
 suffering, and by the yearning after old scenes and house- 
 hold faces of an impassioned memory, brooding over 
 vanished happiness, and cleaving to those early times
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 145 
 
 when life wore even for his eyes the golden light of 
 Paradise. But he had other and higher accomplishments 
 of inlcllect than he showed in his verses, as I shall pres- 
 ently explain ; and of a nature which make it diflicult 
 to bring them adequately within the reader's apprehen- 
 sion. 
 
 Meantime, I will sketch an outline of poor L 's 
 
 history, so far as I can pretend to know it. He was the 
 son, and probably his calamitous life originally dated 
 from his being the son, of Quaker parents. It was said, 
 indeed, by himself as well as others, that the mysterious 
 malady which haunted him, had been derived from an 
 ancestress in the maternal line ; and this may have been 
 true; and, for all that, it may also be true that Quaker 
 habits were originally answerable for this legacy of wo. 
 It is sufHciently well known that, in the training of their 
 young people, the Society of Friends make it a point of 
 conscience to apply severe checks to all open manifesta- 
 tions of natural feeling, or of exuberant spirits. Not the 
 passions — they are beyond their control — but the ex- 
 pression of those passions by any natural language ; this 
 they lay under the heaviest restraint ; and, in many cases, 
 it is possible that such a system of thwarting nature may 
 do no great mischief; just as we see the American 
 Indians, in moulding the plastic skulls of their infants 
 into capricious shapes, do not, after all, much disturb the 
 ordinary course of nature, nor produce the idiots we might 
 have expected. But, then, the reason why such tampering 
 may often terminate in slight results is, because often there 
 is not much to tamper with ; the machinery is so slight, 
 and the total range within which it plays is perhaps so 
 narrow, that the difference between its normal action and 
 its widest deviation may, after all, be practically unim- 
 portant. For there are many men and women of whom 
 
 VOL. II. 10
 
 146 LITERAEY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 I have already said, borrowing the model of the word 
 from Hartley, that they have not so much passions as 
 passiundes. These, however, are in one extreme ; and 
 others there are and will be, in every class, and under 
 every disadvantage, who are destined to illustrate the very 
 opposite extreme. Great passions — passions pointing to 
 the paths of love, of ambition, of glory, martial or literary 
 — these in men — and in women, again, these, either in 
 some direct shape, or taking the form of intense sympathy 
 with the same passions as moving amongst contemporary 
 men — loill gleam out fitfully amongst the placid children 
 of Fox and Penn, not less than amongst us who profess 
 no war with the nobler impulses of our nature. And, per- 
 haps, according to the Grecian doctrine of anliperislasis., 
 strong untameable passions are more likely to arise, even 
 in consequence of the counteraction. Deep passions un- 
 doubtedly lie in the blood and constitution of Englishmen ; 
 and Quakers,* after all, do not, by being such, cease, 
 therefore, to be Englishmen. 
 
 It is, I have said, sufficiently well known that the 
 Quakers make it a point of their moral economy to lay 
 the severest restraints upon all ebullitions of feeling. 
 Whatever may be the nature of the feeling, whatever its 
 strength, utter itself by word or by gesture it must not ; 
 smoulder it may, but it must not break into a flame. This 
 is known ; but it is not equally known that this unnatural 
 restraint, falling into collision with two forces at once, the 
 
 * In using Ibe term Quakers, I hoped it would have been understood, 
 even without any explanation from myself, that I did not mean to use it 
 scornfully or insultingly to that respectable body. But it was the great 
 oversight of their founders not to have saved them from a nickname, by 
 assuming some formal designation expressive of some capital character- 
 istic. At present one is in this dilemma ; either one must use a tedious 
 periphrasis, {e. g.^lhc young women of the Society of Friends,) or the 
 ambiguous one of young female Friends.
 
 CHARLES LLOYD, 147 
 
 force of passion and of youth, not uncommonly records 
 its own injurious tendencies, and publislics the rebellious 
 movements of nature, by distinct and anomalous diseases. 
 And further, I have been assured, upon most excellent 
 authority, that these diseases, strange and elaborate affec- 
 tions of the nervous system, are found exclusively amongst 
 the young men and women of the Quaker society ; that 
 they are known and understood exclusively amongst 
 physicians who have practised in great towns having a 
 large Quaker population, such as Birmingham ; that they 
 assume a new type, and a more inveterate character, in 
 the second or third generation, to whom this fatal inherit- 
 ance is often transmitted ; and finally, that, if this class 
 of nervous derangements does not increase so inuch as to 
 attract public attention, it is simply because the community 
 itself — the Quaker body — does not increase, but, on the 
 contrary, is rather on the wane. 
 
 From a progenitrix, then, no matter in what generation, 
 
 C. L inherited that awful malady which withered his 
 
 own happiness, root and branch, gathering strength from 
 year to year. His father was a banker, and, I presume, 
 wealthy, from the ample allowance which he always made 
 to his son Charles. Charles, it is true, had the rights of 
 primogeniture — which, however, in a commercial family, 
 are not considerable — but, at the same time, though eldest, 
 he was eldest of seventeen or eighteen brothers and sisters ; 
 and of these, I believe, that some round dozen or so were 
 living at the time when 1 first came to know him. He had 
 been educated in the bosom of Quaker society ; his own 
 parents, with most of their friends, were Quakers ; and, 
 even of his own generation, all the young women con- 
 tinued Quakers, Naturally, therefore, as a boy, he also 
 was obliged to conform to the Quaker ritual. But this 
 ritual presses with great inequality upon the two sexes ;
 
 148 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 in SO far, at least, as regards dress. The distinctions of 
 dress which announce the female Quaker, are all in her 
 favor. In a nation eminent for personal purity, and where 
 it should seem beforehand impossible for any woman to 
 create a pre-eminence for herself in that respect ; so it is, 
 however, that the female Quaker, by her dress, seems 
 even purer than other women, and consecrated to a ser- 
 vice of purity ; earthly soil or taint, even the sullying 
 breath of mortality, seems as if kept aloof from her per- 
 son — forcibly held in repulsion by some protecting sanc- 
 tity. This transcendent purity, and a nun-like gentleness, 
 self-respect, and sequestration from the world — these are 
 all that her peculiarity of dress expresses ; and surely this 
 'all' is quite enough to win every man's favorable "feel- 
 ings towards her, and something even like homage. But, 
 with the male Quaker, how different is the case ! His 
 dress — originally not remarkable by its shape, but solely 
 by its color and want of ornament, so peculiar has it be- 
 come in a lapse of nearly two centuries — seems expressly 
 devised to point him out to ridicule. In some towns, it is 
 true, such as Birmingham and Kendal, the public eye is 
 so familiar with this costume, that in them it excites no 
 feeling whatever more than the professional costume of 
 butchers, bakers, grooms, &c. But in towns not com- 
 mercial — towns of luxury and parade — a Quaker is ex- 
 posed to most mortifying trials of his self-esteem. It has 
 happened that 1 have followed a young man of this order 
 for a quarter of ^i mile, in Buth, or in one of the fashiona- 
 ble streets of London, on a summer evening, when numer- 
 ous servants were lounging on the steps of the front door, 
 or at the area gates ; and I have seen him run the gaunt- 
 let of grim smiles from the men, and heard him run the 
 gauntlet of that sound — the worst which heaven has in 
 its artillery of scorn against the peace of poor man — the
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 149 
 
 half-suppressed titter of the women. Laughing outright 
 is bfid, but still that may be construed into a determinate 
 insult that studiously avows more contempt than is really 
 felt ; but tittering is hell itself; for it seems mere nature, 
 and absolute truth, that extort this expression of contempt 
 in spite of every effort to suppress it. 
 
 Some such expression it was that drove Charles L 
 
 into an early apostacy from his sect : early it must have 
 been, for he went at the usual age of eighteen to Cam- 
 bridge, and there, as a Quaker, he could not have been 
 received. He, indeed, of all men, was the least fitted to 
 contend with the world's scorn, for he had no great forti- 
 tude of mind, his vocation was not to martyrdom, and he 
 was cursed with the most exquisite sensibility. This sen- 
 sibility, indeed, it was, and not so properly any determinate 
 passion, which had been the scourge of his ancestress. 
 There was something that appeared effeminate about it; 
 and which, accordingly, used to provoke the ridicule of 
 Wordsworth, whose character, in all its features, wore a 
 masculine and Roman harshness. But, in fact, when you 
 
 came to know Charles L , there was, even in this 
 
 slight tinge of effeminacy, something which conciliated 
 your pity by the feeling that it impressed you with, of 
 being part of his disease. His sensibility was eminently 
 Rousseaiiish — that is, it was physico-moral ; now pointing 
 to appetites that would have mastered him had he been 
 less intellectual, and governed by a less exalted standard 
 of moral perceptions ; now pointing to fine aerial specu- 
 lations, subtle as a gossamer, and apparently calculated to 
 lead him off into abstractions even too remote from flesh 
 and blood. 
 
 During the Cambridge vacation, or, it might be, even 
 before he went to Cambridge — and my reason for think- 
 ing so is, because both, I believe, belonged to the same
 
 150 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 town, if it could not be said of them as of Pyramus and 
 Thisbe, that ' contiguas hahuere domos'' — he fell despe- 
 rately in love with Miss Sophia P n. Who she was I 
 
 never heard — that is, what were her connections ; but, I 
 presume, that she must have been of an opulent family, 
 because Mrs. P n, the mother of Mrs. L , occa- 
 sionally paid a visit to her daughter at the lakes ; and that 
 she brought with her a handsomely-appointed equipage, 
 as to horses and servants. This I have reason to remem- 
 ber from the fact of herself and her daughter frequently 
 coming' over on summer evenings to drink tea with me, 
 and the affront (as I then thought it) which Wordsworth 
 fastened upon me in connection with one of those visits. 
 One evening, ****** 
 
 A pang of wrath gathered at my heart. Yet why .? 
 One moment, I felt, indeed, that it was not gentlemanly to 
 interfere with the privileges of any man standing in the 
 situation which I then occupied, of host; but still I should 
 not have regarded it, except from its connection with a 
 case I recollected in a previous year. One fine summer 
 day, we were walking together — Wordsworth, myself, 
 and Southcy. Southey had been making earnest inquiries 
 
 about poor L , just then in the crisis of some severe 
 
 illness, and Wordsworth's answer had been partly lost to 
 me. I put a question upon it, when, to my surprise, (my 
 wrath internally, but also to my special amusement,) he 
 replied that, in fact, what he had said was a matter of 
 some delicacy, and not quite proper to be communicated 
 except to near friejids of the family. This to me ! — O 
 ye Gods ! — to me, who knew by many a hundred con- 
 versations, how disagreeable Wordsworth was, both to 
 
 Charles L and to his wife ; whilst, on the other 
 
 hand — not by words only, but by deeds, and by the most 
 delicate acts of confidential favor — 1 knew that Mr. Wil-
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 151 
 
 son (Professor Wilson) and myself had been selected as 
 friends in cases which were not so much as named to 
 Wordsworth. The arrogance of Wordsworth was well 
 illustrated in this case of the L 's. 
 
 But to resume L 's history. Being so desperately 
 
 in love with Miss P n, and his parents being rich, why 
 
 should he not have married her ? Why I know not. But 
 some great obstacles arose; and, I presume, on the side 
 of Miss P n's friends; for, actually, it became neces- 
 sary to steal her away ; and the person in whom L 
 
 confided for this delicate service, was no other than 
 Southey. A better choice he could not have made. ■ Had 
 the lady been Helen of Greece, Southey would not> have 
 had a thouijht but for the honor and interests of his con- 
 fid in g friend. 
 
 Having thus, by proxy, run away with his young wife, 
 
 and married her, L brought her to Cambridge. It is 
 
 a novel thing in Cambridge, though not altogether unpre- 
 cedented, for a student to live there with a wife. This 
 
 novelty L exhibited to the University for some time ; 
 
 but then, finding the situation not perfectly agreeable to 
 the delicate sensibilities of his young wife, L re- 
 moved, first, I think, to Penrith ; and, after some changes, 
 he settled down at Brathay, from which, so long as he 
 stayed on English ground — that is, for about fifteen or 
 sixteen years — he never moved. When I first crossed 
 his path at the lakes, he was in the zenith of the brief 
 happiness that was granted to him on earth. He stood in 
 the very centre of earthly pleasures ; and, that his advan- 
 tages may be easily estimated, I will describe both himself 
 and his situation. 
 
 First, then, as to his person, he was tall and somewhat 
 clumsy — not intellectual so much as benign and concilia- 
 tory in his expression of face. His features were not
 
 152 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 striking, but they expressed great goodness of heart ; and 
 latterly wore a deprecatory expression that was peculiarly 
 touchincr to those who knew its cause. His manners were 
 free from all modes of vulgarity ; and, where he acquired 
 his knowledge I know not, (for I never heard him claim 
 any connection with people of rank,) but a knowledge he 
 certainly had of all the conventional usages amongst the 
 higher circles, and of those purely arbitrary customs 
 which mere good sense and native elegance of manner 
 are not, of themselves, sufficient to teach. Some of these 
 he might have learned from the family of the Bishop of 
 LlandafT; for with the ladies of that family he was inti- 
 mate, especially with the eldest daughter, who was an 
 accomplished student in that very department of literature 
 
 which L himself most cultivated, viz., all that class 
 
 of works which deal in the analysis of human passions, 
 or attempt to exhibit the development of human charac- 
 ter, in relation to sexual attachments, when placed in 
 
 trying circunistances. L corresponded with Miss 
 
 Watson in French ; the letters, on both sides, being full 
 of spirit and originality; the subjects generally drawn 
 from Rousseau's ' Ileloise ' or his ' Confessions,' from 
 ' Corinne,' from ' Delphine,' or some other work of Ma- 
 dame de Stael. For such disquisitions L had a real 
 
 and a powerful genius. It was really a delightful luxury 
 to hear him giving free scope to his powers for investi- 
 gating subtle combinations of character; for distinguish- 
 ing all the shades and affinities of some presiding qualities, 
 disentangling their intricacies, and balancing, antithetic- 
 ally, one combination of qualities against another. Take, 
 for instance, any well-known character from the drama, 
 
 and pique L 's delicate perception of differences by 
 
 affecting to think it identical with some other character 
 of the same class — instantly, in his anxiety to mark out
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 153 
 
 the features of dissimilitude, he would hurry into an im- 
 promptu analysis of each character separately, with an 
 eloquence, with a keenness of distinction, and a felicity of 
 phrase, whicli were perfectly admirable. This display of 
 familiarity with life and human nature, in all its masquer- 
 adincTs, was sometimes truly splendid. But two things 
 were remarkable in these displays. One was, that the 
 splendor was quite hidden from himself, and unpercelved 
 amidst the effort of mind, and oftentimes severe struggles, 
 in attempting to do himself justice, both as respected the 
 thousihts and the difhcult task of clothing them in ade- 
 quate words ; he was as free from vanity, or even from 
 complacency in reviewing what he had effected, as it is 
 possible for a human creature to be. He thought, indeed, 
 slightly of his own power; and, which was even a stronger 
 barrier against vanity, his displays of this kind were always 
 effective in proportion to his unhappiness ; for unhappiness 
 it was, and the restlessness of internal irritation, that chiefly 
 drove him to exertions of his intellect ; else, and when free 
 from this sort of excitement, he tended to the quiescent 
 state of a listener ; for he thought everybody better than 
 himself. The other point remarkable in these displays 
 was, (and most unfavorable, of course, it proved to his 
 obtaining the reputation they merited,) that he could suc- 
 ceed in them only before confidential friends, those on 
 whom he could rely for harboring no shade of ridicule 
 towards himself or his theme. Let but one person enter 
 the room of whose sympathy he did not feel secure, and 
 his powers forsook him as suddenly as the buoyancy of a 
 bird that has received a mortal shot in its wing. Accord- 
 ingly, it is a fact that neither Wordsworth nor Coleridge 
 ever suspected the amount of power which was latent in 
 
 L ; for he firmly believed that both of them despised 
 
 him. Mrs. L thought the same thing. Often and
 
 154 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 often she has saM to me, smiling in a mournful way — 
 ' I know too well that both Wordsworth and Coleridge 
 entertain a profound contempt for my poor Charles.' 
 And, when I combated this notion, declaring that, although 
 they might (and probably did) hold very cheap such 
 writers as Rousseau and Madame de Stael, and, conse- 
 quently, could not approve of studies directed so exclu- 
 sively o their works, or to works of the same class, still 
 that was not sufficient to warrant them in undervaluing 
 
 the powers which Mr. L applied to such studies. To 
 
 this, or similar arguments, she would reply by simply 
 shaking her head, and then sink into silence. 
 
 But the time was fast approaching, when all pains of 
 this kind, from supercilious or well founded disparagement, 
 were to be swallowed up in more awful considerations 
 and fears. The transition was not a long one, from the 
 
 state of prosperity in which I found L about 1807-10, 
 
 to the utter overthrow of his happiness, and, for his 
 friends, the overthrow of all hopes on his behalf. In the 
 three years I have assigned, his situation seemed luxu- 
 riously happy, as regarded the external elements of 
 happiness. He had, without effort of his own, an income, 
 most punctually remitted from his father, of from ^^1500 
 to c£l800 per annum. This income was entirely resigned 
 to the management of his prudent and excellent wife ; 
 and, as his own personal expenses, separate from those of 
 his family, were absolutely none at all, except for books, 
 she applied the whole, either to the education of her 
 children, or to the accumulation of all such elegances of 
 life about their easy unpretending mansion, as might 
 soothe her husband's nervous irritations, or might cheer 
 his drooping spirits, with as much variety of pleasure as a 
 mountainous seclusion allowed. The establishment of 
 servants was usually limited to six — one only being a
 
 CHAKLES LLOYD. 
 
 155 
 
 man servant — but these were well chosen : and one or 
 two were confidential servants, tried by long experience. 
 Rents are always low in the country for unfurnished 
 houses ; and even for the country, Low Brathay was a 
 cheap house ; but. it contained everything for comfort, 
 nothing at all for splendor. Consequendy, a very large 
 part of their income was disposable for purposes of hos- 
 pitality ; and, when I first knew them, Low Brathay was 
 distinguished above every other house at the head of 
 Windermere, or within ten miles of that neighborhood, by 
 the judicious assortment of its dinner parties, and the 
 gaiety of its soirees dansanies. These parties were 
 
 never crowded ; poor L rarely danced himself ; but 
 
 it gladdened his benevolent heart to see the young and 
 blooming floatincr through the mazes of the dances then 
 fashionable, whilst he sat by looking on, at times, with 
 pleasure from his sympathy with the pleasure of others ; 
 at times pursuing some animated discussion with a literary 
 friend ; at times lapsing into profound reverie. At some 
 of these dances it was that I first saw Wilson of EUeray, 
 (Professor Wilson,) in circumstances of animation, and 
 buoyant with youthful spirits, under the excitement of 
 lights, wine, and, above all, of female company. He, by 
 the way, was the best male dancer (not professional) I 
 have ever seen ; and this advantage he owed entirely to the 
 extraordinary strength of his foot in all its parts, to its pecu- 
 liarly happy conformation, and to the accuracy of his ear ; 
 for, as to instruction, I have often understood, from his fam- 
 ily, that he never had any. Here also danced the future 
 
 wife of Professor Wilson, Miss Jane P , at that time the 
 
 leading belle of the Lake country. But, perhaps, the 
 most interesting person in those parties, from the peculiar- 
 ity of her situation, was Mrs. L herself, still young, 
 
 and, indeed, not apparently exceeding in years most of
 
 156 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 her unmarried visiters ; still dancing and moving through 
 cotillons, or country dances, as elegantly and as lightly 
 as the youngest of the company ; still framing her coun- 
 tenance to that expression of cheerfulness which hospitality 
 required ; but stealing for ever troubled glances to the 
 sofa, or the recess, where her husband had reclined 
 himself — dark foreboding looks, that saw but too truly 
 the coming darkness which was soon to swallow up every 
 vestige of this festal pleasure. She looked upon herself 
 and her children too clearly as a doomed household ; and 
 such, in some sense, they were. And, doubtless, to poor 
 
 L himself, it must a thousandfold have aggravated 
 
 his sufferings — that he could trace, with a steady eye, the 
 continual growth of that hideous malady which was 
 stealing over the else untroubled azure of his life, and 
 whh inaudible foot was hastening onwards for ever to that 
 night in which no man can work, and in which no man 
 can hope. 
 
 It was so painful to Charles L , naturally, to talk 
 
 much about his bodily sufferings, and it would evidently 
 have been so unfeeling in one who had no medical coun- 
 sels to offer, if, for the mere gratification of his curiosity, 
 he had asked for any circumstantial account of its nature or 
 symptoms, that I am at this moment almost as much at a 
 loss to understand what was the mode of suffering which 
 it produced, how it operated, and through what organs, as 
 any of my readers can be. All that 1 know is this : — For 
 several years — six or seven, suppose — the disease ex- 
 pressed itself by intense anguish of irritation ; not an 
 irritation that gnawed at any one local spot, but diffused 
 itself; sometimes causing a determination of blood to the 
 head, then shaping itself in a general sense of plethoric 
 congestion in the blood-vessels, then again remoulding 
 itself into a restlessness that became insupportable ;
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 157 
 
 preying upon the spirits and the fortitude, and finding no 
 permanent relief or periodic Interval of rest, night or day. 
 Sometimes L used robust exercise, riding on horse- 
 back as fast as he could urge the horse forward ; some- 
 times, foj: many weeks together, he walked for twenty 
 miles, or even more, at a time ; sometimes (this was in 
 the earlier stages of the case) he took large doses of ether ; 
 sometimes he used opium, and, I believe, in very large 
 quantities ; and I understood him to say that, for a time, it 
 subdued the excess of irritability, and the agonizing 
 accumulation of spasmodic strength which he felt for ever 
 growing upon him, and, as it were, upon the very surface 
 of his whole body. But all remedies availed him nothing; 
 and once he said to me, when we were out upon the hills 
 — * Ay, that landscape below, with its quiet cottage, looks 
 lovely, I dare say, to you : as for me, I see it, but 1 feel it 
 not at all ; for, if I begin to think of the happiness, and 
 its various modes which, no doubt, belong to the various 
 occupants, according to their ages and hopes, then I could 
 begin to feel it ; but it would be a painful effort to me ; 
 and ihe worst of all would be, when I had felt it ; for 
 that would so sharpen the prospect before mc, that just 
 such happiness, which natura'lly ought to be mine, is soon 
 on the point of slipping away from me for ever.' 
 
 Afterwards he told me that his situation internally was 
 always this — it seemed to him as if on some distant road 
 he heard a dull trampling sound, and that he knew it, by 
 a misgiving, to be the sound of some man, or party of 
 men, continually advancing slowly, continually threaten- 
 ing, or continually accusing liim ; that all the various 
 artifices which he practised for cheating himself into 
 comfort, or beguiling his sad forebodings, were, in fact, 
 but like so many furious attempts, by drum and trumpets, 
 or even by artillery, to drown the distant noise of his
 
 158 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 enemies ; that, every now and then, mere curiosity, or 
 rather breathless anxiety, caused him to hush the artificial 
 din, and to put himself into the attitude of listening again ; 
 when, again and again, and so he was sure it would still 
 be, he caught the sullen and accursed sound, trampling 
 and voices of men, or whatever it were, still steadily 
 advancing, though still, perhaps, at a great distance. It 
 was too evident that derangement of the intellect, in some 
 shape, was coming on ; because slight and transient fits of 
 aberration from his perfect mind, had already, at intervals, 
 overtaken him ; flying showers, from the skirts of the 
 clouds, that precede and announce the main storm. This 
 was the anguish of his situation, that, for years, he saw 
 before him what was on the road to overwhelm his 
 faculties and his happiness. Still his fortitude did not 
 wholly forsake him, and, in fact, proved to be far greater 
 than I or others had given him credit for possessing. Once 
 only he burst suddenly into tears, on hearing the innocent 
 voices of his own children laughing, and of one especially 
 who was a favorite ; and he told me that sometimes, when 
 this little child took his hand and led him passively about 
 the garden, he had a feeling that prompted him (however 
 weak and foolish it seemed) to call upon tliis child for 
 protection; and that it seemed to him as if he might still 
 escape, could he but surround himself only with children. 
 No doubt this feeling arose out of his sense that a confu- 
 sion was stealing over his thoughts, and that men would 
 soon find this out to be madness, and would deal with him 
 accordingly; whereas children, as long as he did them no 
 harm, would see no reason for shutting him up from his 
 own fireside, and from the human face divine. 
 
 It would be too painful to pursue the unhappy case 
 through all its stages. For a long time, the derangement 
 of poor L 's mind was but partial and fluctuating ;
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 159 
 
 and it was the opinion of Professor Wilson, from \\hat ho 
 had observed, that it was possible to recall him to himself 
 by firmly opposing his delusions. He certainly, on his 
 own part, did whatever he could to wean his thoughts from 
 gloomy contemplation, by preoccupying them with cheer- 
 ful studies, and such as might call out his faculties. He 
 translated the whole of Alfieri's dramas, and published 
 his translation. He wro e and printed (but did not 
 publish) a novel in two volumes ; my copy of which he 
 soon after begged back again so beseechingly, that I 
 yielded ; and so, I believe, did all his other friends : in 
 which case no copy may now exist. A I, however, 
 availed him not ; the crisis so long dreaded arrived. He 
 was taken away to a lunatic asylum ; and, for some lonnr 
 time, he was lost to me as to the rest of the world. The 
 first memorial I had of him, was a gentleman, with his 
 hair in disorder, rushing into my cottage at Grasmere, 
 throwing his arms about my neck, and bursting into stormy 
 
 weeping — it was poor L ! 
 
 Yes, it was indeed poor L , a fugitive from a mad- 
 house, and throwing himself for security upon the honor 
 and affection of one whom, with good reason, he supposed 
 confidentially attached to him. Could there be a situation 
 so full of interest or perplexity ? Should any ill happen 
 to himself, or to another, though his present enlargement 
 — should he take any fit of vindictive malice against any 
 person whom he might view as an accomplice in the plans 
 against his own freedom, and probably many persons in 
 the neighborhood, medical and non-medical, stood liable 
 to such a suspicion — upon me, I felt, as the abettor of 
 his evasion, would all the blame settle. And unfortunately 
 we had, in the recent records of this very vale, a most 
 awful lesson, and still fresh in everybody's remembrance, 
 of the danger connected with this sort of criminal con-
 
 160 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 nivance, or passive participation in the purposes of 
 maniacal malignity. A man, named Watson, had often 
 and for years threatened to kill his aged and inoffensive 
 mother. His threats, partly from their own monstrosity, 
 and from the habit of hearing him for years repeating 
 them without any serious attempt to give them effect — 
 partly also from an unwillingness to aggravate the suffer- 
 ing of the poor lunatic, by translating him out of a 
 mountaineer's liberty, into the gloomy confinement of an 
 hospital — were treated with neglect ; and at lengih, after 
 years of disregarded menace, and direct forewarning to 
 the parish authorities, he took an opportunity (which 
 indeed was rarely wanting to him) of killing the poor 
 gray-headed woman, by her own fireside. This case I 
 had before my mind ; and it was the more entitled to 
 have weisjht with me when connected with the altered 
 
 temper of L , who now, for the first time in his life, 
 
 had dropped his gentle and remarkably quiet demeanor, 
 for a tone, savage and ferocious, towards more than one 
 individual. This tone, however, lurked under a mask, 
 and did not come forward, except by fits and starts, for 
 the present. Indeed his whole inanner wore the appear- 
 ance of studied dissimulation, from the moment wlien he 
 perceived that I was not alone. In the interval of years 
 since I had last seen him, (which might have been in 
 1818,) my own marriage had taken place ; accordingly, 
 on turning round and seeing a young woman seated at 
 the tea-table, where heretofore he had been so sure of 
 finding me alone, he seemed shocked at the depth of 
 emotion which he had betrayed before a stranger, and 
 anxious to reinstate himself in his own self-respect, by 
 assuming a tone of carelessness and indifference. No 
 person in the world could feel more profoundly on his 
 account than the young stranger before him, who in fact
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 161 
 
 was not a stranger to his situation and the excess of his 
 misery. But this he could not know ; and it was not, 
 therefore, until we found ourselves alone, that he could be 
 prevailed upon to speak of himself, or of the awful cir- 
 cumstances surrounding him, unless in terms of most 
 unsuitable levity. 
 
 One thing I resolved, at any rate, to make the rule of my 
 conduct towards this unhappy friend, viz., to deal frankly 
 with him, and in no case to make myself a party to any 
 plot upon his personal freedom. Retaken I knew he would 
 be, but not through me ; even a murderer in such a case, 
 (i. e., the case of having thrown himself upon my good 
 faith,) I would not betray. I drew from him an account of 
 the immediate facts in his late escape and his own ac- 
 knowledgment that even now the pursuit must be close at 
 hand ; probably, that his recaptors were within a few hours' 
 distance of Grasmere ; that he would be easily traced. 
 That my cottage furnished no means of concealment, he 
 knew too well ; still in these respects he was not worse off 
 in Grasmere than elsewhere ; and, at any rate, it might 
 save him from immediate renewal of his agitation, and 
 might procure for him one night of luxurious rest and 
 relaxation, by means of conversation with a friend, if he 
 would make up his mind to stay with us until his pursuers 
 should appear ; and them I could easily contrive to delay, 
 for at least one day and night, by throwing false informa- 
 tion in their way, such as would send them on to Keswick 
 at least, if not to Whitehaven, through the collusion of the 
 very few persons who could have seen him enter my door. 
 My plan was simple and feasible : but somehow or other, 
 and, I believe, chiefly because he did not find me alone, 
 nothing I could say had any weight with him ; nor would 
 he be persuaded to stay longer than for a little tea. Staying 
 so short a time, he found it difficult to account for having 
 
 VOL. II. H
 
 162 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ever come. But it was too evidently useless to argue the 
 point with him ; for he was altered, and had become 
 obstinate and intractable. I prepared, therefore, to gratify 
 him according to his own plan, by bearing him company 
 on the road to Ambleside, and (as he said) to Brathay. 
 We set off on foot : the distance to Ambleside is about 
 three and a half miles ; and one-third of this distance 
 brought us to an open plain on the margin of Rydalmere, 
 where the road lies entirely open to the water. This lake 
 is unusually shallow, by comparison with all its neighbors ; 
 but, at the point I speak of, it takes (especially when seen 
 under any mode of imperfect light) the appearance of 
 being gloomily deep : two islands of exquisite beauty, but 
 strongly discriminated in character, and a sort of recess 
 or bay in the opposite shore, across which the shadows of 
 the hilly margin stretch with great breadth and solemnity 
 of effect to the very centre of the lake, together with the 
 very solitary character of the entire valley, on which (ex- 
 cluding the little hamlet in its very gorge or entrance) there 
 is not more than one single house, combine to make the 
 scene as impressive by night as any in the lake country. 
 At this point it was that my poor friend paused to converse, 
 and, as it seemed, to take his leave, with an air of peculiar 
 sadness, as if he had foreseen (what in fact proved to be 
 the truth) that we now saw each other for the final time. 
 The spot seemed favorable to confidential talk ; and here, 
 therefore, he proceeded to make his last heart-rending 
 communication : here he told me rapidly the tale of his 
 sufferings, and, what oppressed his mind far more than 
 those at this present moment, of the cruel indignities to 
 which he had been under the necessity of submitting. In 
 particular, he said that a man of great muscular power 
 had instructions to knock him down whenever he made any 
 allusion to certain speculative subjects, which the presiding
 
 CHARLES LLOYB. 163 
 
 authorities of the asylum chose to think connected with his 
 unhappy disease. Many other brutaUties, damnable and 
 dishonoring to human nature, were practised in this asylum, 
 not always by abuse of the powers lodged in the servants, 
 but by direct authority from the governors ; and yet it had 
 been selected as the one most favorable to a liberal treat- 
 ment of the patients ; and, in reality, it continued to hold 
 a very high reputation. 
 
 Great and monstrous are the abuses which have been 
 detected in such institutions, and exposed by parliamentary 
 interference, as well as by the energy of individual philan- 
 thropists : but it occurs to one most forcibly, that, after all, 
 the light of this parliamentary torch must have been but 
 feeble and partial, when it was possible for cases such as 
 these to escape all general notice, and for the establishment 
 which fostered them to retain a character as high as any 
 in the land for enlightened humanity. Perhaps the para- 
 mount care in the treatment of lunatics should be directed 
 toward those appliances, and that mode of discipline which 
 is best fitted for restoring the patient finally to a sane con- 
 dition ; but the second place in the machinery of his proper 
 management, should be reserved for that system of atten- 
 tions, medical or non-medical, which have the best chance 
 of making him happy for the present ; and especially 
 because his present happiness must always be one of the 
 directest avenues to his restoration. In the present case, 
 could it be imagined that the shame, agitation, and fury, 
 which convulsed poor L , as he went over the circum- 
 stances 'of his degradation, were calculated for any other 
 than the worst effects upon the state and prospects of his 
 malady ? By sustaining the tumult of his brain, they 
 must, almost of themselves, have precluded his restoration. 
 At the side of that quiet lake he stood for nearly an hour 
 repeating his wrongs, his eyes glaring continually, as the
 
 164 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 light thrown off from those parts of the lake which reflected 
 bright tracts of sky amongst the clouds fitfully illuminated 
 them, and again and again threatening, with gestures the 
 wildest, vengeance the most savage upon those vile keepers 
 who had so abused any just purposes of authority. He 
 would talk of little else ; apparently he could not. A 
 hollow effort he would make now and then, when his story 
 had apparently reached its close, to sustain the topic of or- 
 dinary conversation ; but in a minute he had relapsed into 
 the one subject which possessed him. In vain I pressed him 
 to return with me to Grasmere. He was now, for a few 
 hours to come, to be befriended by the darkness ; and he 
 resolved to improve the opportunity for some purpose of his 
 own, which, as he showed no disposition to communicate 
 any part of his future plans, I did not directly inquire into. 
 In fact, part of his purpose in stopping where he did, had 
 been to let me know that he did not wish for company any 
 further. We parted ; and I saw him no more. He was 
 soon recaptured ; then transferred to some more eligible 
 asylum ; then liberated from all restraint ; after which, 
 with his family, he went to France ; where again it became 
 necessary to deprive him of liberty. And, finally, in 
 France it was that his feverish existence found at length a 
 natural rest and an everlasting liberty ; for there it was, 
 in a maison de sante, at or near Versailles, that he died, 
 (and I believe tranquilly,) a few years after he had left 
 England. Death was indeed to him, in the words of that 
 fine mystic, Blake the artist, ' a golden gate ' — the gate 
 of liberation from the captivity of half a life ; or, as I 
 once found the case beautifully expressed in a volume of 
 poems a century old, and otherwise poor enough, for they 
 offered nothing worth recollecting beyond this single line, 
 in speaking of the particular morning in which some young 
 man had died —
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 
 
 165 
 
 ' That morning brought him peace and liberty.' 
 
 Charles L never returned to Brathay after he had 
 
 once been removed from it ; and the removal of his family- 
 soon followed. Mrs. L , indeed, returned at intervals 
 
 from France to England, upon business connected with 
 the interests of her family ; and, during one of those 
 fufTJtive visits, she came to the Lakes, where she selected 
 Grasmere for her residence, so that I had opportunities of 
 seeing her every day, for a space of several weeks. 
 Otherwise, I never again saw any of the family, except 
 one son, an interesting young man, who sought most 
 meritoriously, by bursting asunder the heavy yoke of con- 
 stitutional inactivity, to extract a balm for his own besetting 
 melancholy, from a constant series of exertions in which 
 he had forced himself to engage, for promoting education 
 or religious knowledge amongst his poorer neighbors. 
 But often and often, in years after all was gone, 1 have 
 passed old Brathay, or have gone over purposely after dark, 
 about the time when, for many a year, I used to go over to 
 spend the evening; and, seating myself on a stone, by the 
 side of the mountain river Brathay, have stayed for hours 
 
 listening to the same sound to which so often C L 
 
 and I used to hearken together with profound emotion and 
 awe — the sound of pealing anthems, as if streaming from 
 the open portals of some illimitable cathedral ; for such a 
 sound does actually arise, in many states of the weather, 
 from the peculiar action of the river Brathay upon its rocky 
 bed ; and many times I have heard it, of a quiet night, 
 when no stranger could have been persuaded to believe it 
 other than the sound of choral chanting — distant, solemn, 
 saintly. Its meaning and expression were, in those earlier 
 years, uncertain and general ; not more pointed or deter- 
 mined in the direction which it impressed upon one's 
 feelings than the light of setting suns : and sweeping, in
 
 166 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 fact the whole harp of pensive sensibilities, rather than 
 striking the chord of any one specific sentiment. 
 
 But since the ruin or dispersion of that household, after 
 the smoke had ceased to ascend from their hearth, or the 
 garden walks to re-echo their voices, oftentimes, when 
 lying by the river side, I have listened to the same aerial 
 saintly sound, whilst looking back to that night, long hidden 
 in the frost of receding years, when Charles and Sophia 
 
 L , now lying in foreign graves, first dawned upon me, 
 
 coming suddenly out of rain and darkness ; then — young, 
 rich, happy, full of hope, belted with young children, (of 
 whom also most are long dead,) and standing apparently 
 on the verge of a labyrinth of golden hours. Musing on 
 that night in November, 1807, and then upon the wreck 
 that had been wrought by a space of fifteen years, I would 
 say to myself sometimes, and seem to hear it in the songs 
 of this watery cathedral — Put not your trust in any fabric 
 of happiness that has its root in man or the children of 
 men. Sometimes even I was tempted to discover in the 
 same music, a sound such as this — Love nothing, love 
 nobody, for thereby comes a killing curse in the rear. But 
 sometimes also, very early on a summer morning, when 
 the dawn was barely beginning to break, all things locked 
 in sleep, and only some uneasy murmur or cock-crow, at 
 a faint distance, giving a hint of resurrection for earth and 
 her generations, I have heard, in that same chanting of 
 the little mountain river, a more solemn if a less agitated 
 admonition — a requiem over departed happiness, and a 
 protestation against the thought that so many excellent 
 creatures, but a little lower than the angels, whom I have 
 seen only to love in this life — so many of the good, the 
 brave, the beautiful, the wise — can have appeared for no 
 higher purpose or prospect than simply to point a moral, 
 to cause a little joy and many tears, a few perishing moons
 
 CHARLES LLOYD. 
 
 1G7 
 
 of happiness and years of vain regret, — No! that the 
 destiny of man is more in correspondence with the gran- 
 deur of his endowments; and that our own mysterious 
 tendencies are written hieroglyphically in the vicissitudes 
 of day and night, of winter and summer, and throughout 
 the great alphabet of Nature. But on that theme — Be- 
 ware, reader ! Listen to no inlellectucd argument. One 
 argument there is, one only there is, of philosophic value : 
 an argument drawn from the moral nature of man ; an 
 argument of Immanuel Kant's. The rest are dust and 
 ashes.
 
 CHAPTER XIX, 
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 
 
 Passing onwards from Brathay, a ride of about forty 
 minutes carries you to the summit of a wild heathy tract, 
 along which, even at noonday, few sounds are heard 
 that indicate the presence of man, except now and then a 
 woodman's axe, in some of the many coppice- woods 
 scattered about that neighborhood. In Nonhern England 
 there are no sheep-bells ; which is an unfortunate defect, 
 as regards the full impression of wild solitudes, whether 
 amongst undulating heaths, or towering rocks : at any 
 rate, it is so felt by those who, like myself, have been 
 trained to its soothing effects, upon the hills of Somerset- 
 shire — the Cheddar, the Mendip, or the Quantock — or 
 any other of those breezy downs, which once constituted 
 such delightful local distinctions for four or five counties 
 in that south-west angle of England. At all hours of day 
 or night, this silvery tinkle was delightful ; but, after sun- 
 set, in the solemn hour of gathering twilight, heard (as it 
 always was) intermittingly, and at great varieties of dis- 
 tance, it formed the most impressive incident for the ear, 
 and the most in harmony with the other circumstances of 
 the scenery, that, perhaps, anywhere exists — not ex- 
 cepting even the natural sounds, the swelling and dying 
 intonations of insects wheeling in their vesper flights. 
 Silence and desolation are never felt so profoundly as
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 169 
 
 when they are interrupted by solemn sounds, recurring by 
 uncertain intervals, and from distant places. But in these 
 Westmoreland heaths, and uninhabited ranges of hilly 
 ground, too often nothing is heard, except, occasionally, 
 the wild cry of a bird — the plover, the snipe, or perhaps 
 the raven's croak. The general impression is, therefore, 
 cheerless ; and the more are you rejoiced when, looking 
 down from some one of the eminences which you have 
 been gradually ascending, you descry, at a great depth 
 below,* the lovely lake of Coniston. The head of this 
 lake is the part chiefly interesting, both from the sublime 
 character of the mountain barriers, and from the intricacy 
 of the little valleys at their base. On a little verdant 
 knoll, near the north-eastern margin of the lake, stands a 
 small villa, called Tent Lodge, built by Colonel Smith, 
 and for many years occupied by his family. That 
 daughter of Colonel Smith who drew the public attention 
 so powerfully upon herself by the splendor of her attain- 
 ments, had died some months before I came into the 
 country. But yet, as I was subsequently acquainted with 
 her family through the Lloyds, (who were within an easy 
 drive of Tent Lodge,) and as, moreover, with regard to 
 Miss Elizabeth Smith herself, I came to know more than 
 the world knew — drawing my knowledge from many of 
 her friends, but especially from Mrs. Hannah More, who 
 
 * The approach from Ambleside or Hawkshead, though fine, is far 
 less so than that from Grasmere, through the vale of Tilberlhwaite, to 
 which, for a coup de theatre, I recollect nothing equal. Taking the left- 
 hand road, so as to make for Monk Coniston, and not for Church Con- 
 iston, you ascend a pretty steep hill, from which at a certain point of 
 the little gorge or haicsc, (i. e. hals, neck or throat, viz., the dip in any 
 hill ilirough which the road is led,) the whole lake of six miles in 
 length, and the beautiful foregrounds, all rush upon the eye with the 
 effect of a pantomimic surprise — not by a graduated revelation, but by 
 an instantaneous flash.
 
 170 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 had been intimately connected with her ; for these reasons, 
 I shall rehearse the leading points of her story ; and the 
 rather, because her family, who were equally interested 
 in that story, long continued to form part of the Lake 
 society. 
 
 On my first becoming acquainted with Miss Smith's 
 pretensions, it is very true that I regarded them with but 
 little concern ; for nothing ever interests me less than 
 great philological attainments, or at least that mode of 
 philological learning which consists in mastery over 
 languages. But one reason for this indifference is, that 
 the apparent splendor is too often a false one. They 
 who know a vast number of languages, rarely know any 
 one with accuracy ; and the more they gain in one way, 
 the more they lose in another. With Miss Smith, however, 
 I gi'adually came to know that this was not the case ; or, 
 at any rate, but partially the case ; for, of some languages 
 which she possessed, and those the least accessible, it 
 appeared, finally, that she had even a critical knowledge. 
 It created also a secondary interest in these difficult 
 accomplishments of hers, to find that they were so very 
 extensive. Secondly, That they were pretty nearly all 
 of self-acquisition. Thirdly, That they were borne so 
 meekly, and with unaffected absence of all ostentation. 
 
 ml ' 
 
 As to the first point, it appears (from Mrs. H. Bowdler's 
 Letter to Dr. Mummsen, the friend of Klopstock) that she 
 made herself mistress of the French, the Italian, the 
 Spanish, the Latin, the German, the Greek, and the 
 Hebrew languaa;es. She had no inconsiderable know- 
 ledge of the Syriac, the Arabic, and the Persic. She was 
 a good geometrician and algebraist. She was a very 
 expert musician. She drew from nature, and had an 
 accurate knowledge of perspective. Finally, she mani- 
 fested an early talent for poetry ; but, from pure modesty,
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 171 
 
 destroyed most of what she had written, as soon as her 
 acquaintance with the Hebrew models had elevated the 
 standard of true poetry in her mind, so as to disgust her 
 with what she now viewed as the tameness and inetTlcicncy 
 of her own performances. As to the second point — that 
 for these attainments she was indebted, almost exclusively, 
 to her own energy ; this is placed beyond all doubt, by 
 the fact, that the only governess she ever had (a young 
 lady not much beyond her own age) did not herself 
 possess, and therefore could not have communicated, any 
 knowledge of languages, beyond a little French and 
 Italian. Finally, as to the modesty with which she wore 
 her distinctions, that is sulFiciently established by every 
 page of her printed works, and her letters. Greater 
 diffidence, as respected herself, or less willingness to 
 obtrude her knowledge upon strangers, or even upon 
 those correspondents who would have wished her to make 
 a little more display, cannot be imagined. And yet I 
 repeat, that her knowledge was as sound and as profound 
 as it was extensive. For, taking only one instance of this, 
 her Translation of Job has been pronounced, by Biblical 
 critics of the first rank, a work of rea.1 and intrinsic value, 
 without any reference to the disadvantages of the trans- 
 lator, or without needing any allowances whatever. In 
 particular, Dr. Magee, the celebrated writer on the Atone- 
 ment, and subsequently a dignitary of the Irish Church — 
 certainly one of the best qualified judges at that time — 
 describes it as ' conveying more of the character and 
 meaning of the Hebrew, with fewer departures from the 
 idiom of the English, than any other translation whatever 
 that we possess.' So much for the scholarship ; whilst he 
 rightly notices, in proof of the translator's taste and dis- 
 cretion, that ' from the received version she very seldom 
 unnecessarily deviates : ' thus refusing to disturb what was,
 
 172 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 generally speaking, so excellent and time-hallowed for 
 any dazzling effects of novelty ; and practising this for- 
 bearance as much as possible, notwithstanding novelty 
 was, after all, the main attraction upon which the ne\y 
 translation must rest. 
 
 The example of her modesty, however, is not more 
 instructive than that of her, continued struggle with diffi- 
 culties in pursuing knowledge, and with misfortunes in 
 supporting a Christian fortitude. I shall briefly sketch her 
 story: — She was born at Burnhall, in the county of 
 Durham, at the latter end of the year 1776. Early in 
 1782, when she had just entered her sixth year, her 
 parents removed into Suffolk, in order to be near a blind 
 relation, who looked with anxiety to the conscientious 
 attentions of Mrs. Smith, in superintending his comforts 
 and interests. This occupation absorbed so much of her 
 time, that she found it necessary to obtain the aid of a 
 stranger in directing the studies of her daughter. An 
 opportunity just then offered of attaining this object, con- 
 currently with another not less interesting to herself, viz., 
 that of offering an asylum to a young lady who had recently 
 been thrown adrift upon the world by the misfortunes of 
 her parents. They had very suddenly fallen from a sta- 
 tion of distinguished prosperity ; and the young lady her- 
 self, then barely sixteen, was treading that path of severe 
 adversity, upon which, by a most singular parallelism of 
 ill fortune, her young pupil was destined to follow her 
 steps at exactly the same age. Being so prematurely 
 called to the office of governess, this young lady was 
 expected rather to act as an elder companion, and as a 
 lightener of the fatigues attached to their common studies, 
 than exactly as their directress. And, at all events, from 
 her who was the only even nominal governess that Miss 
 Smith ever had, it is certain that she could have learned
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 173 
 
 little or nothino;. This arrangement subsisted between 
 two and three years, when the death of their blind kins- 
 man allowed Mr. Smith's family to leave Sutlblk, and 
 resume their old domicile of Burnhall. But from this, by 
 a sudden gleam of treacherous prosperity, they were sum- 
 moned, in the following year, (June, 1785,) to the splen- 
 did inheritance of Picrcefiold — a show-place upon the 
 river Wye; and, next after, Tintern Abbey and the river 
 itself — an object of attraction to all who then visited the 
 Wye. 
 
 A residence on the W'ye, besides its own natural attrac- 
 tion, has this collateral advantage, that it brings Bath (not 
 to mention Clifton and the Hot Wells) within a visiting 
 distance for people who happen to have carriages ; and 
 Bath, it is hardly necessary to say, besides its stationary 
 body of polished and intellectual residents, has also a 
 floating casual population of eminent or interesting per- 
 sons, gathered into this focus from every quarter of the 
 empire. Amongst the literary connections which the 
 Piercefield family had formed in Bath, was one with Mrs, 
 Bowdler and her daughter — two ladies not distinguished 
 by any very powerful talents, but sufficiently tinctured 
 with literature and the love of literature to be liberal in 
 their opinions. And, fortunately, (as it turned out for 
 Miss Smith,) they were eminently religious : but not in a 
 bigoted way ; for they were conciliating and winning in 
 the outward expression of their religious character; capa- 
 ble of explaining their own creed with intelligent con- 
 sistency ; and, finally, were the women to recommend 
 any creed, by the sanctity and the benignity of their own 
 lives. This strong religious bias of the two Bath ladies, 
 operated in Miss Smith's favor by a triple service. First 
 of all, it was this depth of religious feeling, and, con- 
 sequently, of interest in the Scriptures, which had origin-
 
 174 LITERARY REBIINISCENCES. 
 
 ally moved the elder Mrs. Bowdler to study the Hebrew 
 and the Greek, as the two languages in which they had 
 been originally .delivered. And this example it was of 
 female,-^ triumph over their difficulties, together with the 
 proof thus given that such attainments were entirely 
 reconcilable with feminine gentleness, which first sug- 
 gested to Miss Smith the project of her philological 
 studies ; and, doubtless, these studies, by the constant and 
 agreeable occupation which they afforded, overspread the 
 whole field of her life with pleasurable activity. * From 
 the above-mentioned visit,' says her mother, writing to 
 Dr. Randolph, and referring to the visit which these Bath 
 ladies had made to Pierceficld — ' from the above-men- 
 tioned visit I date the turn of study which Elizabeth ever 
 after pursued, and which I firmly believe the amiable 
 conduct of our guests first led her to delight in.' Second- 
 ly, to the religious sympathies which connected these 
 two ladies with Miss Smith, was owing the fervor of 
 that friendship, which afterwards, in their adversity, the 
 Piercefield family found more strenuously exerted in their 
 behalf by the Bovvdlers than by all the rest of their con- 
 nections. And, finally, it was this piety and religious 
 resignation, with which she had been herself inoculated 
 by her Bath friends, that, throughout the calamitous era 
 of her life, enabled Miss Elizabeth Smith to maintain her 
 own cheerfulness unbroken, and greatly to support the 
 failing fortitude of her mother. 
 
 This visit of her Bath friends to Piercefield — so 
 memorable an event for the whole subsequent life of Miss 
 Smith — occurred in the summer of 1789; consequently, 
 when she was just twelve and a half years old. And the 
 impressions then made upon her childish, but unusually 
 thoughtful, mind, were kept up by continual communi- 
 cations, personal or written, through the years immediately
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 175 
 
 succeeding. Just two and a half years after, in the very 
 month when Miss Smith accomplished her fifteenth year, 
 upon occasion of going through the rite of Confirmation, 
 according to the discipline of the English Church, she 
 received a letter of religious counsel — grave, affectionate, 
 but yet humble — from the elder Mrs. Bowdler, which 
 might almost have been thought to have proceeded from a 
 writer who had looked behind the curtain of fate, and had 
 seen the forge at whose fires the shafts of Heaven were 
 even now being forged. 
 
 Just twelve months from the date of this letter, in the 
 very month when Miss Elizabeth Smith completed her 
 sixteenth year, the storm descended upon the house of 
 Piercefield. The whole estate, a splendid one, was swept 
 away, by the failure (as I have heard) of one banking- 
 house ; nor was there recovered, until some years after, 
 any slender fragments of that estate. Piercefield was, of 
 course, sold : but that was not the heaviest of her 
 grievances to Miss Smith. She was now far advanced 
 upon her studious career ; for it should be mentioned, as 
 a lesson to other young ladies of what may be accom- 
 plished by unassisted labor, that, between the ages of 
 thirteen and twenty-one, all • her principal acquisitions 
 .were made. ■ No treasure, therefore, could, in her eyes, 
 be of such priceless value as the Piercefield library ; but 
 this also followed the general wreck : not a volume, not a 
 pamphlet, was reserved ; for the family were proud in 
 their integrity, and would receive no favors from the 
 creditors. Under this scorching test, applied to the 
 fidelity of friends, many, whom Mrs. Smith mentions in 
 one of her letters under the name of ' summer friends,' 
 fled from them by crowds: dipners, balls, soirees — 
 credit, influence, support — these things were no longer 
 to be had from Piercefield. But more annoying even
 
 176 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 than the fickle levity of such open deserters, was the 
 timid and doubtful countenance, as I have heard Mrs. 
 Smith say, which was still ofiered to them by some who 
 did not relish, for their oion sokes, being classed *with 
 those who had paid their homage only to the fine house 
 and fine equipages of Piercefield. These persons con- 
 tinued, therefore, to send invitations to the family ; but so 
 frigidly, that every expression manifested but too forcibly 
 how disagreeable was the duty with which they were 
 complying ; and how much more they submitted to it for 
 their own reputation's sake, than for any kindness they 
 felt to their old friends. Mrs. Smith was herself a very 
 haughty woman, and it maddened her to be the object of 
 condescensions so insolent and so reluctant. 
 
 Meantime, her daughter, young as she was, became the 
 moral support of her whole family, and the fountain from 
 which they all drew consolation and fortitude. She was 
 confirmed in her religious tendencies by two circumstances 
 of her recent experience : one was, that she, the sole per- 
 son of her family who courted religious consolations, was 
 also the sole person who had been able to maintain cheer- 
 fulness and uniform spirits : the other was, that although 
 it could not be truly said of all their worldly friends that 
 they had forsaken them, yet, of their religious friends it 
 could be said, not one had done so ; and at last, when for 
 some time they had been so far reduced as not to have a 
 roof over their heads, by one of these religious friends it 
 was that they were furnished with every luxury as well as 
 comfort of life ; and, in a spirit of such sisterly kindness, 
 as made the obligation not painful to the proudest amongst 
 them. 
 
 It was in 1792 that the Piercefield family had been 
 ruined ; and in 1794, out of the wrecks which had b^en 
 gathered together, Mr. Smith (the father of the family)
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 177 
 
 bought a commission in the army. For some time the 
 family coiitinuccl to live in London, Bath, and othez* 
 parts of England ; but, at length, Mr. Smith's regiment 
 was ordered to the west of Ireland ; and the ladies of his 
 family resolved to accompany him to head-quarters. In 
 passing through Wales, (May, 1796,) they paid a visit to 
 those sentimental anchorites of the last generation, whom 
 so many of us must still remember — Miss Ponsonby,and 
 Lady Eleanor Butler, (a sister of Lord Ormond,) whose 
 hermitage stood near to Llangollen, and, therefore, close 
 to the usual Irish route, by way of Holyhead. On landing in 
 Ireland, they proceeded to a seat of Lord Kingston — a 
 kind-hearted, hospitable Irishman, who was on the old 
 Piercefield list of friends, and had never wavered in his 
 attachment. Here they stayed three weeks. Miss Smith 
 renewed, on this occasion, her friendship with Lady 
 Isabella King, the daughter of Lord Kingston ; and a 
 little incident connected with this visit, gave her an oppor- 
 tunity afterwards of showing her delicate sense of the 
 sacred character which attaches to gifts of friendship, and 
 showing it by an ingenious device, that may be worth the 
 notice of other young ladies in the same case. Lady 
 Isabella had given to Miss Smith a beautiful horse, calle 
 Brunette. In process of time, when they had ceased to be 
 in the neighborhood of any regimental stables, it became 
 matter of necessity that Brunette should be parted with. 
 To have given the animal away, had that been otherwise 
 possible, might only have been delaying the sale for a 
 short time. After some demur, therefore, Miss Smith 
 adopted this plan : she sold Brunette, but applied the 
 whole of the price, 120 guineas, to the purchase of a 
 splendid harp. The harp was christened Brunette, and 
 was religiously preserved to the end of her life. Now 
 Brunette, after all, must have died in a few years ; but, 
 VOL. II. 12
 
 178 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 by translating lier friend's gift into another form, she not 
 only connected the image of her distant friend, and her 
 sense of that friend's kindness, with a pleasure and a use- 
 ful purpose of her own, but she conferred on that gift a 
 perpetuity of existence. 
 
 At length came the day when the Smiths were to quit 
 Kingston Lodge for the quarters of the regiment. And 
 now came the first rude trial of Mrs. Smith's fortitude, as 
 connected with points of mere decent comfort. Hitherto, 
 floating amongst the luxurious habitations of opulent 
 friends, she might have felt many privations as regarded 
 splendor and direct personal power, but never as regarded 
 the primary elements of comfort, warmth, cleanliness, 
 convenient arrangements. But on this journey, which 
 was performed by all the party on horseback, it rained 
 incessantly. They reached their quarters drenched with 
 wet, weary, hungry, forlorn. The quartermaster had 
 neglected to give any directions for their suitable accom- 
 modation — no preparations whatever had been made for 
 receiving them ; and, from the luxuries of Lord King- 
 ston's mansion, which habit had made so familiar to them 
 all, the ladies found themselves suddenly transferred to a 
 miserable Irish cabin — dirty, narrow, nearly quite unfur- 
 nished, and thoroughly disconsolate. Mrs. Smith's proud 
 spirit fairly gave way, and she burst out into a fit of 
 weeping. Upon this, her daughter, Elizabeth, [and Mrs. 
 Smith herself it was that told the anecdote, and often she 
 told it, or told others of the same character, at Lloyd's,] 
 in a gentle, soothing tone, began to suggest the many 
 blessings which lay before them in life, and some even for 
 this evening. 
 
 ' Blessings, child ! ' — her mother impatiently interrupted 
 her. ' What sort of blessings ? Irish blessings ! — county 
 of Sligo blessings, I fancy. Or, perhaps, you call this a
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 179 
 
 blessing?' holding up a miserable fragnnent of an iron 
 rod, which had been left by way of poker, or rather as a 
 substitute for the whole assortment of fire-irons. The 
 daughter laughed ; but she changed her wet dress expedi- 
 tiously, assumed an apron ; and so various were her 
 accornplisiiments, that, in no long time, she had gathered 
 together a very comfortable dinner for her parents, and, 
 amongst other things, a currant tart, which she had herself 
 made, in a tenement absolutely unfurnished of every 
 kitchen utensil. 
 
 In the autumn of this year, (1796,) they returned to 
 England ; and, after various migrations through the next 
 four years, amongst which was another and longer visit to 
 Ireland, in 1800, they took up their abode in the seques- 
 tered vale of Patterdale. Here they had a cottage upon 
 the banks of Ulleswater; the most gorgeous of the 
 English lakes, from the rich and ancient woods which 
 possess a great part of its western side ; the sublimest, as 
 respects its mountain accompaniments, except only, per- 
 haps, Wastdale ; and, I believe, the largest; for, though 
 only nine miles in length, and, therefore, shorter by about 
 two miles than Windermere, it averages a greater breadth. 
 Here, at this time, was living Mr. Clarkson — that son of 
 thunder, that Titan, who was in fact that one great Atlas 
 that bore up the Slave-Trade abolition cause — now rest- 
 ing from his mighty labors and nerve-shattering perils. 
 So much liad his nerves been shattered by all that he had 
 gone through in toil, in suffering, and in anxiety, that, for 
 many years, I have heard it said, he found himself unable 
 to walk up stairs without tremulous motions of his limbs. 
 He was, perhaps, too iron a man, too much like the Talus 
 of Spenser's ' Faerie Queene,' to appreciate so gentle a 
 creature as Miss Elizabeth Smith. A more suitable 
 friend, and one who thoroughly comprehended her, and
 
 180 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 expressed his admiration for her in verse, was Thomas 
 Wilkinson of Yanwalh, a Quaker, a man of taste, and of 
 delicate sensibility. He wrote verses occasionally ; and 
 though feebly enough as respected poetic power, there 
 were often such delicate touches of feeling, such gleams 
 of real tenderness, in some redeeming part of each poem, 
 that even Wordsworth admired and read them aloud with 
 pleasure. Indeed Wordsworth has addressed to him one 
 copy of verses, or rather to his spade, which was printed 
 in the collection of 1807, and which Lord Jeffrey, after 
 quoting one line, dismissed as too dull for repetition. 
 
 During this residence upon Ulleswater (winter of 1800) 
 it was, that a very remarkable incident befell Miss Smith. 
 I have heard it often mentioned, and sometimes with a 
 slight variety of circumstances ; but I here repeat it from 
 an account drawn up by Miss Smith herself, who was 
 most literally exact and faithful to the truth in all reports 
 of her own personal experience. There is, on the west- 
 ern side of Ulleswater, a fine cataract, (or, in the language 
 of the country, a force,) known by the name of Airey 
 Force ; and it is of importance enough, especially in rainy 
 seasons, to attract numerous visiters from among ' the 
 Lakers.' Thither, with some purpose of sketching, not 
 the whole scene, but some picturesque features of it, Miss 
 Smith had gone, quite unaccompanied. The road to it 
 lies through Gobarrow Park ; and it was usual, at that 
 time, to take a guide from the family of the Duke of 
 Norfolk's keeper, who lived in Lyulph's Tower — a soli- 
 tary hunting lodge, built by his Grace for the purposes of 
 an annual visit which he used to pay to his estates in that 
 part of England. She, however, thinking herself suffi- 
 ciently familiar with the localities, had declined to encum- 
 ber her motions with such an attendant ; consequently she 
 was alone. For half an hour or more, she continued to
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 181 
 
 ascend : and, being a good ' cragswoman,' from the expe- 
 rience she had won in Wales as well as in northern Eng- 
 land, slie had reached an altitude much beyond what 
 would generally be thought corresponding to the time. 
 The path had vanished altogether ; but she continued to 
 pick out one for herself amongst the stones, sometimes 
 receding from the force, sometimes approaching it, ac- 
 cording to the openings allowed by the scattered masses 
 of rock. Pressing forward in this hurried way, and never 
 looking back, all at once she found herself in a little stony 
 chamber, from which there was no egress possible in 
 advance. She stopped and looked up. There was a 
 frightful silence in the air. She felt a sudden palpitation 
 at her heart, and a panic from she knew not what. Turn- 
 ing, however, hastily, she soon wound herself out of this 
 aerial dungeon ; but by steps so rapid and agitated, that, 
 at length, on looking round, she found herself standing at 
 the brink of a chasm, frightful to look down. That way, 
 it was clear enough, all retreat was impossible ; but, on 
 turning round, retreat seemed in every direction alike 
 even moi'e impossible. Down the chasm, at least, she 
 might have leaped, though with little or no chance of 
 escaping with life ; but on all other quarters it seemed to 
 her eye that, at no price, could she efiect an exit, since 
 the rocks stood round her, in a semicircus, all lofty, all 
 perpendicular, all glazed with trickling water, or smooth 
 as polished porphyry. Yet how, then, had she reached 
 the point > The same track, if she could hit that track, 
 would surely secure her escape. Round and round she 
 walked ; gazed with almost despairing eyes ; her breath 
 came thicker and thicker ; for path she could not trace by 
 which it was possible for her to have entered. Finding 
 herself grow more and more confused, and every instant 
 nearer to sinking into some fainting fit or convulsion, she
 
 182 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 resolved to sit down and turn her thoughts quietly into 
 some less exciting channel. This she did ; gradually re- 
 covered some self-possession ; and then suddenly a thought 
 rose up to her, that she was in the hands of God, and that 
 he would not forsake her. But immediately came a 
 second and reproving thought — that this confidence in 
 God's protection might have been justified had she been 
 ascending the rocks upon any mission of duty ; but what 
 right could she have to any providential deliverance, who 
 had been led thither in a spirit of levity and carelessness .? 
 I am here giving her view of the case ; for, as to myself, 
 I fear greatly, that if her steps were erring ones, it is but 
 seldom indeed that nous autres can pretend to be treading 
 upon right paths. Once again she rose ! and, supporting 
 herself upon a little sketching-stool that folded up into a 
 stick, she looked upwards, in the hope that some shepherd 
 might, by chance, be wandering in those aerial regions ; 
 but nothing could she see except the tall birches growing 
 at the brink of the highest summits, and the clouds slowly 
 sailing overhead. Suddenly, however, as she swept the 
 whole circuit of her station with her alarmed eye, she saw 
 clearly, about two hundred yards beyond her own position, 
 a lady, in a white muslin morning robe, such as were then 
 universally worn by young ladies until dinner-time. The 
 lady beckoned with a gesture and in a manner that, in a 
 moment, gave her confidence to advance — hoio she could 
 not guess, but in some way that baffled all power to re- 
 trace it, she found instantaneously the outlet which pre- 
 viously had escaped her. She continued to advance 
 towards the lady, whom now, in the same moment, she 
 found to be standing upon the other side of i\\e force, and 
 also to be her own sister. How or why that young lady, 
 whom she had left at home earnestly occupied with her 
 own studies, should have followed and overtaken her,
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 183 
 
 filled her with perplexity. But this was no situation for 
 putting questions; for the guiding sister began to descend, 
 and, by a few simple gestures, just serving to indicate 
 when Miss Elizabeth was to approach and when to leave 
 the brink of the torrent, she gradually led her down to a 
 platform of rock, from which the further descent was safe 
 and conspicuous. There Miss Smith paused, in order to 
 take breath from her panic, as well as to exchange greet- 
 ings and questions with her sister. But sister there was 
 none. All trace of her had vanished ; and when, in two 
 hours after, she reached her home, Miss Smith found her 
 sister in the same situation and employment in which she 
 had left her ; and the whole family assured her that she 
 had never stirred from the house. 
 
 In 1801, I believe it was that the family removed from 
 Patterdale to Coniston. Certainly they were settled there 
 in the spring of 1802 ; for, in the May of that spring, Miss 
 Elizabeth Hamilton — a writer now very much forgotten, 
 or remembered only by her ' Cottagers of Glenburnie,' 
 but then a person of mark and authority in the literary 
 circles of Edinburgh — paid a visit to the Lakes, and 
 stayed there for many months, together with her married 
 sister, Mrs. Blake ; and both ladies cultivated the friend- 
 ship of the Smiths. Miss Hamilton was captivated with the 
 family ; and, of the sisters in particular, she speaks as of 
 persons that, ' in the days of paganism, would have been 
 worshipped as beings of a superior order, so elegantly 
 graceful do they appear, when, with easy motion, they 
 guide their light boat over the waves.' And of Miss Eliza- 
 beth, separately, she says, on another occasion, — ' I never 
 before saw so much of Miss Smith ; and, in the three days 
 she spent with us, the admiration which I had always felt 
 for her extraordinary talents, and as extraordinary virtues, 
 was hourly augmented. She is, indeed, a most charming
 
 184 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 creature; and, if one could inoculate her with a little of 
 the Scotch frankness, I think she would be one of the most 
 perfect of human beings,' 
 
 About four years had been delightfully passed in 
 Coniston. In the summer of 1805, Miss Smith laid the 
 foundation of her fatal illness in the following way, accord- 
 ing to her own account of the case, to an old servant, a 
 very short time before she died : — ' One very hot evening, 
 in July, I took a book, and walked about two miles from 
 home, when I seated myself on a stone beside the lake. 
 Being much engaged by a poem I was reading, I did not 
 perceive that the sun was gone down, and was succeeded 
 by a very heavy dew, till, in a moment, I felt struck on the 
 chest as if with a sharp knife. I returned home, but said 
 nothing of the pain. The next day, being also very hot, 
 and every one busy in the hay-field, I thought I would take 
 a rake, and work very hard to produce perspiration, in the 
 hope that it might remove the pain ; but it did not.' From 
 that time, a bad cough, with occasional loss of voice, gave 
 reason to suspect some organic injury of the lungs. Late 
 in the autumn of this year, (1805,) Miss Smith accom- 
 panied her mother and her two younger sisters to Bristol, 
 Bath, and other places in the south, on visits to various 
 friends. Her health went through various fluctuations until 
 May of the following year, when she was advised to try 
 Matlock. Here, after spending thi'ee weeks, she grew 
 worse; and, as there was no place which she liked so well 
 as the Lakes, it was resolved to turn homewards. About 
 the beginning of June, she and her mother returned alone 
 to Coniston : one of her sisters was now married ; her 
 three brothers were in the army or navy ; and her father 
 almost constantly with his regiment. Through the next two 
 months she faded quietly away, sitting always in a tent,* 
 
 * And, ia allusion to this circumstance, the house afterwards raised
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 185 
 
 that had been pitched upon the lawn, and which remained 
 open continually to receive the fanning of the intermitting 
 airs upon the lake, as well as to admit the bold mountain 
 scenery to the north. She lived nearly through the first 
 week of August, dying on the morning of August 7; and 
 the circumstances of her last night are thus recorded by 
 her mother: — *At nine she went to bed. I resolved to 
 quit her no more, and went to prepare for the night. 
 Turpin [Miss Smith's maid] came to say that Elizabeth 
 entreated I would not stay in her room. I replied — " Oa 
 that one subject I am resolved ; no power on earth shall 
 keep me from her ; so, go to bed yourself." Accordingly, 
 I returned to her room ; and, at ten, gave her the usual 
 dose of laudanum. After a little time, she fell into a doze, 
 and, I thought, slept till one. She was uneasy and restless, 
 but never complained ; and, on my wiping the cold sweat 
 off her face, and bathing it with camphorated vinegar, 
 which I did very often in the course of the night, she 
 thanked me, smiled, and said — "That is the greatest 
 comfort I have." She slept again for a short time ; and, 
 at half past four, asked for some chicken broth, which she 
 took perfectly well. On being told the hour, she said, 
 " Hoio long this night is ! " She continued very uneasy ; 
 and, in half an hour after, and on my inquiring if I could 
 move the pillow, or do anything to relieve her, she replied, 
 " There is nothing for it but quiet." At six she said, 
 " I must get up, and have some mint tea." I then called 
 for Turpin, and felt my angel's pulse : it was fluttering ; 
 and by that I knew I should soon lose her. She took the 
 tea well. Turpin began to put on her clothes, and was 
 proceeding to dress her, when she laid her head upon the 
 
 on a neighboring spot, at this lime suggested by Miss Smith, received 
 the name of Tent Lodge.
 
 186 LITERARY HEMINISCENCES. 
 
 faithful creature's shoulder, became convulsed in the face, 
 spoke not, looked not, and in ten minutes expired.' 
 
 She was buried in Hawkshead churchyard, where a 
 small tablet of white marble is raised to her memory, on 
 which there is the scantiest record that, for a person so 
 eminently accomplished, I have ever met with. After 
 mentioning her birth and age, (twenty-nine,) it closes 
 thus : — ' She possessed great talents, exalted virtues, and 
 humble piety.' Anything so unsatisfactory or so com- 
 monplace I have rarely known. As much, or more, is 
 often said of the most insipid people; whereas Miss Smith 
 was really a most extraordinary person. I have conversed 
 with Mrs. Hannah More often about her ; and I never failed 
 to draw forth some fresh anecdote illustrating the vast ex- 
 tent of her knowledge, the simplicity of her character, 
 the gentleness of her manners, and her unaffected humility. 
 She passed, it is true, almost inaudibly through life ; and 
 the stir which was made after her death soon subsided. 
 But the reason was — that she wrote but little ! Had it 
 been possible for the world to measure her by her powers, 
 rather than her performances, she would have been placed, 
 perhaps, in the estimate of posterity, at the head of learned 
 women ; whilst her sweet and feminine character would 
 have rescued her from all shadow and suspicion of that 
 reproach which too often settles upon the learned character, 
 when supported by female aspirants. 
 
 The family of Tent Lodge continued to reside at 
 Coniston for many years ; and they were connected with 
 the Lake literary clan chiefly through the Lloyds and those 
 who visited the Lloyds ; for it is another and striking proof 
 of the slight hold which Wordsworth, &c., had upon the 
 public esteem in those days, that even Miss Smith, with 
 all her excessive diflidence in judging of books and 
 authors, never seems, by any one of her letters, to have
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 187 
 
 felt the least interest about Wordsworth or Coleridge ; 
 nor did Miss Hamilton, with all her esprit de corps and ac- 
 quired interest in everything at all bearing upon literature, 
 ever mention them in those of her letters which belong to 
 the period of her Lake visit in 1602 ; nor, for the six or 
 seven months which she passed in that country, and within 
 a short morning ride of Grasmere, did she ever think it 
 worth her while to seek an introduction to any one of the 
 resident authors. 
 
 Yet this could not be altogether from ignorance that 
 such people existed ; for Thomas Wilkinson, the intimate 
 and admiring friend of Miss Smith, was also the friend of 
 Wordsworth ; and, for some reason that I never could 
 fathom, he was a sort of pet with Wordsworth. Professor 
 Wilson or myself were never honored with one line, one 
 allusion, from his pen ; but many a person, of particular 
 feebleness, has received that honor. Amongst these I 
 may rank Thomas Wilkinson ; not that I wish to speak 
 contemptuously of him : he was a Quaker, of elegant 
 habits, rustic simplicity, and with tastes, as Wordsworth 
 affirms, ' too pure to be refined.' His cottage was seated 
 not far from the great castle of the Lowthers ; and, either 
 from mere whim — as sometimes such whims do possess 
 great ladies — whims, I mean, for drawing about them 
 odd-looking, old-world people, as piquant contrasts to the 
 fine gentlemen of their own society, or because they 
 did really feel a homely dignity in the plain-speaking 
 ' Friend,' and liked, for a frolic, to be thou'd and thee'd — 
 or some motive or other, at any rate, they introduced 
 themselves to Mr. Wilkinson's cottage ; and I believe that 
 the connection was afterwards improved by the use they 
 found for his services in forming walks through the woods 
 of Lowther, and leading them in such a circuit as to take 
 advantage of all the most picturesquQ stations. As a poet,
 
 188 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 I presume that Mr. Wilkinson could hardly have recom- 
 mended himself to the notice of ladies who would naturally 
 have modelled their tastes upon the favorites of the age. A 
 poet, however, in a gentle, unassuming way, he was ; and 
 he, therefore, is to be added to the corps litteraire of the 
 Lakes ; and Yanwath to be put down as the advanced post 
 of that corps to the north. 
 
 Two families there still remain, which I am tempted to 
 gather into my group of Lake society — notwithstanding 
 it is true that the two most interesting members of the first 
 had died a little before the period at which my sketch 
 commences; and the second, though highly intellectual in 
 the person of that particular member whom I have chiefly 
 to commemorate, was not, properly speaking, literary ; 
 and, moreover, belongs to a later period of my own 
 Westmoreland experience — being, at the time of my set- 
 tlement in Grasmere, a girl at a boarding-school. The 
 first was the family of the Sympsons, whom ]\Ir. Words- 
 worth has spoken of, with deep interest, more than once. 
 The eldest son, a clergyman, and, like Wordsworth, an 
 alutnnus of Hawkshead school, wrote, amongst other 
 poems, ' The Vision of Alfred.' Of these poems, Words- 
 worth says, that they ' are little known ; but they contain 
 passages of splendid description ; and the versification of 
 his " Visio7i'''' is harmonious and animated.' This is much 
 for Wordsworth to say; and he does him even the honor of 
 quoting the following illustrative simile from his description 
 of the sylphs in motion, (which sylphs constitute the ma- 
 chinery of his poem;) and, probably, the reader will be 
 of opinion that this passage justifies the praise of Words- 
 worth. It is founded, as he will see, on the splendid 
 scenery of the heavens in Polar latitudes, as seen by 
 reflection in polished ice at midnight.
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 189 
 
 * Less varying hues beneath the Pole adorn 
 The streamy glories of the Boreal morn. 
 That, waving to and fro, their radiance shed 
 On Bothnia's gulf, with glassy ice o'erspread ; 
 Where the lone native, as he homeward glides. 
 On polished sandals o'er the imprisoned tides. 
 Sees, at a glance, above him and below, 
 Two rival heavens with equal splendor glow ; 
 Stars, moons, and meteors, ray oppose to ray ; 
 And solemn midnight pours the blaze of day.' 
 
 ' He was a man,' says Wordsworth, in conclusion, ' of 
 ardent feeling ; and his faculties of mind, particularly his 
 memory, were extraordinary.' Brief notices of his life 
 ought to find a place in the history of Westmoreland. 
 
 But it was the father of this Joseph Sympson who gave 
 its chief interest to the family. Him Wordsworth has 
 described, at the same time sketching his history, with 
 a fulness and a circumstantiality beyond what he has 
 conceded to any other of the real personages in ' The 
 Excursion.' ' A priest he was by function ; ' but a priest 
 of that class which is now annually growing nearer to 
 extinction among us, not being supported by any sympa- 
 thies in this age. 
 
 ' His course. 
 From his youth up, and high as manhood's noon. 
 Had been irregular — I might say wild ; 
 By books unsteadied, by his pastoral care 
 Too little check'd. An active, ardent mind ; 
 A fancy pregnant with resouixe and scheme 
 To cheat the sadness of a rainy day ; 
 Hands apt for all ingenious arts and games ; 
 A* generous spirit, and a body strong. 
 To cope with stoutest champions of the bowl — 
 Had earned for him sure welcome, and the rights 
 , Of a priz'd visitant in the jolly hall 
 Of country squire, or at the statelier board
 
 190 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Of Duke or Earl — from scenes of courtly pomp 
 Withdrawn, to Avhile away the summer hours 
 In condescension amongst rural guests. 
 With these high comrades he had revelled long, 
 By hopes of coming patronage beguiled, 
 Till the heart sicken'd.' 
 
 Slowly, however, and indignantly his eyes opened fully 
 to the windy treachery of all the promises held out to 
 him ; and, at length, for mere bread, he accepted, from 
 an ' unthought-of patron,' a most ' secluded chapelry ' 
 in Cumberland. This was ' the little, lowly house of 
 prayer' of Wythburn, elsewhere celebrated by Words- 
 worth ; and, for its own sake, interesting to all travellers, 
 both for its deep privacy, and for the excessive humility 
 of its external pretensions, whether as to size or orna- 
 ment. Were it not for its twin sister at Buttermere, it 
 would be the very smallest place of worship in all 
 England ; and it looks even smaller than it is, from its 
 poshion ; for it stands at the base of the mighty Hel- 
 vellyn, close to the high-road between Ambleside and 
 Keswick, and within speaking distance of the upper lake 
 — (for Wythburn Water, though usually passed by the 
 traveller under the impression of absolute unity in its 
 waters, owing to the interposition of a rocky screen, is, in 
 fact, composed of two separate lakes.) To this minia- 
 ture and most secluded congregation of shepherds, did 
 the once dazzling parson officiate as pastor; and it seems 
 to amplify the impression already given of his versatility, 
 that he became a diligent and most fatherly, though not 
 peculiarly devout teacher and friend. The temper, 
 however, of the northern Dalesmen, is not constitu- 
 tionally turned to religion ; consequently that part of his 
 defects did him no especial injury, when compensated 
 (as, in the judgment of these Dalesman, it was com-
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 191 
 
 pensated) by ready and active kindness, charity the most 
 diffusive, and patriarchal hospitality. The living, as I 
 have said, was in Wythburn ; but there was no parsonage, 
 and no house in this poor dale which was disposable for 
 that purpose. So Mr. Sympson crossed the marches of 
 the sister counties, which to him was about equidistant 
 from his chapel and his house, into Grasmere, on the 
 Westmoreland side. There he occupied a cottage by the 
 roadside ; a situation which, doubtless, gratified at once 
 his social and his hospitable propensities ; and, at length, 
 from age, as well as from paternal character and station, 
 came to be regarded as the patriarch of the vale. Before 
 I mention the afflictions which fell upon his latter end, 
 and by way of picturesque contrast to his closing scene, 
 let me have permission to cite Wordsworth's sketch 
 (taken from his own boyish remembrance of the case,) 
 describing the first gipsy-like entrance of the brilliant 
 parson and his household into Grasmere — so equally out 
 of harmony with the decorums of his sacred character 
 and the splendors of his past life : — 
 
 ' Kough and forbidding were the choicest roads 
 By -whicli our northern wilds could then be crossed ; 
 And into most of these secluded vales 
 Was no access for wain, heavy or light. 
 So at his dwelling-place the priest arriv'd, 
 With store of household goods in. panniers slung 
 On sturdy horses, graced with jingling bells ; 
 And, on the back of more ignoble beast, 
 That, with like burthen of efiects most priz'd 
 Or easiest carried, closed the motley train. 
 Young was I then, a schoolboy of eight years : 
 But still methinks I see them as they pass'd 
 In order — drawing toward their wish'd-for home. 
 Rock'd by the motion of a trusty ass, 
 Two ruddy children hung, a well-pois'd freight — 
 Each in his basket nodding drowsily.
 
 192 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Their bonnets, I remember, Tvreath'd with flowers. 
 
 Which told it was the pleasant month of June. 
 
 And close behind the comely matron rode — 
 
 A woman of soft speech and gracious smile, 
 
 And with a lady's mien. — From far they came, 
 
 Even from Northumbrian hills : yet theirs had been 
 
 A merry journey, rich in pastime, cheer'd 
 
 By music, pranks, and laughter-stirring jest ; 
 
 And freak put on, and arch word dropp'd — to swell 
 
 That cloud of fancy and uncouth surmise 
 
 Which gathered round the slowly moving train. 
 
 " Whence do they come ? and with what errand charged? 
 
 Belong they to the fortune-telling tribe 
 
 Who pitch their tents under the greenwood tree ? 
 
 Or strollers are they, fitted to enact 
 
 Fair Rosamond and the Children of the "Wood ? 
 
 When the next village hears the show announc'd 
 
 By blast of trumpet ? " Plenteous was the growth 
 
 Of such conjectures — overheard or seen 
 
 On many a staring countenance portray'd 
 
 Of boor or burgher, as they march'd along. 
 
 And more than once their steadiness of face 
 
 Was put to proof, and exercise supplied 
 
 To their inventive humor, by stern looks. 
 
 And questions in authoritative tone. 
 
 By some staid guardian of the public peace. 
 
 Checking the sober horse on which he rode. 
 
 In his suspicious wisdom ; oftener still 
 
 By notice indirect or blunt demand 
 
 From traveller halting in his own despite, 
 
 A simple curiosity to ease : — 
 
 Of which adventures, that beguil'd and cheer'd 
 
 Their grave migration, the good pair would tell 
 
 With undiminished glee in hoary age.' 
 
 Meantime the lady of the house embellished it with 
 feminine skill; and the homely pastor — for such he had 
 now become — not having any great weight of spiritual 
 duties, busied himself in rural labors and rural sports.
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 193 
 
 But was his mind, though bending submissively to his lot, 
 changed in conformity to his task ? No : 
 
 ' For he still 
 Retained a flashing eye, a burniug palm, 
 A stin-ing foot, a head which beat at nights 
 Upon its pillow with a thousand schemes. 
 Few likings had he dropp'd, few pleasures lost; 
 Generous and charitable, prompt to serve; 
 And still his harsher passions kept their hold — 
 Anger and indignation. Still he lov'd 
 The sound of titled names, and talked in glee 
 Of long past banquetings with high-born friends: 
 Then from those lulling fits of vain delight 
 Uprous'd by recollected injury, rail'd 
 At their false ways disdainfully and oft 
 In bitterness and with a threatening eye 
 Of fire, incens'd beneath its hoary brow.. 
 Those transports, with staid looks of pure good-will, 
 And with soft smile his consort would reprove. 
 She, far behind him in the race of years. 
 Yet keeping her first mildness, was advanced 
 Far nearer, in the habit of her soul, 
 To that still region whither all are bound.' 
 
 ^o' 
 
 Such was the tenor of their lives ; such the separate 
 character of their manners and dispositions ; and, with 
 unusual quietness of course, both were sailing placidly to 
 their final haven. Death had not visited their happy 
 mansion through a space of forty years — ' sparing both 
 old and young in that abode.' But calms so deep are 
 ominous — immunities so profound are terrific. Sudden- 
 ly the signal was given, and all lay desolate. 
 
 « Not twice had fall'ii 
 On those high peaks the first autumnal snow, 
 Before the greedy visiting was closed, 
 And the long privileg'd house left empty; swept 
 As by a plague. Yet no rapacious plague 
 VOL. II. 13.
 
 194 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 , Had been among them; all was gentle death, 
 One after one, with intervals of peace.' 
 
 The aged pastor's wife, his son, one of his daughters, 
 and ' a little smiling grandson,' all had gone within a 
 brief series of days. These composed the entire house- 
 hold in Grasmere, (the others having dispersed, or mar- 
 ried away ;) and all were gone but himself, by very 
 many years the oldest of the whole : he still survived. 
 And the whole valley, nay, all the valleys round about, 
 speculated with a tender interest upon what course the 
 desolate old man would take for his support. 
 
 ' All gone, all vanished ! he, deprived and bare. 
 How will he face the remnant of his life ? 
 What will become of him ? we said, and mus'd 
 In sad conjectures. — Shall we meet him now, 
 Haunting with rod and line the craggy brooks ? 
 Or shall we overhear him, as we pass, 
 Striving to entertain the lonely hours 
 With music ? [for he had not ceas'd to touch 
 The harp or viol, which himself had fram'd 
 For their sweet purposes, with perfect skill.] 
 What titles will he keep ? Will he remain 
 Musician, gardener, builder, mechanist, 
 A planter, and a reai'er from the seed ? ' 
 
 Yes ; he persevered in all his pursuits : intermitted 
 none of them. Weathered a winter in solitude ; once 
 more beheld the glories of a spring, and the resurrection 
 of the flowers upon the graves of his beloved ; held out 
 even through the depths of summer into the cheerful 
 season of haymaking, (a season much later in Westmore- 
 land than in the south ;) took his rank, as heretofore, 
 amongst the haymakers ; sat down at noon for a little 
 rest to his aged limbs ; and found even a deeper rest 
 than he was expecting ; for, in a moment of time, without
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 195 
 
 a warning, without a struggle, and without a groan, he did 
 indeed rest from his labors for ever. He, 
 
 ' With his cheerful throng 
 Of open projects, and his inward hoard 
 Of unsunn'd griefs, too many and too keen, 
 Was overcome by unexpected sleep 
 In one blest moment. Like a shadow thrown, 
 Softly and lightly, from a passing cloud. 
 Death fell upon him, while reclined he lay 
 For noontide solace on the summer gi-ass — 
 The warm lap of his mother earth ; and so. 
 Their lenient term of separation pass'd, 
 That family— * * * * 
 
 By yet a higher privilege — once more 
 Were gathered to each other.' 
 
 Two 'Surviving members of the family, a son and a 
 daughter, I knew intimately. Both have been long dead ; 
 but the children of the daughter — grandsons, therefore, 
 to the patriarch here recorded — are living prosperously, 
 and do honor to the interesting family they represent. 
 
 The other family were, if less generally interesting by 
 their characters or accomplishments, much more so by 
 the circumstances of their position ; and that member of 
 the family with whom accident and neighborhood had 
 brought me especially connected, was, n her intellectual 
 capacity, probably superior to most of those Avhom I have 
 had occasion to record. Had no misfortunes settled upon 
 her life prematurely, and with the benefit of a little 
 judicious guidance to her studies, I am of opinion that she 
 would have been a most distinguished person. Her 
 situation, when I came to know her, was one of touching 
 interest. I will state the circumstances : — She was the 
 sole and illegitimate daughter of a country gentleman : 
 and was a favorite with her father, as she well deserved 
 to be, in a degree so excessive — so nearly idolatrous —
 
 196 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 that I never heard illustrations of it mentioned but that 
 secretly I trembled for the endurance of so perilous a love 
 under the common accidents of life, and still more under 
 the unusual difficulties and snares of her peculiar situation. 
 Her father was, by birth, breeding, and property, a 
 Leicestershire farmer; not, perhaps, what you would 
 strictly call a gentleman, for he afTected no j'efinements of 
 manner, but rather courted the exterior of a bluff, careless 
 yeoman. Still he was of that class whom all people, 
 even then, on his letters, addressed as esquire : he had an 
 ample income, and was surrounded with all the luxuries 
 of modern life. In early life — and that was the sole 
 palliation of his guilt — (and yet, again, in another view, 
 aggravated it) — he had allowed himself to violate his 
 own conscience in a way which, from the hour of his 
 error, never ceased to pursue him with remorse, and 
 
 which was, in fact, its own avengei*. Mr. K was a 
 
 favorite specimen of English yeomanly beauty : a fine 
 athletic figure ; and with features handsome, well moulded, 
 frank, and generous in their expression, and in a striking 
 degi'ee manly. In fact, he might have sat for Robin 
 Hood. It happened that a young lady of his own 
 neighborhood, somewhere near Mount Soril I think, fell 
 desperately in love with him. Oh ! blindness of the 
 human heart ! how deeply did she come to rue the day 
 when she first turned her thoughts to him ! At first, how- 
 ever, her case seemed a hopeless one ; for she herself 
 
 was remarkably plain, and Mr. K was profoundly in 
 
 love with the very handsome daughter of a neighboring 
 farmer. One advantage, however, there was on the side 
 of this plain girl : she was rich ; and part of her wealth, 
 or of her expectations, lay in landed property, that would 
 effect a very tempting arrondissement of an estate be- 
 longing to Mr. K . Through what course the aflair
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 
 
 197 
 
 travelled, I never heard more particularly, than that 
 Mr. K was besieged and worried out of his steady- 
 mind by the solicitations of aunts and other relations, who 
 had all adopted the cause of the heiress. But what 
 finally availed to extort a reluctant consent from him was, 
 the representation made by the young lady's family, and 
 backed by medical men, that she was seriously in danger 
 
 of dying, unless Mr. K would make her his wife. 
 
 He was no coxcomb ; but, when he heard all his own 
 female relations calling him a murderer, and taxing him 
 with having, at times, given some encouragement to the 
 unhappy lovesick girl, in an evil hour he agreed to give 
 up liis own sweetheart and marry her. He did so. But 
 no sooner was this fatal step taken than it was repented. 
 His love returned in bitter excess for the girl whom he 
 had forsaken, and with frantic remorse. This girl, at 
 length, by the mere force of his grief, he actually 
 persuaded to live with him as his wife ; and when, in 
 spite of all concealments, the fact began to transpire, and 
 the ans;rv wife, in order to break off the connection, 
 obtained his consent to their quitting Leicestershire 
 altoijelher, and transferrin^ their whole establishment to 
 
 the Lakes, Mr. K evaded the whole object of this 
 
 mancEuvre by secretly contriving to bring her rival also 
 into Westmoreland. Her, however, he placed in another 
 vale ; and, for some years, it is pretty certain that Mrs. 
 
 K never suspected the fact. Some said that it was 
 
 her pride which would not allow her to seem conscious of 
 so great an atFront to herself; others, better skilled in 
 deciphering the meaning of manners, steadfastly affirmed 
 that she was in iiappy ignorance of an arrangement 
 known to all the country beside. 
 
 Years passed on ; and the situation of the poor wife 
 became more and more gloomy. During those years, she
 
 198 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 brought her husband no children ; on the other hand, her 
 
 hated rival liad : Mr. K saw growing up about his 
 
 table two children, a son, and then a daughter, who, in 
 their childhood, must have been beautiful creatures; for 
 the son, when I knew him in after life, though bloated 
 and disfigured a good deal by intemperance, was still a 
 very fine young man ; more athletic even than his father ; 
 and presenting his father's handsome English yeoman's 
 face, exalted by a Roman dignity in some of the features. 
 The daughter was of the same cast of person; tall, and 
 Roman also in the style of her face. In fact, the brot^ier 
 and the sister would have offered a fine impersonation of 
 Coriolanus and Valeria. This Roman bias of the features 
 a little affected the feminine loveliness of the daughter's 
 appearance. But still, as the impression was not very 
 decided, she would have been pronounced anywhere a 
 very captivating young woman. These were the two 
 
 crowns of Mr. K 's felicity, that for seventeen or 
 
 eighteen years made the very glory of his life. But 
 Nemesis was on his steps ; and one of these very children 
 she framed the scourge which made the day of his death 
 a happy deliverance, for which he had long hungered and 
 thirsted. But I anticipate. About the time when I came 
 to reside in Grasmere, some little affair of local business 
 
 one night drew Wordsworth up to Mr. K 's house. It 
 
 was called, and with great propriety, from the multitude 
 of holly trees that still survived from ancient days, The 
 
 Hollens ; which pretty local name Mrs, K , in her 
 
 general spirit of vulgar sentimentality, had changed to 
 Holly Grove. 
 
 The place, spite of its slipshod novelish name, which 
 might have led one to expect a corresponding style of 
 tinsel finery, and a display of childish purposes, about its 
 furniture or its arrangements, was really simple and
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 199 
 
 unpretending ; whilst its situation was, in itself, a sufficient 
 ground of interest ; for it stood on a little terrace, running 
 like an artificial gallery or corridor, along the final, and 
 all but perpendicular, descent of the mighty Fairfield.* 
 It seemed as if it must require iron bolts to pin it to the 
 rock, which rose so high, and, apparently, so close behind. 
 Not until you reached the little esplanade upon which the 
 modest mansion stood, were you aware of a little area 
 interposed between the rear of the house and the rock, 
 just sufficient for ordinary domestic offices. The house 
 was otherwise interesting to myself, from recalling one in 
 which I had passed part of my infancy. As in that, you 
 entered by a rustic hall, fitted up so as to make a beautiful 
 little breakfasting-room : the distribution of the passages 
 was pretty nearly the same ; and there were other resem- 
 blances. Mr. K received us with civility and hospi- 
 tality — checked, however, and embarrassed, by a very 
 evident reserve. The reason of this was, partly, that he 
 distrusted the feelings, towards himself, of two scholars ; 
 but more, perhaps, that he had something beyond this 
 general jealousy for distrusting Wordsworth. He had 
 been a very extensive planter of larches, which were then 
 recently introduced into the Lake country ; and were, in 
 
 * ' Mighty Fairfield.' 
 
 And Mighty Fairfield, with her chime 
 
 Of echoes, still was keeping time. 
 
 Wordsworth's ' Waggoner.' 
 I have retained the English name of Fairfield ; hut, when I was 
 studying Danish, I stumbled upon the true meaning of the name, un- 
 locked by that language ; and reciprocally (as one amongst other 
 instances which I met at the very threshold of my studies) unlocking 
 the fact that Danish (or Icelandic rather) is the master-key to the local 
 names and dialect of Westmoreland. Faar is a sheep : fald a hill. 
 But are not all the hills sheep hills ? No ; Fairfield only, amongst all 
 its neiglibors, has large, smooth, pastoral savannas, to which the sheep 
 resort when all the rocky or barren neighbors are left desolate.
 
 200 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 every direction, displacing the native forest scenery, and 
 dismally disfiguring this most lovely region ; and this 
 effect was necessarily in its worst ex'cess during the infancy 
 of the larch plantations ; both because they took the 
 formal arrangement of nursery grounds, until extensive 
 thinnings, as well as storms, had begun to break this 
 hideous stiffness in the lines and angles, and also because 
 the larch is a mean tree, both in form and coloring, (having 
 a bright gosling glare in spring, a wet blanket hue in 
 autumn,) as long as it continues a young tree. Not until 
 it has seen forty or fifty winters does it begin to toss its 
 boughs about with a wild Alpine grace. Wordsworth, 
 for many years, had systematically abused the larches and 
 the larch planters ; and there went about the country a 
 pleasant anecdote, in connection with this well-known 
 habit of his, which I have often heard repeated by the 
 woodmen — viz., that, one day, when he believed himself 
 to be quite alone — but was, in fact, surveyed coolly, 
 during the whole process of his passions, by a reposing 
 band of laborers in the shade, and at their noontide meal 
 — Wordsworth, on finding a whole cluster of birch-trees 
 grubbed up, and preparations making for the installation 
 of larches in their place, was seen advancing to the spot 
 with gathering wrath in his eyes ; next he was heard 
 pouring out an interrupted litany of comminations and 
 maledictions ; and, finally, as his eye rested upon the four 
 or five larches which were already beginning to ' dress the 
 line ' of the new battalion, he seized his own hat in a 
 transport of fury, and launched it against the odious 
 
 intruders. Mr. K had, doubtless, heard, of \A'ords- 
 
 worth's frankness upon this theme, and knew himself to 
 be, as respected Grasmere, the sole offender. 
 
 In another way, also, he had earned a few random shots 
 from Wordsworth's wrath — viz., as the erector of a huge
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 
 
 201 
 
 unsightly barn, built solely for convenience, and so far 
 violating all the modesty of rustic proportions, that it was 
 really an eyesore in the valley. These considerations, 
 and others beside, made him reserved ; but he felt the 
 silent appeal to his lares from the strangers' presence, and 
 
 was even kind in his courtesies. Suddenly, Mrs. K 
 
 entered the room — instantly his smile died away : he did 
 not even mention her name. Wordsworth, however, she 
 knew slightly ; and to me she introduced herself. Mr. 
 
 K seemed almost impatient when I rose and presented 
 
 her with my chair. Anything that detained her in the 
 room for a needless moment seemed to him a nuisance. 
 She, on the other hand — what was her behavior? I 
 had been told that she worsliipped the very ground on 
 which he trod ; and so, indeed, it appeared. This adoring 
 love might, under other circumstances, have been beau- 
 tiful to contemplate : but here it impressed unmixed dis- 
 gust. Imagine a woman of very homely features, and 
 farther disfigured by a scorbutic eruption, fixing a tender 
 gaze upon a burly man of forty, who showed, by every 
 word, look, gesture, movement, that he disdained her. In 
 fact, nothing could be more injudicious than her deport- 
 ment towards him. Everybody must feel that a man who 
 hates any person, hates that person the more for troubling 
 him with expressions of love ; or, at least, it adds to hatred 
 the sting of disgust. That was the fixed language of Mr. 
 
 K 's manner, in relation to his wife. He was not a 
 
 man to be pleased with foolish fondling endearments, from 
 any woman, before strangers ; but from her ! Faugh ! he 
 said internally, at every instant. His very eyes he averted 
 from her: not once did he look at her, though forced into 
 the odious necessity of speaking to her several times; and, 
 at length, when she seemed disposed to construe our pres- 
 ence as a sort of brief privilege to her own, he adopted that
 
 202 LITERARY REBIINISCENCES. 
 
 same artifice for ridding himself of her detested company, 
 which has sometimes done seasonable service to a fine 
 gentleman when called upon by ladies for the explanation 
 of a Greek word — he hinted to her, pretty broadly, that 
 the subject of our conversation was not altogether proper 
 for female ears; very much to the astonishment of Words- 
 worth and myself.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 SOCIETY OF THE LAKES. 
 
 It was at Mr. Wordsworth's house that I first became 
 acquainted with Professor (then Mr.) Wilson, of Elleray. 
 I have elswhere described the impression which he made 
 upon me at my first acquaintance ; and it is sufficiently 
 known, from other accounts of Mr. Wilson, (as, for 
 example, that written by Mr. Lockhart in ' Peter's Let- 
 ters,') that he divided his time and the utmost sincerity of 
 his love between literature and the stormiest pleasures of 
 real life. Cock-fighting, wrestling, pugilistic contests, boat- 
 racing, horse-racing, all enjoyed Mr. Wilson's patronage ; 
 all were occasionally honored by his personal participation. 
 I mention this in no unfriendly spirit toward Professor 
 Wilson ; on the contrary, these propensities grew out of 
 his ardent temperament and his constitutional endowments 
 — his strength, speed, and agility : and being confined to 
 the period of youth — for I am speaking of a period 
 removed by five-and-twenty years — can do him no dis- 
 honor amongst the candid and the judicious. ' N071 lusisse 
 piidet, sed non incidere ludum.'' The truth was, that 
 Professor Wilson had in him, at that period of life, some- 
 thing of the old English chivalric feeling which our old 
 ballad poetry agrees in ascribing to Robin Hood. Several 
 men of genius have expressed to me, at different times, 
 the delight they had in the traditional character of Robin
 
 204 LITEKARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Hood : he has no resemblance to the old heroes of Con- 
 tinental romance in one important feature ; they are 
 uniforoily victorious : and this gives even a tone of mo- 
 notony to the Continental poems : for, let them involve 
 their hero in what dangers they may, the reader still feels 
 them to be as illusory as those which menace an enchanter 
 — an Astolpho, for instance, who, by one blast of his horn, 
 can dissipate an army of opponents. But Robin is fre- 
 quently beaten: he never declines a challenge ; sometimes 
 he courts one ; and occasionally he learns a lesson from 
 some proud tinker or masterful beggar, the moral of which 
 teaches him that there are better men in the world than 
 himself. What follows ? Is the brave man angry with his 
 stout-hearted antagonist, because he is no less brave and a 
 little stronger than himself? Not at all : he insists on 
 making him a present, on giving him a dejeuner a la four' 
 chette, and (in case he is disposed to take service in the 
 forest) "finally adopts him into his band of archers. Much 
 the same spirit governed, in his earlier years. Professor 
 Wilson. And, though a man of prudence cannot altogether 
 approve of his throwing himself into the convivial society 
 of gipsies, tinkers, potters,* strolling players, &c. ; never- 
 theless, it tells altogether in favor of Professor Wilson's 
 generosity of mind, that he was ever ready to forego his 
 advantas-es of station and birth, and to throw himself 
 fearlessly upon his own native powers, as man opposed to 
 man. Even at Oxford he fought -an aspiring shoemaker 
 repeatedly, which is. creditable to both sides ; for the very 
 prestige of the gown is already overpowering to the artisan 
 from the beginning, and he is half beaten by terror at his 
 own presumption. Elsewhere he sought out, or, at least 
 
 * Poller is the local term in northeni England for a hawker of earth- 
 en ware, many of which class lead a vagrant life, and encamp during the 
 summer months like gipsies.
 
 PROFESSOR WILSON. 205 
 
 did not avoid the most dreaded of the local heroes ; and 
 foLiglit his way through his ' most verdant years,' taking 
 or giving defiances to the right and the left in perfect 
 carelessness, as chance or occasion offered. No man 
 could well show more generosity in these struggles, nor 
 more magnanimity in reporting their issue, which naturally 
 went many times against him. But Mr. Wilson neither 
 sought to disguise the issue nor showed himself at all 
 displeased with it : even brutal ill-usage did not seem to 
 have left any vindictive remembrance of itself. These 
 features of his character, however, and these propensities 
 which naturally belonged merely to the transitional state 
 from boyhood to manhood, would have drawn little atten- 
 tion on their own account, had they not been relieved and 
 emphatically contrasted by his passion for literature, and 
 the fluent command which he soon showed over a rich 
 and voluptuous poetic diction. In everything Mr. Wilson 
 showed himself an Athenian. Athenians were all lovers 
 of the cockpit ; and, howsoever shocking to the sensibilities 
 of modern refinement, we have no doubt that Plato was a 
 frequent better at cock-fights ; and Socrates is known to 
 have bred cocks himself. If there were anv Athenian, 
 however, in particular, it was Alcibiades ; for he had his 
 marvellous versatility ; and to the Windermere neigh- 
 borhood in which he had settled, this versatility came 
 recommended by something of the very same position in 
 society — the same wealth, the same social temper, the 
 same jovial hospitality. No person was better fitted to win 
 or to maintain a high place in social esteem ; for he could 
 adapt himself to all companies; and the wish to conciliate 
 and to win his way by flattering the self-love of others, 
 was so predominant over all personal self-love and vanity, 
 
 • That he did in the general bosom reign 
 Of young and old.'
 
 206 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Mr. Wilson and most of his family I had already known 
 for six years. We had projected journeys together 
 through Spain and Greece, all of which had been nipped 
 in the bud by Napoleon's furious and barbarous mode of 
 making war. It was no joke, as it had been in past times, 
 for an Englishman to be found wandering in continental 
 regions ; the pretence that he was, or might be, a spy — a 
 charge so easy to make, so impossible to throw off — at 
 once sufficed for the hanging of the unhappy traveller. 
 In one of his Spanish bulletins. Napoleon even boasted * 
 of having hanged sixteen Englishmen, ' merchants or 
 others of that nation,' whom he taxed with no suspicion 
 even of being suspected, beyond the simple fact of being 
 detected in the act of breathing Spanish air. These 
 atrocities had interrupted our continental schemes; and 
 we were thus led the more to roam amongst home scenes. 
 How it happened I know not — for we had wandered 
 together often in England — but, by some accident, it was 
 not until 1814 that we visited Edinburgh together. Then 
 it was that I first saw Scotland. 
 
 I remember a singular incident which befell us on the 
 road. Breakfasting together, before starting, at Mr. 
 Wilson's place of Elleray, we had roamed, through a 
 long and delightful day, by way of UUeswater, &c. 
 Reaching Penrith at night, we slept there ; and in the 
 morning, as we were sunning ourselves in the street, we 
 saw, seated in an arm-chair, and dedicating himself to the 
 self-same task of apricating his jolly personage, a rosy, 
 jovial, portly man, having something of the air of a 
 Quaker. Good nature was clearly his predominating 
 quality ; and, as that happened to be our foible also, we 
 
 * This brutal boast might, after all, be a falsehood ; and, with respect 
 to mere numbers, probably was so.
 
 PROFESSOR WILSON. 207 
 
 soon fell into talk; and from that into reciprocations 
 of good will; and from those into a direct proposal, on 
 our new friend's part, that we should set out upon our 
 travels together. How — whither — to what end or ohject 
 — seemed as little to enter into his speculations as the 
 cost of realizing them. Rare it is, in this business world 
 of ours, to find any man in so absolute a state of indiffer- 
 ence and neutrality, that for him all quarters of the globe, 
 and all points of the compass, are self-balanced by 
 philosophic equilibrium of choice. There seemed to us 
 something amusing and yet monstrous in such a man ; 
 and, perhaps, had we been in the same condition of 
 exquisite indetermination, to this hour we might all have 
 been staying together at Penrith. We, however, were 
 previously bound to Edinburgh; and, as soon as this was 
 explained to him, that way he proposed to accompany 
 us. We took a chaise, therefore, jointly, to Carlisle ; and, 
 during the whole eighteen miles, he astonished us by the 
 wildest and most frantic displays of erudition, much of it 
 levelled at Sir Isaac Newton. Much philosophical learning 
 also he exhibited ; but the grotesque accompajiiment of 
 the whole was, that, after every bravura, he fell back into 
 his corner in fits of laughter at himself. We began to 
 find out the unhappy solution of his indifference and 
 purposeless condition; he was a lunatic ; and, afterwards, 
 we had reason to suppose that he was now a fugitive from 
 his keepers. At Carlisle he became restless and suspi- 
 cious ; and, finally, upon some real or imaginary business, 
 he turned aside to Whitehaven. We were not the objects 
 of his jealousy ; for he parted Avith us reluctantly and 
 anxiously. On our part, we felt our pleasure overcast by 
 sadness ; for we had been much amused by his conversa- 
 tion, and could not but respect the philological learning 
 which he had displayed. But one thing was wdiimsical
 
 208 LITEKARY REMi:^ISCENCES. 
 
 enough: Wilson purposely said some startling things — 
 startling in point of decorum, or gay pleasantries, contra 
 bonos mores ; at every sally of which, he looked as awfully 
 shocked as though he himself had not been holding the 
 most licentious talk in another key, licentious as respected 
 all truth of history or of science. Another illustration, in 
 fact, he furnished of what I "have so often heard Coleridge 
 say — that lunatics, in general, so far from being the 
 brilliant persons they are thought, and having a preter- 
 natural brightness of fancy, usually are the very dullest 
 and most uninspired of mortals. The sequel of our poor 
 friend's history — for the apparent goodness of his nature 
 had interested us both in his fortunes and caused us to 
 inquire after him through all probable channels — was, 
 that he was last seen by a Cambridge man of our 
 acquaintance, but under circumstances which confirmed 
 our worst fears: it was in a stage-coach: and, at first, 
 the Cantab suspected notliing amiss ; but some accident 
 of conversation being started, the topic of La Place's 
 Mechanique Celeste, off flew our jolly Penrith friend in a 
 tirade against Sir Isaac Newton ; so that at once we 
 recognised him, as the ' Vicar of Wakefield,' his ' cos- 
 mogony friend ' in prison ; but — and that was melancholy 
 to hear — this tirade was suddenly checked, in the rudest 
 manner, by a brutal fellow in one corner of the carriage, 
 who, as it now appeared, 'was attending him as a regular 
 keeper ; and, according to the custom of such people, 
 always laid an interdict upon every ebullition of fancy or 
 animated thought. He was a man whose mind had got 
 some wheel entangled, or some spring overloaded, but 
 else, was a learned and able person ; and he was to be 
 silent at the bidding of a low, brutal fellow, incapable of 
 distinguishing between the gaieties of fancy and the 
 wandering of the intellect. Sad fate ! and sad inversion
 
 PROFESSOR WILSON. 209 
 
 of the natural relations between the accomplished scholar 
 and the rude, illiterate boor ! 
 
 Of Edinburgh I thought to have spoken at length. But 
 I pause, and retreat from the subject, when I remember 
 that so many of those whom I loved and honored at that 
 time — some, too, among the gayest of the gay — are now 
 lying in their graves. Of Professor Wilson's sisters, the 
 youngest, at that time a child almost, and standing at the 
 very vestibule of womanhood, is alone living : she has had 
 a romantic life ; has twice traversed, with no attendance 
 but her servants, the gloomy regions of the Caucasus ; 
 and once with a young child by her side. Her husband, 
 Mr. M'Neill, is now the English envoy at the court of 
 Teheran. On the rest, one of whom I honored and loved 
 as a sister, the curtain has fallen ; and here, in the present 
 mood of my spirits, I also feel disposed to drop a curtain 
 over my subsequent memoirs. Farewell hallowed recol- 
 lections ! 
 
 Thus, I have sketched the condition of the lake district, 
 as to society of an intellectual order, at the time, (viz., 
 the winter of 1808-9,) when I became a personal resi- 
 dent in that district; and, indeed, from this era, through 
 a period of about twenty years in succession, I may 
 describe my domicile as being amongst the lakes and 
 mountains of Westmoreland. It is true, I often made 
 excursions to London, Bath, and its neighborhood, or 
 northwards to Edinburgh ; and, perhaps, on an average, 
 passed one-fourth part of each year at a distance from this 
 district ; but here only it was that henceforwards I had a 
 house and small establishment. The house, for a very 
 long course of years, was that same cottage in Grasmere, 
 embowered in roses and jessamine, which I have already 
 described as a spot hallow^ed to the admirers of Mr. 
 Wordsworth, by his seven years' occupation of its pretty 
 
 VOL. II. 14
 
 210 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 chambers and its rocky orchard : a little domain, which 
 he has himself apostrophized as the ' lowest stair in that 
 magnificent temple,' forming the north-eastern boundary 
 of Grasmere. The little orchard is rightly called ' the 
 lowest stair;' for within itself, all is ascending ground; 
 hardly enough of flat area on which to pitch a pavilion, 
 and even that scanty surface an inclined plane ; whilst 
 the rest of the valley, into which you step immediately 
 from the garden gate, is, (according to the characteristic 
 beauty of the northern English valleys, as first noticed 
 by Mr. Wordsworth himself,) ' flat as the floor of a 
 temple.' 
 
 In sketching the state of the literary society gathered or 
 gathering about the English lakes, at the time of my 
 settling amongst them, I have, of course, authorized the 
 reader to suppose that I personally mixed freely amongst 
 the whole ; else I should have had neither the means for 
 describing that society with truth, nor any motive for 
 attempting it. Meantime, the direct object of my own 
 residence at the lakes was the society of Mr. Wordsworth. 
 And it will be a natural inference that, if I mingled on 
 familiar or friendly terms with this society, a fortiori 
 would Mr. Wordsworth do so, as belonging to the lake 
 district by birth, and as having been, in some instances, 
 my own introducer to members of this community. But 
 it was not so; and never was a grosser blunder commit- 
 ted than by Lord Byron, when, in a letter to Mr. Hogg, 
 (/rom which an extract is given in some volume of Mr. 
 Lockhart's ' Life of Sir Walter Scott,') he speaks of 
 Wordsworth, Southey, &:c., in connection with Sir Walter, 
 as all alike injured by mixing only with little adoring 
 coteries, which each severally was supposed to have 
 gathei'^d about himself as a centre. Now, had this really 
 been the case, I know not how the objects of such a
 
 WILLIAM WORDSAVORTH. 211 
 
 partial or exclusive admiration could have been injured by 
 it ill any sense \viili which the public were concerned. 
 A writer may — and of that there arc many instances — 
 write the worse for meeting nobody of sympathy with 
 himself; no admiration sufficient to convince him that he 
 has written powerfully : that misfortune, when it occurs, 
 may injure a writer, or may cause him to cease cultivating 
 his genius. But no man was ever injured by the strong 
 reflection of his own power in love and admiration ; not 
 as a writer, I mean : though it is very true, from the great 
 variety of modes in which praise, or the indirect flattery 
 of silent homage, acts upon different minds, that some 
 men maybe injured as social companions: vanity, and, 
 still more, egotism — the habit of making self the central 
 point of reference, in every treatment of every subject — 
 ni^y certainly be cherished by the idolatry of a private 
 circle, continually ascending ; but arrogance and gloomy 
 anti-social pride are qualities much more likely to be 
 favored by sympathy withheld, and the unjust denial of a 
 man's pretensions. This, however, need not be discussed 
 with any reference to Mr. Wordsworth ; for he had no 
 such admiring circle : no applauding coterie ever gathered 
 about him. Wordsworth was not a man to be openly 
 flattered : his pride repelled that kind of homage, or any 
 homage that oflered itself with the air of conferring 
 honor ; and repelled it m a tone of loftiness or arrogance 
 that never failed to kindle the pride of the baflied flatterer. 
 Nothing in the way of applause could give Wordsworth 
 any pleasure, unless it were the spontaneous and half- 
 unconscious utterance of delight in some passage — the 
 implicit applause of love, half afraid to express itself; or 
 else the deliberate praise of rational examination, study, 
 and comparison, applied to his writings : these were the 
 only modes of admiration which could recommend them-
 
 2l2 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 selves to Wordsworth. But had it been otherwise, there 
 was another mistake in what Lord Byron said : — the 
 neighboring people, in every degree, ' gentle and simple,' 
 literary or half-educated, who had heard of Wordsworth, 
 agreed in despising him. Never had poet or prophet less 
 honor in his own country. Of the gentry, very few knew 
 anything about Wordsworth. Grasmere was a vale little 
 visited at that time, except for an hour's admiration. The 
 case is now altered ; and partly by a new road, which, 
 having pierced the valley by a line carried along the 
 water's edge, at a most preposterous cost, and with a large 
 arrear of debt for the next generation, saves the labor of 
 surmounting a laborious hill. The case is now altered, 
 no less for the intellect of the age ; and Rydal Mount is 
 now one of the most honored abodes in the island. But, 
 at that time, Grasmere did not differ more from the 
 Grasmere of to-day than Wordsworth from the Words- 
 worth of 1809-20. I repeat that he was little known, 
 even as a resident in the country ; and, as a poet, strange 
 it would have been had the little town of Ambleside 
 undertaken to judge for itself, and against a tribunal 
 which had for a time subdued the very temper of the age. 
 Lord Byron might have been sure that nowhere would the 
 contempt for Mr. Wordsworth be rifer than exactly 
 amongst those who had a local reason for curiosity about 
 the man, and who, of course, adopting the tone of the 
 presiding journals, adopted them with a personality of 
 feeling unknown elsewhere. 
 
 Except, therefore, with the Lloyds, or occasionally with 
 Thomas Wilkinson the Quaker, or very rarely with 
 Southey, Wordsworth had no intercourse at all beyond the 
 limits of Grasmere : and in that valley I was myself, for 
 some years, his sole visiting friend ; as, on the other hand, 
 my sole visiters, as regarded that vale, were himself and 
 his family.
 
 KATE WOKDSWORTII. 213 
 
 Among that family, and standing fourth in tlie series of 
 his children, was a little girl, whose life, short as it was, 
 and whose death, obscure and little heard of as it was 
 amongst all the rest of the world, connected themselves 
 with the records of my own life by ties of passion so 
 profound, by a grief so frantic, and so memorable through 
 the injurious effects which it produced of a physical kind, 
 that, had I left untouched every other chapter of my own 
 experience, I should certainly have left behind some 
 memorandum of this, as having a permanent interest in 
 the psychological history of human nature. Luckily the 
 facts are not without a parallel, and in well authenticated 
 medical books ; else I should have scrupled, (as what 
 man does ?iot scruple who values, above all things, the 
 reputation for veracity ?) to throw the whole stress of 
 credibility on my own unattached narration. But all 
 experienced physicians know well that cases similar to 
 mine, though not common, occur at intervals in every 
 large community. 
 
 When I first settled in Grasmere, Catherine Wordsworth 
 was in her infancy ; but, even at that age, noticed me 
 more than any other person, excepting, of course, her 
 mother. She had for an attendant a young girl, perhaps, 
 thirteen years old — Sarah, one of the orphan children 
 left by the unfortunate couple, George and Sarah Green, 
 whose tragical end in a snow-stomn I have already 
 narrated. This Sarah Green was as far removed in 
 character as could be imagined from that elder sister who 
 had won so much admiration in her childish days, by her 
 premature display of energy and household virtues. She 
 was lazy, luxurious, and sensual: one, in fact, of those 
 nurses who, in their anxiety to gossip about young men, 
 leave their infant of youthful charges to the protection of 
 chance. It was, however, not in her out-of-door ram-
 
 214 LITERARY KEBIINISCENCES. 
 
 blings, but at home, that the accident occurred which 
 determined the fortunes of little Catherine. Mr. Cole- 
 ridge was, at that time, a visiter to the Wordsworths at 
 Allan Bank, that house in Grasmere to which Wordsworth 
 had removed upon quitting his cottage. One day about 
 noon, when, perhaps, he was coming down to breakfast, 
 Mr. Coleridge passed Sarah Green, playing after her 
 indolent fashion with the child; and between them lay a 
 number of carrots. He warned the girl that raw carrots 
 were an indijrestible substance for the stomach of an 
 infant. This warnincr was neglected : little Catherine ate 
 — it was never known how many; and, in a short time, 
 was seized with strong convulsions. I saw her in this 
 state about two, P. M, No medical aid was to be had 
 nearer than Ambleside ; about six miles distant. How- 
 ever, all proper measures were taken; and, by sunset, she 
 had so far recovered as to be pronounced out of danger. 
 Her left side, however, left arm, and left leg, from that 
 time forward, were in a disabled state : not what could be 
 called paralyzed, but suffering a sort of atony or imperfect 
 distribution of vital power. Catherine was not above 
 three years old when she died ; so that ttiere could not 
 have been much room for the expansion of her under- 
 standing, or the unfolding of her real character. But 
 there was room enough in her short life, and too much, for 
 Jove the most frantic to settle upon her. The whole vale 
 of Grasmere is not large enough to allow of any great 
 distances between house and house; and as it .happened 
 that little Kate Wordsworth returned my love, she in a 
 manner lived with me at my solitary cottage ; as often as 
 I could entice her from home, walked with me, slept with 
 me, and was my sole companion. That I was not singular 
 in describing some witchery to the nature and manners of 
 this innocent child, you may gather from the following
 
 KATE WORDSWORTH. 215 
 
 most beautiful lines extracted from a sketch * towards her 
 portraiture, drawn by lier father, (with whom, however, 
 she was noways a favorite) : — 
 
 ' And as a faggot sparkles on the hearth, 
 Not less if unattended and alone 
 Than when both young and old sit gather'd round, 
 And take delight in its activity ; 
 Even so this happy creature of herself 
 Was all sufficient : Solitude to her 
 Was blithe society, who fiU'd the air 
 With gladness and involuntary songs. 
 Light were her sallies as the tripping fxwn's, 
 Forth startled from the form where she lay couch'd j 
 Unthought of, unexpected, as the stir 
 Of the soft breeze ruffling the meadow flowers ; 
 Or from before it chasing wantonly 
 The many-color'd images irapress'd 
 Upon the bosom of a placid lake.' 
 
 It was this radiant spirit of joyousness, making solitude 
 for her blithe society, and filling from morning to night 
 the air ' with gladness and involuntary songs,' this it was 
 which so fascinated my heart, that I became blindly, 
 doatingly, in a servile degree, devoted to this one affection. 
 
 * It is entitled ' Characteristics of a Child Three Years Old ;' and is 
 dated at the foot ISII, which must he an oversight, for she was not so 
 old until the following year. I may as well add the first six lines, 
 though I had a reason for beginning- the extract where it does, in order 
 to fix the attention ujioii ilie special circumstance which had so much 
 fascinated myself, of her all-suflic-icncy to herself, and the way in which 
 she ' filled the air with gladness and involuntary songs.' The other 
 lines are these : 
 
 ' Loving she is and tractable, though wild ; 
 And Innocence hath privilege in her 
 To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes ; 
 And feats of cunning ; and the pretty round 
 Of trespasses, affected to provoke 
 Mock chastisement and partnership in play.'
 
 216 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 In the Spring of 1812, I went up to London; and, early 
 in June, by a letter from Miss Wordsworth, her aunt, I 
 learned the terrific news, (for such to me it was,) that she 
 had died suddenly. She had gone to bed in good health 
 about sunset on June 4; was found speechless a little 
 before midnight ; and died in the early dawn, just as the 
 first gleams of morning began to appear above Seat 
 Sandel and Fairfield, the mightiest of the Grasmere 
 barriers, about an hour, perhaps, before sunrise. Never, 
 perhaps, from the foundations of those mighty hills, was 
 there so fierce a convulsion of grief as mastered my 
 faculties on receiving that heart-shattering news. Over 
 and above my excess of love for her, I had always viewed 
 her as an impersonation of the dawn and the spirit of 
 infancy ; and this abstraction seated in her person, to- 
 gether with the visionary sort of connection, which, even 
 in her parting hours, she assumed with the summer sun, 
 by timing her immersion into the cloud of death with the 
 rising and setting of that fountain of life — these com- 
 bined impressions recoiled so violently into a contrast or 
 polar antithesis to the image of death, that each exalted 
 and brightened the other. I returned hastily to Grasmere ; 
 stretched myself every night, for more than two months 
 running, upon her grave ; in fact, often passed the night 
 upon her grave ; not (as may readily be supposed) in any 
 parade of grief; on the contrary, in that quiet valley of 
 simple shepherds, I was secure enough from observation 
 until morning light began to return ; but in mere intensity 
 of sick, frantic yearning after neighborhood to the darling 
 of my heart. 
 
 Many readers will have seen in Sir Walter Scott's ' De- 
 monology,' and in Dr. Abercrombie's ' Inquiries concern- 
 ins the Intellectual Powers,' some remarkable illustrations 
 of the creative faculties awakened in the eye or other
 
 KATE WORDSWORTH. 217 
 
 organs by peculiar states of passion ; and it is worthy of 
 a place amongst cases of that nature, that, in many soli- 
 taiy fields, at a considerable elevation above the level of 
 the valleys — fields which, in the local dialect, are called 
 ' intacks,' — my eye was haunted at times, in broad noon- 
 day, (oftener, however, in the afternoon,) with a facility, 
 but at times also with a necessity, for weaving, out of a 
 few simple elements, a perfect picture of little Kate in 
 the attitude and onward motion of walking. I resorted 
 constantly to these ' intacks,' as places where 1 was little 
 liable to disturbance ; and usually I saw her at the opposite 
 side of the field, which might sometimes be at a distance 
 of a quarter of a mile, generally not so much. Always 
 almost she carried a basket on her head ; and usually the 
 first hint upon which the figure arose commenced in wild 
 plants, such as tall ferns, or the purple flowers of the fox- 
 glove ; but, whatever might be the colors or the forms, 
 uniformly the same little full-formed figure arose, uni- 
 formly dressed in the little blue bed-gown and black skirt 
 of Westmoreland, and uniformly with the air of advancing 
 motion. Through part of June, July, and part of August, 
 in fact throughout the summer, this frenzy of grief con- 
 tinued. It was reasonably to be expected that nature 
 would avenge such senseless self-surrender to passion ; 
 for, in fact, so far from making an effort to resist it, I 
 clung' to it as a luxury, (which, in the midst of suffering, it 
 really was in part.) All at once, on a day at the latter 
 end of August, in one instant of time, I was seized with 
 some nervous sensation that, for a moment, caused sick- 
 ness. A glass of brandy removed the sickness; but I 
 felt, to my horror, a sting as it were, of some stationary 
 torment left behind — a torment absolutely indescribable, 
 but under which I felt assured that life could not be borne. 
 It is useless and impossible to describe what followed :
 
 218 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 with no apparent illness discoverable to any medical 
 eye — looking, indeed, better than usual for three months 
 and upwards, I was under the possession of some internal 
 nervous malady, that made each respiration which I drew 
 an act of separate anguish. I travelled southwards imme- 
 diately to Liverpool, to Birmingham, to Bristol, to Bath, 
 for medical advice; and finally rested — in a gloomy- 
 state of despair, rather because I saw no use in-further 
 change, than that I looked for any change in this place 
 more than others — at Clifton, near Bristol. Here it was, 
 at length, in the course of November, that, in one hour, 
 my malady began to leave me : it was not quite so 
 abrupt, however, in its departure, as in its first develop- 
 ment : a peculiar sensation arose from the knee down- 
 wards, about midnight : it went forwards through a space 
 of about five hours, and then stopped,. leaving me per- 
 fectly free from every trace of the awful malady which had 
 possessed me ; but so much debilitated as with difficulty 
 to stand or walk. Going down soon after this, to Ilfra- 
 combe, in Devonshire, where there were hot sea baths, I 
 found it easy enough to restore my shattered strength. 
 But the remarkable fact in this catastrophe of my illness 
 is, that all grief for little Kate Wordsworth, nay, all re- 
 membrance of her, had, with my malady, vanished from 
 my mind. The traces of her innocent features were 
 utterly washed away from my heart : she might have 
 been dead for a thousand years, so entirely abolished was 
 the last lingering image of her face or figure. The little 
 memorials of her, which her mother had given to me, as 
 in particular, a pair of her red morocco shoes, won not a 
 sigh from me as I looked at them : even her little grassy 
 grave, white with snow, when I returned to Grasmere in 
 January, 1813, v/as looked at almost with indiiference ; 
 except, indeed, as now become a memorial to me of that
 
 MRS. HANNAH MORE. — MRS. SIDDONS. 219 
 
 dire internal physical convulsion thence arising, by which 
 I had been shaken and wrenched ; and, in short, a case 
 more entirely realizing the old Pagan superstition of a 
 nympholepsy in the first place, and, secondly, of a Lethe 
 or river of oblivion, and the possibility, by one draught 
 from this potent stream, of applying an everlasting ablu- 
 tion to all the soils and stains of human anguish, I do not 
 suppose the psychological history of man affords. 
 
 From the Lakes, as I have mentioned before, I went 
 annually southwards — chiefly to Somersetshire or to Lon- 
 don, and more rarely to Edinburgh. In my Somersetshire 
 visits, I never failed to see Mrs. Hannah More. My own 
 relative's house, in fact, standing within one mile of Bar- 
 ley Wood, I seldom suffered a week to pass without calling 
 to pay my respects. There was a stronger motive to this 
 than simply what arose from Mrs. H. More's company, or 
 even from that of her sisters, (one or two of whom were 
 more entertaining because more filled with animal spirits 
 and less thoughtful than Mrs. Hannah ;) for it rarely hap- 
 pened that one called within the privileged calling hours, 
 which, with these rural ladies, ranged between twelve 
 and four o'clock, but one met some person interesting by 
 rank, station, political or literary eminence. 
 
 Here, accordingly, it was, that, during one of my last 
 visits to Somersetshire, either in 1813 or 1814, I met Mrs. 
 Siddons, whom T had often seen upon the stage, but never 
 before in private society. She had come into this part of 
 the country chiefly, I should imagine, with a view to the 
 medical advice at the Bristol Hot Wells and Clifton ; for it 
 happened that one of her daughters — a fine interesting 
 young woman — was suffering under pulmonary con- 
 sumption — that scourge of the British youth; of which 
 malady, I believe, she ultimately died. From the Hot 
 Wells, Mrs. Siddons had been persuaded to honor with her
 
 220 LITEBARY REBIINISCENCES. 
 
 company a certain Dr. Wh , whose splendid villa of 
 
 Mendip Lodge stood about tv.o miles from Barley Wood. 
 This villa, by the way, was a show place, in which a vast 
 deal of money had been sunk, upon two follies equally 
 unproductive of pleasure to the beholder and of anything 
 approaching a pecuniary compensation to the owner. The 
 villa, with it embellishments, was supposed to have cost 
 at least sixty thousand pounds ; of which one-half had been 
 absorbed, partly by a contest with the natural obstacles 
 of the situation, and partly by the frailest of all orna- 
 ments — vast china jars, vases, and other ' knicknackery ' 
 baubles, which held their very existence by so frail a 
 tenure as the carefulness of a housemaid ; and which, at 
 all events, if they should survive the accidents of life, 
 never are known to reproduce to the possessor one-tenth 
 part of what they have cost. Out of doors there were 
 terraces of a mile \ong, one rising above another, and car- 
 ried, by mere artifice of mechanic skill, along the perpen- 
 dicular face of a lofty rock. Had they, when finished, any 
 particular beauty ? Not at all. Considered as a pleasure 
 ground, they formed. a far less delighful landscape, and a 
 far less alluring haunt to rambling steps, than most of the 
 uncostly shrubberies which were seen below, in unpre- 
 tending situations, and upon the ordinary level of the 
 vale. What a record of human imbecility ! For all his 
 pains and his expense in forming this costly ' folly,' his 
 reward was daily anxiety, and one solitary ho7i mot which 
 he used to record of some man, who, on being asked by 
 the Rev. Doctor what he thought of his place, replied, 
 that ' He thought the Devil had tempted him up to an 
 exceedingly high place.' No part of the grounds, nor the 
 house itself, was at all the better because, originally, it 
 had been, beyond measure, difficult to form it : so difficult 
 that, according to Dr. Johnson's witty remark, on another
 
 MRS. SIDDONS. 221 
 
 occasion, there was good reason for wishing that it had 
 been impossible. The owner, whom I knew, most cer- 
 tainly never enjoyed a happy day in this costly creation ; 
 which, after all, displayed but little taste, though a gor- 
 geous array of finery. The show part of the house was 
 itself a monument to the barrenness of invention in him 
 who planned it ; consisting, as it did, of one long suite of 
 rooms in a straight line, without variety, without obvious 
 parts, and therefore without symmetry or proportions. 
 This long vista was so managed that, by means of folding- 
 doors, the whole could be seen at a glance, whilst its 
 extent was magnified by a vast mirror at the further end. 
 The Doctor was a querulous old man, enormously tall 
 and enormously bilious ; so that he had a spectral appear- 
 ance when pacing through the false gaieties of his glitter- 
 ing villa. He was a man of letters, and had known Dr. 
 Johnson, whom he admired prodigiously ; and had himself 
 been, in earlier days, the author of a poem now forgotten. 
 He belonged, at one period, to the coterie of Miss Seward, 
 Dr. Darwin, Day, Mr. Edgeworth, &c. ; consequently he 
 might have been an agreeable companion, having so much 
 anecdote at his command : but his extreme biliousness 
 made him irritable in a painful degree, and impatient of 
 contradiction — impatient even of dissent in the most 
 moderate shape. The latter stage of his life is worth 
 recording, as a melancholy comment upon the blindness 
 of human foresight, and in some degree also as a lesson 
 on the disappointments which follow any departure from 
 high principle, and the deception which seldom fails to 
 lie in ambush for the deceiver. I had one day taken the 
 liberty to ask him why, and with what ultimate purpose, 
 he who did not like trouble and anxiety, had embarrassed 
 himself with the planning and construction of a villa that 
 manifestly embittered his days ? ' That is, my young
 
 222 
 
 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 friend,' r plied the doctor, 'speaking plainly, you mean 
 to express your wonder that I, so old a man, (for he was 
 then not far from seventy,) should spend my time in 
 creating a show-box. Well now, I will tell you : pre- 
 cisely because I am old. I am naturally of a gloomy 
 turn ; and it has always struck me, that we English, who 
 are constitutionally haunted by melancholy, are too apt to 
 encourage it by the gloomy air of the mansions we inhabit. 
 Your fortunate age, my friend, can dispense with such 
 aids : ours require continual influxes of pleasure through 
 the senses, in order to cheat the stealthy advances of old 
 age, and to beguile us of our sadness. Gaiety, the riant 
 style in everything, that is what we old men need. And 
 I, who do not love the pains of creating, love the creation ; 
 and, in fact, require it as part of my artillery against 
 time.' 
 
 Such was the amount of his explanation : and now, in 
 a few words, for his subsequent history. Finding himself 
 involved in difficulties by the expenses of this villa, going 
 on concurrently with a large London establishment, he 
 looked out for a good marriage, (being a widower,) as 
 the sole means, within his reach, for clearing off his 
 embarrassments, without proportionable curtailment of 
 his expenses. It happened, unhappily for both parlies, 
 that he fell in with a widow lady, who was cruising about 
 the world with precisely the same views, and in precisely 
 the same difficulties. Each (or the friends of each) held 
 out a false flag, magnifying their incomes respectively, 
 and sinking the embarrassments. Mutually deceived, 
 they married: and one change immediately introduced 
 at the splendid villa was, the occupation of an entire 
 wing by a lunatic brother of the lady's; the care of 
 ■whom, with a large allowance, had been committed to 
 her by the Court of Chancery. This, of itself, shed a
 
 MRS. SIDDONS. 223 
 
 gloom over the place which defeated the primary purpose 
 of tlie doctor (as explained by himself) in erecting it. 
 Windows barred, maniacal howls, gloomy attendants, 
 from a lunatic hospital, ranging about : these were sad 
 disturbances to the doctor's rose-leaf system of life. 
 This, however, if it were a nuisance, brought along with 
 it some solatium, as the lawyers express it, in the shape 
 of the Chancery allowance. But next came the load of 
 debts for which there was no solatium, and which turned 
 out to be the only sort of possession with which the lady 
 was well endowed. The disconsolate doctor — an old 
 man, and a clergyman of the establishment — could not 
 resort to such redress as a layman might have adopted : 
 he was obliged to give up all his establishments ; his gay 
 villa vvas otfcred to Queen Caroline, who would, perhaps, 
 have bought it, but that her final troubles in this world 
 were also besetting her about that very time. For the 
 present, therefore, the villa was shut up, and ' left alone 
 with its glory.' The reverend and aged proprietor, now 
 ten times more bilious and more querulous than ever, 
 shipped himself off for France ; and there, in one of the 
 southern provinces — so far, therefore, as climate was 
 concerned, realizing his vision of gaiety, but for all else 
 in the most melancholy of exiles — sick of the world and 
 of himself, hating to live, yet more intensely hating tb 
 die, in a short time the unhappy old man breathed his 
 last, in a common lodging-house, gloomy and vulgar, and 
 in all things the very antithesis to that splendid abode 
 which he had planned for the consolation of his melan- 
 choly, and for the gay beguilement of old age. 
 
 At this gentleman's villa, Mrs. Siddons had been 
 paying a visit; for the doctor was a worshipper, in a 
 servile degree, of all things which flourished in the 
 sunshine of the world's applause. To have been the
 
 224 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 idolized favorite of nations, to have been an honored and 
 even a privileged* guest at Windsor, that was enough 
 for him ; and he did his utmost to do the honors of his 
 neighborhood, not less to glorify himself in the eye of 
 the country, who was fortunate enough to have such a 
 guest, than to show his respect for the distinguished 
 visiter. Mrs. Siddons felt herself flattered by the worthy 
 doctor's splendid hospitalities ; for that they were really 
 splendid, may be_ judged by this fact, communicated to 
 me by Hannah More, viz., that the Bishop of London, 
 (Porteus,) when on a visit to Barley Wood, being much 
 pressed by the doctor to visit him, had at length accepted 
 a dinner invitation. Mrs. Hannah More was, of course, 
 included in the invitation, but had found it impossible to 
 attend, from ill health ; and the next morning, at break- 
 fast, the bishop had assured her, that, in all his London 
 experience, in that city of magnificent dinners beyond all 
 other cities of the earth, and amongst the princes of the 
 land, he had never witnessed an entertainment so perfect 
 in its appointments. Gratified as she was, however, by 
 her host's homage, as expressed in his splendid style of 
 entertaining, Mrs. Siddons was "evidently more happy in 
 her residence at Barley Wood. The style of conversa- 
 tion pleased her. It was religious : but Mrs. Siddons was 
 herself religious ; and at that moment, when waiting with 
 anxiety upon a daughter whose languor seemed but too 
 ominous in her maternal eyes, she was more than usually 
 open to religious impressions, and predisposed to religious 
 
 * ' A privileged guest at Windsor.' Mrs. Siddons used to mention, 
 that wFien she was invited to Windsor Castle, for the purpose of reading 
 before the Q,ueen and her royal daughters, on her first visit, she was 
 ready to sink from weariness under the effort of standing for so long a 
 time ; but on some subsequent visit, I have understood that she was al- 
 lowed to sit, probably on the suggestion of one of the younger ladies.
 
 MKS. SIDDONS. 
 
 225 
 
 topics. Certain I am, however, from what 1 then ob- 
 served, that Mrs. Siddons, in common with many women 
 of rank who were on the Hst of the Barley Wood visiters, 
 did not apprehend, in their full sense and severity, the 
 peculiar principles of Hannah More. This lady, excel- 
 lent as she was, and incapable of practising any studied 
 deceit, had, however, an instinct of worldly wisdom, 
 which taught her to refrain from shocking ears polite with 
 too harsh or too broad an exposure of all which she 
 believed. This, at least, if it were any duty of hers, she 
 considered, perhaps, as already fulfilled by her writings ; 
 and, moreover, the very tone of good breeding, which 
 she had derived from the good company she had kept, 
 made her feel the impropriety of lecturing her visiters 
 even when she must have thought them in error. Mrs. 
 Siddons obviously thought Hannah More a person who 
 differed from the world chiefly by applying a greater 
 energy, and sincerity, and zeal, to a system of religious 
 truth equally known to all. Repentance, for instance — 
 all people hold that to be a duty ; and Mrs. Hannah More 
 differed from them only by holding it to be a duty of all 
 hours, a duty for youth not less than for age. But how 
 much would she have been shocked to hear that Mrs. 
 Hannah More held all repentance, however indispensable, 
 yet in itself, and though followed by the sincerest efforts 
 at reformation of life, to be utterly unavailing as any 
 operative part of the means by which man gains accept- 
 ance with God. To rely upon repentance, or upon any- 
 thing that man can do for himself, that Mrs. Hannah 
 More considered as the mortal taint, as the tiquitov 'FivSu; 
 in the worldly theories of the Christian scheme ; and I 
 have heard the two ladies — Mi's. More and Mrs. Siddons, 
 I mean — talking by the hour together, as completely at 
 cross purposes as it is possible to imagine. Everything 
 VOL. ir. 15
 
 226 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 in fact, of what was special in the creed adopted by Mrs. 
 Hannah More, by Wilberforce, and many others known 
 as evangelical Christians, is always capable, in lax con- 
 versation, of being translated into a vague general sense, 
 which completely obscures the true limitations of the 
 meaning. 
 
 Mrs. Hannah More, however, was too polished a woman 
 to allow of any sectarian movement being impressed upon 
 the conversation ; consequently, she soon directed it to 
 literature, upon which Mrs. Siddons was very amusing, 
 from her recollections of Dr. Johnson, whose fine-turned 
 compliment to herself, (so much in the spirit of those 
 unique compliments addressed to eminent people by 
 Louis XIV.) had for ever planted the doctor's memory 
 in her heart. She spoke also of Garrick and of Mrs. 
 Garrick ; but not, I think, with so much respect and 
 affection as Mrs. Hannah More, who had, in her youthful 
 days, received the most friendly attentions from both, 
 though coming forward at that time In no higher char- 
 acter than as the author of Percy, the most insipid of 
 tragedies. Mrs. Siddons was prevailed on to read pas- 
 sages from both Shakspeare and Milton. The dramatic 
 readings were delightful ; in fact, they were almost stage 
 rehearsals, accompanied with appropriate gesticulation. 
 One was the grpat somnambulist scene in Macbeth, which 
 was the ne phis ultra in the whole range of Mrs. Siddons's 
 scenical exhibitions, and can never be forgotten by any 
 man who once had the happiness to witness that immortal 
 performance of the divine artist. Another, given at the 
 request of a Dutch lady, residing in the neighborhood of 
 Barley Wood, ^vas the scene from King John, of the Lady 
 Constance, beginning — ' Gone to be married ! gone to 
 swear a peace \ ' &c. The last, and truly superb for the 
 musical intonation of the cadences, was that inimitable
 
 MRS. SIDDONS. 227 
 
 apology or pleading of Christian charity for Cardinal 
 VVolsey, addressed to his bitterest enemy, Queen Cathe- 
 rine. All these, in different degrees and different ways, 
 were exquisite. But the readings from Milton were not 
 to my 'taste. And, some weeks after, when, at IMrs. 
 Hannah More's request, I had read to her some of Lord 
 Byron's most popular works, I got her to acknowledge, in 
 then speaking upon the subject of reading, that perhaps 
 the style of Mrs. Siddons's reading had been too much 
 determined to the dramatic cast of emphasis, and the 
 pointed expression of character and situation which must 
 always belong to a speaker bearing a part in a dialogue, 
 to admit of her assuming the tone of a rapt poetic inspi- 
 ration. 
 
 Meantime, whatever she did — whether it were in 
 display of her own matchless talents, but always at the 
 earnest request of the company or of her hostess — or 
 whether it were in gentle acquiescent attention to the 
 display made by otjiers — or whether it were as one 
 member of a general party, taking her part occasionally, 
 for the amusement of the rest, and contributing to the 
 general fund of social pleasure — nothing could exceed 
 the amiable, kind, and unassuming deportment of Mrs. 
 Siddons. She had retired from the stage,* and no longer 
 regarded herself as a public character. But so much the 
 stronger did she seem to think the claims of her friends 
 upon anything she could do for their amusement. 
 
 Meantime, amongst the many pleasurable impressions 
 
 * I saw her, however, myself upon the stage twice after this meeting 
 at Barley Wood ; it was at Edinburgh ; and the parts were those of 
 Lady Macbeth and Lady Randolph. But she then performed only as 
 an expression of kindness to* her grandchildren. Professor Wilson and 
 myself saw her on the occasion from the stage-box, with a delight em- 
 bittered by the certainty that we saw her for the last time.
 
 228 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 which Mrs. Siddons's presence never failed to make, there 
 was one which was positively painful and humiliating : it 
 was the degradation which it inflicted upon other women. 
 One day there was a large dinner party at Barley Wood 
 — Mrs. Siddons was present ; and I remarked to a gen- 
 tleman who sat next to me — a remark which he heartily 
 confirmed — that upon rising to let the ladies leave us, 
 Mrs. Siddons, by the mere necessity of her regal deport- 
 ment, figure, manner, air, without meaning it, absolutely 
 dwarfed the whole party, and made them look ridiculous ; 
 though Mrs. H. More, and others of the ladies present, 
 were otherwise really women of very pleasing appearance. 
 One final remark is forced upon me by my recollec- 
 tions of Mrs. Jordan, and of her most unhappy end ; it is 
 this; and strange enough it seems: — That the child of 
 laughter and comic mirth, whose laugh itself thrilled the 
 heart with pleasure, and who created gaiety of the 
 noblest order for one entire generation of her country- 
 men, died prematurely, and in exjle, and in affliction, 
 which really killed her by its own stings. If ever woman 
 died of a broken heart, of tenderness bereaved, and of 
 hope deferred, that woman was Mrs. Jordan. On the 
 other hand, this sad votary of Melpomene, the queen of 
 the tragic stage, died, full of years and honors, in the 
 bosom of her admiring country, in the centre of idolizing 
 friends, and happy in all things except this, that some of 
 those whom she most loved on earth had gone before her. 
 Strange contrariety of lots for the two transcendent 
 daughters of the comic and tragic muse. For my own 
 part, I shall always regard my recollections of Mrs. 
 Siddons as those in which chiefly I have an advantage 
 over the coming generation ; nay, perhaps, over all 
 generations ; for many centuries may revolve without 
 producing such another transcendent creature.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 WALKING STEWART. — EDWARD IRVING. — WILLIAM 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 In London, for a space of fifteen or twenty years, the 
 most interesting by far of all my friends, and, singly, a 
 sufficient magnet to draw me in that direction, sometimes 
 when I had no other motive for such a journey, was the 
 celebrated Peripatetic, John Stewart, commonly called 
 ' Walking Stewart.' This man was indeed, in many 
 respects, a more interesting person than any I have 
 known, amongst those distinguished by accomplishments 
 of the same kind. He was by birth a Scotsman : but it 
 was little indeed that he owed to the land of his nativity ; 
 for he had been early turned adrift, and thrown altogether 
 upon his own resources. At school, as he often told me 
 with high glee, and even with something of gratified 
 vanity in the avowal, no boy except himself was consid- 
 ered an invincible dunce, or what is sometimes called a 
 Bergen-op-zoom ; that is, a head impregnable to all 
 teaching and all impressions that could be conveyed 
 through books. Erudition, in fact, and classical or philo- 
 logical learning of every kind, he thoroughly despised; 
 nor could he have been won by kindness even to take 
 »an interest in studies from which his mind naturally 
 revolted; and thus, like many a boy before him, he 
 obtained the reputation of a dunce, merely because his
 
 230 LITEKAKY REBIINISCENCES. 
 
 powers were never called into action or tried amongst 
 tasks in which he took any genial delight. Yet this same 
 scoffing-stock of the school, when summoned away to the 
 tasks of life, dealing with subjects that interested his 
 feelings, and moving in an element for which his natural 
 powers had qualified him, displayed the energetic origi- 
 nality of genius. He went out to Bengal as a servant of 
 the Company, in a civil capacity, and, for some time, was 
 viewed both as an aspiring young man and as a young 
 man of great promise : but, suddenly, some strong 
 scruples of conscience seized him, with regard to the ten- 
 ure of the Company's Indian empire, and to the mode 
 in which it was administered. Simply upon the impulse 
 of these scruples, doubtless ill-founded, he quitted the 
 Company's service and entered that of a native prince — 
 I think the Nawaub of Arcot : him he served in the office 
 of secretary. And, finally, quitting this service also, 
 chiefly, I conjecture, because the instinct of migration 
 and of rambling was strong upon him, he commenced 
 that long course of pedestrian travelling which thence- 
 forwards occupied the active years of his life : in fact, 
 from perhaps the age of twenty-three to fifty-eight or 
 sixty. A navigator who has accomplished the periplus 
 (tteoi/iAhc) of the globe, we call a circumnavigator ; and, 
 by parity of reason, we might call a man in the circum- 
 stances of Mr. Stewart, viz., one who has walked round 
 the terra jirma of the globe, from Kamtschatka to 
 Paraguay, and from Paraguay to Lapland, a circum- 
 peripatetic, (or, if the reader objects to this sort of 
 tautology in the circum and the peri, a circumnamhilator.) 
 A terrestrial globe, representing the infinite wanderings 
 of Mr. Stewart, would have seemed belted and zoned in ■ 
 all latitudes, like a Ptolemaic globe of the heavens, with 
 cycles and epicycles, approaching, crossing, traversing,
 
 WALKING STEWART. 231 
 
 coinciding, receding. No region, pervious to human feet, 
 except, I think, China and Japan, but had been visited 
 by Mr. Stewart in this philosophic style ; a style which 
 compels a man to move slowly through a country, and to 
 fall in continually with the natives of that country in a 
 degree far beyond what is possible for the traveller in 
 carriages and palanquins,* or mounted on horses, mules, 
 or camels. 
 
 It may be presumed of any man who has travelled so 
 extensively, and has thrown himself so fearlessly, for five 
 or eight and thirty years, amongst men of all nations and 
 in all degrees of civilization, that he must often have 
 found himself in situations of great and sudden danger. 
 In fact. Walking Stewart, like the famous Ledyard, used 
 to look back upon the hardships, the sufferings, and the 
 risks he had undergone, as too romantic for rehearsal. 
 People would imagine, as he thought, that he was using 
 the traveller's immemorial privilege of embellishing ; 
 and accordingly, as one foremost feature in the character 
 of John Stewart, was his noble reverence for truth, so 
 that, to have won a universal interest with the public, he 
 would not have deviated, by one hair's breadth, from the 
 severe facts of a case ; for that reason it was I'are that he 
 would be persuaded to relate any part of his adventures 
 which approached the marvellous. Being so sincerely 
 and profoundly veracious, he was jealous even of being 
 suspected to be otherwise, though it were in a trifling 
 question, or by a shadow of exaggeration. Yet, unwilling 
 as he was to report his own adventurous hazards, or the 
 escapes which, doubtless, he often owed to his own 
 
 * Dawk-travelling in a palanquin has been so much improved of lale 
 throughout India, that ninety miles a day may be accomplished in 
 favorable weather ; and, if the bearers are laid carefully, one hundred. 
 With this velocity, and this seclusion, little can be seen.
 
 232 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 address, courage, or presence of mind, one general 
 remark I have often heard hhii make, and with great 
 energy ; a remark abstracted from all his dangers collec- 
 tively, though he would not refer to them separately and 
 individually : it is a remark which ought to be put on 
 record for the honor of human nature ; and it should be 
 viewed in the light of a testimony given by a witness, 
 whose opportunities for collecting a fair evidence must far 
 have exceeded those of all other men, making no excep- 
 tion in favor of any nation or any century. His remark 
 was this — that, although in barbarous countries, with no 
 police or organized provisions whatsoever, for the protec- 
 tion of human life and property, many violent and 
 licentious aggressions would, doubtless, be committed, 
 under circumstances of temptation or of provocation, 
 upon the weak or defenceless stranger ; yet that, in the 
 whole course of his experience, he had never known one 
 case where the rudest savas;e of the wildest tribes had 
 violated an understood trust reposed in his forbearance. 
 It was generally supposed, he said, that the civilized 
 traveller amongst savages might lay his account with 
 meeting unprovoked violence, except in so far as he 
 carried arms for his protection. Now, he had found it 
 by much the safer plan to carry no arms. That he had 
 never found, and did not believe that in travels ten times 
 more extensive he ever should have fouiid, a human 
 being so base as to refuse (provided he could be made 
 clearly to understand) the appeal made to his generosity 
 by a fellow-being, in boldly throwing himself upon his 
 justice or hospitality; and if a different creed prevailed 
 often amongst nautical people, it was owing (he con- 
 tended) to the extreme levity and thoughtlessness of 
 sailors. Indeed, the records of voyages, and, very 
 recently, the records of our new settlements in Australia
 
 WALKING STEWART. 233 
 
 teem with instances where feuds, through a whole genera- 
 tion, (wanton and causeless as they may seem to many of 
 those who merely inherit the consequences,) have been 
 originally provoked by a cruel or cowardly salutation 
 from fire-arms to a party of natives, advancing, perhaps, 
 in a tumultuous manner, alarming to the timid or the 
 inexperienced, but with intentions perfectly pac-ific. 
 
 Walking Stewart was, in conversation, the most elo- 
 quent man — limiting the meaning to the eloquence of 
 nature, unsustained by any range of illustration from 
 books — that I have ever known. Nor was I singular in 
 this opinion; for Mr, Wordsworth, the poet, said some- 
 thing to the same effect, in speaking of the political 
 harangues which he was in the habit of making about 
 the time of the French Revolution. And little as he 
 occupied himself with books as a reader, by a strange 
 inversion of the ordinary human relations to literature, he 
 — this rare and slight reader — was largely connected 
 with books as an author. Apparently, he read little or 
 nothing but what he wrote himself; books treating of 
 man, his nature, his expectations, and his duties, in a 
 desultory style ; mingling much profound philosophy with 
 many absurd or whimsical theories of physiology, or 
 equally chimerical hypotheses of health and the modes of 
 preserving it. Animal food or wine he never allowed 
 himself to use ; or, in fact, anything but the Brahminical 
 diet of milk, fruit, and bread. It is saying little in favor 
 of his system, to mention that he, in his own person, 
 enjoyed a cloudless health ; for so he would have done 
 under any diet, with the same quantity of bodily exercise, 
 and enjoying the same original hardiness of constitution 
 and athletic frame of body. Latterly, his sole pleasure 
 was music ; aiid it grieved me to find, therefore, towards 
 the close of his life, that he was growing exceedingly
 
 234 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 deaf: but this defect of hearing he remedied partially by 
 purchasing an organ of considerable size and power. 
 
 Walking Stewart had purchased, in his younger days, 
 an annuity, which, in fact, for many years, constituted his 
 sole dependence. The tables of mortality were very 
 imperfect at that time, and the Insurance Offices made 
 many losing contracts ; amongst which was Mr. Stewart's. 
 He had long been viewed by the office as one of their 
 bad bargains; and he had a playful malice in presenting 
 himself annually to establish his continued existence. 
 The office was always in a roar of laughter when he 
 made his entry : for the Directors protested that he had 
 already lived too long by twenty years for their interest ; 
 and he, on his part, ascribing his robust health to his 
 peculiar diet, threatened them with living at least twenty 
 years longer. He did, certainly, wear all the promise of 
 doing so ; for his eye was as brilliant and his cheek as 
 fresh as those ef men forty years younger. But he did 
 not quite redeem the pledges of his appearance. A few 
 years before his death, he gained an important suit 
 against the East India Company. How that should have 
 hastened his death, I cannot conjecture ; for so thoroughly 
 had his simple diet become necessary to his comfort, and 
 a matter of cordial preference, that no entreaties of a 
 friend would persuade him take a glass of wine or 
 spirits. A man more temperate never existed, nor a man 
 in all respects of more philosophic habits, or more entire 
 independence. I and others, who would not have insulted 
 him with the offer of money, yet, knowing at one time 
 the extreme slenderness of his resources, attempted to 
 send him books and a few other luxuries, by way of 
 relieving the weariness (as we feared) of his long soli- 
 tary evenings in the heart of tumultuous London. But, 
 though taking our attentions kindly, he uniformly repelled
 
 ■WALKING STEWART, 
 
 235 
 
 them ; nor ever, in one instance, would accept of any- 
 thing that miglit bring his perfect independence into 
 question. He died when I was abseW from London ; 
 and I could never learn the circumstances : for he had, 
 I believe, no relatives ; and his opulence, during the 
 latter years of his life, would be likely to throw him 
 into the hands of strangers. His books are filled with 
 extravagances on all subjects ; and, to religious people, 
 they are especially revolting, by the uniform spirit of 
 contempt which he manifests for all creeds alike — 
 Christian, Mahometan, Buddhist, Pagan. In fact, he was 
 as deliberate and resolute an Atheist as can ever have 
 existed : but, for all that, and although wishing, for his 
 own sake, that he had been a more religious man, or at 
 least had felt a greater reverence for such subjects, and a 
 closer sympathy with that which, for so vast a majority of 
 the human race, must ever constitute their sole consola- 
 tion under sorrow and calamity ; still I could not close 
 my eyes to the many evidences which his writings and 
 his conversation afforded of a true grandeur of mind, 
 and of a calm Spinosistic state of contemplative reverie. 
 In fact, he was half crazy. But his mind, like a shelPv 
 taken from the sea, still echoed and murmured to the / 
 multitudinous sounds and forms amongst which his I 
 former years had been passed. The many nations' 
 amongst whom he had walked, ' passing like night ' (as 
 the Ancient Mariner describes himself) ' from land to 
 land,' — the black men, and the white men, and the 
 'dusk-faces with white silken turbands wreathed,' — 
 were present for ever, and haunted his inner eye with 
 imagery of the noblest kind, and with moving pageant- 
 ries, in the midst of silence and years of deafness. He 
 was himself a fine specimen of the animal Man. And, 
 in some directions, he was fine also intellectually. His
 
 236 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 books, which are past counting, ought to be searched, and 
 a bead-roll of fine thoughts, or eloquent expressions of 
 old ones, separated from the eccentric speculations with 
 which they too often lie interwoven. These books con- 
 tain, moreover, some very wise practical suggestions, 
 particularly as to the mode of warfare adapted to the 
 British nation. And for knowledoe of national character 
 he was absolutely unrivalled. Some time or other, 1 
 may myself draw up a memoir of his life, and raise a 
 tribute to his memory by a series of extracts such as I 
 have suggested. 
 
 Another eminent man of our times, whom I came to 
 
 know in my later visits to London, was the Rev. Edward 
 
 Irving ; and, in some respects, he is naturally recalled by 
 
 the remembrance of Walking Stewart ; for, like him, he 
 
 had a fervid nature, a most energetic will, and aspirations 
 
 after something greater than he could find in life. Like 
 
 him, also, he owed not very much to education or study. 
 
 Mr. Irving, unfortunately for his own reputation, sinned so 
 
 enormously against prudence, and indeed against all 
 
 sanity of mind during the latter part of his career; his 
 
 writings and his actions were so equally indicative of an 
 
 unsettled intellect ; that, with most people, this sad 
 
 revolution in his nature has availed to extinguish the 
 
 recollection of that unequalled splendor of appearance 
 
 with which he convulsed all London at his first debut. 
 
 He was, unquestionably, by many, many degrees, the 
 
 greatest orator of our times. Of him, indeed, more than 
 
 of any man whom I have seen throughout my whole 
 
 experience, it might be said, with truth and with emphasis, 
 
 that he was a Boanerges, a son of thunder ; and, in a 
 
 sense, even awful and unhappy for himself, it might be 
 
 affirmed that he had a demon within himself. Doubt 
 
 there can now be none that he was insane, or partially so,
 
 EDWARD IRVING. 237 
 
 from the very first. Not many weeks after his first burst 
 upon the metropohs, I had the pleasure of meeting him at 
 a dinner party. He was in exuberant spirits; and he 
 strode about the drawing-room, before dinner, with the 
 air of one wlio looked upon himself as clothed with the 
 functions of Jonah sent to Nineveh, or of Paul upon a 
 celestial mission to the Gentiles. He talked a good deal 
 of phrenology, and in the tone of one who had entirely 
 adopted its great leading doctrines. My head, with a very 
 slight apology for doing so, he examined : his report, 
 being somewhat flattering, I shall not repeat, further than 
 that ' conscientiousness' was found in great strength, and 
 'veneration,' which were the chief moral indications that 
 he detected. We walked homewards together ; and, as it 
 happened that our roads coincided for three miles or more, 
 we had a good deal of conversation. In one thing he 
 thoroughly agreed with me, viz., in disliking common 
 literary society, by comparison with that of people less 
 pretending, left more to the impulses of their natural 
 unchecked feelings, and entertaining opinions less mod- 
 elled upon what they read. One ebullition of his own 
 native disposition was, however, not very amiable. Near 
 Charing Cross, a poor houseless female vagrant came up - 
 to us and asked charity. Now, it was in no respect sur- 
 prising to me, that Mr. Irving should refuse to give her 
 anything, knowing that so many excellent people system- 
 atically set their faces against street alms ; and a man, 
 the most kind-hearted in the world, whose resources are 
 limited, may very reasonably prefer throwing whatever 
 he has at his disposal into the channels of well organized 
 charitable institutions. Not, therefore, the refusal, but 
 the manner of the refusal, it was which surprised me. 
 Mr, Irving shook oiF the poor shivering suppliant, whose 
 manner was timid and dejected, with a roughness that
 
 238 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 would have better become a parish beadle towards a stout 
 masterful beggar, counterfeiting the popular character of 
 shipwrecked mariner. Yet I am far from thinking, or 
 wishing to insinuate, that Edward Irving was deficient in 
 benignity. It was the overmastering demoniac fervor of 
 his nature, the constitutional riot in his blood, more than 
 any harshness of disposition, which prompted his fierce 
 refusal. 
 
 It is remarkable, and I mention it as no proof of any 
 sagacity of myself, but, on the contrary, as a proof of 
 broad and palpable indications, open and legible to him 
 who ran, that from what I saw of Mr. Edward Irving at 
 this first intei'view, I drew an augury, and immediately 
 expressed it to more than one friend ; that he was destined 
 to a melancholy close of his career, in lunacy. I drew 
 my judgment from the expression and the peculiar rest- 
 lessness of his eye, combined with the untamable fervor 
 of his manner, and his evident craving after intense states 
 of excitement. I believe that public applause, or at least 
 public sympathy with his own agitated condition of feel- 
 ing, and public attention, at any rate to himself, as a great 
 moral power thundering and lightening through the upper 
 regions of the London atmosphere, really became indis- 
 pensable to his comfort. The effect of his eloquence, great 
 as that certainly was, had been considerably exaggerated 
 to the general estimate, by the obstacles opposed to the 
 popular curiosity, in the mere necessities of the narrow 
 chapel within which he preached. Stories of carriage 
 panels beaten in, chapel windows beaten out, as en- 
 trances for ladies of rank and distinguished senators — 
 such stories to awaken the public interest, and then (as 
 consequences of that interest, which reacted to sustain and 
 widen it) stories of royal princesses, lord chancellors, and 
 prime ministers, going, in spite of all difiiculties, to hear
 
 EDWARD IRVING. 
 
 239 
 
 the new apostle of the North — these things procured for 
 Mr. Irving, during the early novitiate of his London 
 career, if not great audiences, (which, numerically speak- 
 ing, his chapel would not have admitted,) yet so memo- 
 rable a conflict of competition for the small space available 
 to those who had no private right of admission, that 
 inevitably the result was misunderstood, or, at least, 
 misappreciated by the public. The smaller was the 
 disposable accommodation, so much the hotter was the 
 contest : and thus a small chapel, and a^small congregation 
 told more effectually in his favor, more emphatically 
 proclaimed his sudden popularity, than the largest could 
 have done. Meantime, the presbytery, availing them- 
 selves of the sudden enthusiasm called into life by this 
 splendid meteor, collected large subscriptions- for a new 
 chapel. This being built upon a scale proportioned to 
 the money, offered ample accommodation to the public 
 curiosity. That feeling could not wholly have subsided ; 
 but many, like Wilberforce, had found themselves suffi- 
 ciently gratified by a single experience of Mr. Irving's 
 powers; others, upon principle, were unwilling to leave 
 their old pastors — not to mention that, for the majority, 
 this would have involved a secession from the particular 
 creed to which they adhered ; and, when deductions were 
 made frpm ]\Ir. Irving's audiences, upon these and other 
 accounts, those who still went as extra auditors were no 
 longer numerous enough, now that they were diffused 
 through a large chapel, to create the former tumultuous 
 contests for admission. 
 
 The enthusiasm of the public had now subsided and 
 settled into a condition more uniform, and no longer 
 capable of holding up a mirror which reflected Mr. 
 Irving's own intense state of exaltation. It was the state 
 of collapse whicli succeeded in his mind, the want of
 
 240 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 correspondence which he found between the public zeal 
 to be taught or moved, and his own to teach or move ; this 
 it was, I can hardly doubt, which drove him into those 
 crazy speculations which eventually cost him the general 
 respect, and led to an open breach between himself and 
 the trustees for the management of the property embarked 
 upon the chapel. Unable to win the popular astonish- 
 ment by the legitimate display of his extraordinary powers, 
 he attempted to secure the same end by extravagance. 
 The whole extent of this extravagance, it is true that he 
 did not perceive; for his mind was unhinged. But still the 
 insanity, which had preyed upon him from the very first, 
 lay more in his moral nature and in a disease of his will 
 than in the functions of his intellect. Disappointment, 
 vexation of heart, wounded pride, and latterly, perhaps, 
 some tinge of remorse for the abuse which he had made 
 of his magnificent endowments, all combined, with the 
 constitutional fever in his blood, to sap his health and 
 spirits. That he was very unhappy, latterly, I have no 
 doubt; nor was I, for my part, ever called upon to feel so 
 powerfully the conviction that here was a ruined man of 
 genius, and a power in the first rank of great moral 
 agencies, an orator the most Demosthenic of our age, 
 descending rapidly to night and utter extinction, as during 
 the whole latter years of Edward Irving's troubled ex- 
 istence. I am not singular in my estimate of him as an 
 orator : — Mr. Canning, a most accomplished orator him- 
 self, and, as a great artist, the first orator of our tirnes, 
 but perhaps, for that very reason, less likely to do full 
 justice in a case of power that was altogether natural, and 
 no way indebted to art, even he (when visiting Mr. Bolton 
 of Storrs, on Windermere) said something very nearly ap- 
 proaching to what I have here said. I did not hear it 
 myself; but I afterwards heard it from many who did.
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 241 
 
 He was the only man of our times who realized one's idea 
 of Paul preaching at Athens, or defending himself before 
 King Agrippa. Terrific meteor ! unhappy son of fervid 
 genius, which mastered diyself even more that the rapt 
 audiences which at one time hung upon thy lips ! were 
 the cup of life once again presented to thy lips, wouldst 
 thou drink again ; or would thou not rather turn away 
 from it with shuddering abomination ? Sleep, Boanerges ! 
 and let the memory of man settle only upon thy colossal 
 powers, without a thought of those intellectual aberrations 
 which were more powerful for thy own ruin than for the 
 misleading of others ! 
 
 London, however, great as were its attractions, did but 
 rarely draw me away from Westmoreland. There I 
 found more and more a shelter and an anchor for my own 
 wishes. Originally, as I have mentioned, the motive 
 which drew me to this country, in combination with its 
 own exceeding beauty, had been the society of Words- 
 worth. But in this I committed a great oversight. Men 
 of extraordinary genius and force of mind are far better 
 as objects for distant admiration than as daily companions; 
 — not that I would insinuate anything to the disadvantage 
 of I\lr. Wordsworth. What I have to say in the way of 
 complaint, shall be said openly and frankly ; this is but 
 fair ; for insinuations or covert accusations always leave 
 room for misconstruction and for large exaggeration. 
 Mr. Wordsworth is not only a man of principle and 
 integrity, according to the severest standard of such a 
 character, but he is even a man, in many respects, of 
 amiable manners. Still there are traits of character 
 about him, and modes of expressing them in his manners, 
 which make a familiar or neighborly intercourse with him 
 painful and mortifying. Pride, in its most exalted form, 
 
 TOL. II. 16
 
 242 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 he was entitled to feel ; but something there was, in the 
 occasional expression of this pride, which was difficult to 
 bear. Upon groufid where he was really strong, Words- 
 worth was not arrogant. In a question of criticism, he 
 was open to any man's suggestions. But there ivere 
 fields of thought or of observation which he seemed to 
 think locked up and sacred to himself; and any alien 
 entrance upon those fields he treated almost as intrusions 
 and usurpations. One of these, and which naturally 
 occurred the most frequently, was the whole theory of 
 picturesque beauty, as presented to our notice at every 
 minute by the bold mountainous scenery amongst which 
 we lived, and as it happened to be modified by the sea- 
 sons of the year, by the time of day, or by the accidents 
 of light and shade. Now Wordsworth and his sister really 
 had, as I have before acknowledged, a peculiar depth of 
 organic sensibility to the efi'ects of form and color ; and 
 to thejn I was willing to concede a vote, such as, in ancient 
 Rome, was called a ' a prerogative vote,' upon such ques- 
 tions. But, not content with this, Wordsworth virtually 
 claimed the same precedency for all who were connected 
 with himself, though merely by affinity, and therefore 
 standing under no colorable presumption (as' blood re- 
 lations might have done) of inheriting the same con- 
 stitutional gifts of organization. To everybody, standing 
 out of this sacred and privileged pale, Wordsworth behav- 
 ed with absolute insult in cases of this nature : he did not 
 even appear to listen ; but, as if what they said on such a 
 theme must be childish prattle, turned away with an air of 
 perfect indifference ; began talking, perhaps, with another 
 person on another subject ; or, at all events, never noticed 
 what we said, by an apology for an answer. I, very 
 early in our connection, having observed this inhuman 
 arrogance, took care never afterwards to lay myself under
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 243 
 
 the possibility of such an insult. Systematically I avoided 
 saying anything, however suddenly tempted into any ex- 
 pression of my feelings, upon the natural appearances, 
 whether in the sky or on the earth. Thus I evaded one 
 cause of quarrel ; and so far Wordsworth was not aware 
 of the irritation and disgust which he had founded in the 
 minds of his friends. But there were other manifestations 
 of the same ungenial and exclusive pride, even still more 
 offensive and of wider application. 
 
 With other men, upon finding or thinking one's self ill- 
 used, all one had to do was to make an explanation ; and, 
 with any reasonable grounds of complaint, or any reason- 
 able temper to manage, one was tolerably sure of redress. 
 Not so with Wordsworth ; he had learned from Mrs. 
 C a vulgar phrase for all attempts at reciprocal ex- 
 planations — he called them contemptuously 'fending and 
 proving.'' And you might lay your account with being 
 met in limine, and further progress barred, by a declara- 
 tion to this effect — ' Mr. X 'Y Z, I will have nothing to do 
 with finding and proving.' This amounted, in other 
 words, to saying, that he conceived himself to be liberated 
 from those obligations of justice and courtesy by which 
 other men are bound. Now, I knew myself well enough 
 to be assured that, under suCh treatment, I should feel too 
 much indignation and disgust to persevere in courting the 
 acquaintance of a man who thus avowed his contempt for 
 the laws of equal dealing. Redress I knew that I should 
 never get; and, accordingly, I reasoned thus : — 'I have 
 been ill used to a certain extent ; but do I think that a 
 sufficient reason for giving up all my intimacy with a man 
 like Wordsworth ? If I do not, let me make no com- 
 plaint ; for, inevitably, if I do make complaint, that will be 
 the result. For, though I am able to bear the particular 
 wrong I now complain of, yet I feel that even from Words-
 
 244 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 worth I could not tolerate an open and contemptuous 
 refusal of justice. The result, then, if I pursue this 
 matter, will be to rob me of Wordsworth's acquaintance. 
 Reparation, already necessary to my feelings, will then 
 become necessary to my honor : I shall fail to obtain it ; 
 and then it will become my duty to renounce his acquaint- 
 ance. I will, therefore, rest contentedly where I am.' 
 
 What then were the cases of injustice which I had to 
 complain of.'' Such they were as between two men could 
 hardly have arisen ; but wherever there are women — 
 unless the terms on which the parties stand are most free 
 and familiar, so that fast as clouds arise of misunderstand- 
 ing, explanations may have full leave to move concur- 
 rently, and nothing be left for either side to muse upon as 
 wrong, or meditated insult — I hold it next to impossible 
 that occasions should not arise in which both parties will 
 suspect some undervaluing, or some failure in kindness or 
 respect. I, to give one example, had, for the controller of 
 my domestic vianege, a foolish, selfish, and ignorant old 
 maid. Naturally, she ought to have been no enemy to the 
 Wordsworths, for she had once lived as a servant with 
 them ; and, for my service, she had been engaged, at high 
 wages, by Miss Wordsworth herself. These motives to a 
 special regard for the W.'s, were not weighty enough to 
 overrule her selfishness. Having unlimited power in all 
 which regarded the pecuniary arrangements of my house, 
 she became a person of some consideration and some 
 power amongst her little sphere. In my absence, she took 
 upon herself the absolute command of everything ; and I 
 could easily perceive, by diflferent anecdotes which reached 
 me, that she was jealous of any abridgment to her own 
 supreme discretion, such as might naturally arise through 
 any exercise of those friendly rights, claimed in my ab- 
 sence, by those friends who conceived themselves to have
 
 "WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 245 
 
 the freedom of my house, and the right to use its accom- 
 modations in any honorable way prompted by their own 
 convenience. To my selfish house-keeper this was a dan- 
 gerous privilege ; for, if it had brought no other evil with 
 it, inevitably it would sometimes lay a restraint upon her 
 gadding propensity, and detain her at home during 
 months when otherwise my great distance gave her the 
 amplest privilege of absence. In shaping remedies for this 
 evil, which, from natural cowardice, she found it difficult 
 to oppose in her own person, she had a ready resource in 
 charging upon myself the measures which she found con- 
 venient. ' blaster [which was her technical designa- 
 tion for myself] thinks thus,' or ' Master left such and 
 such directions.' These* were obvious fictions, for a woman 
 so selfish and mean. Any real friend of mine ought to 
 have read, in the very situation which this woman held — 
 in her obvious interest, connected with her temper — a 
 sufficient commentary upon the real state of things. A 
 man more careless than myself of the petty interests con- 
 cerned in such a case, could not exist. And it may be 
 supposed with what disgust and what reasonable indigna- 
 tion I heard of opinions uttered upon my character by 
 those who called themselves my friends ; opinions shaped 
 to meet, not any conduct which I had ever held, or which 
 it could be pretended that I had countenanced, but to meet 
 the false imputations of an interested woman, who was 
 by those imputations doing to me a far deeper injury than 
 to those whom she merely shut out from a momentary 
 accommodation. 
 
 But why not, upon discovering such forgeries and mis- 
 representations, openly and loudly denounce them for what 
 they were ? I answer, that when a man is too injuriously 
 wounded by the words of his soi-disant friends, oftentimes 
 a strong movement of pride makes it painful for him to
 
 246 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 degrade himself by explanations or justifications. Besides 
 that, when once a false idea has prepossessed the minds of 
 your friends, justification oftentimes becomes impossible. 
 My servant, in such a case, would have worn the air of 
 one who had offended me, not by a base falsehood, but by 
 an imprudence in betraying too much of the truth ; and, 
 doubtless, when my back was turned, she would insinuate 
 that her own interest had obliged her to put up with my 
 disavowal of what she had done ; but that, in literal truth, 
 she had even fallen short of my directions. Others, again, 
 would think that, though no specific directions might have 
 been given to her, possibly she had collected my sincere 
 wishes from words of complaint dropped casually upon 
 former occasions. Thus, in short, partly I disdained, 
 partly I found it impossible, to exonerate myself fr&m 
 those most false imputations ; and I sate down half-con- 
 tentedly under accusations which, in the very solemnity of 
 truth, applied less justly to myself than to any one person 
 I knew amongst the whole circle of my acquaintance. 
 The result was, that ever after I hated the name of the 
 woman at whose hands I had sustained this wrong, so far 
 as such a woman could be thought worthy of hatred ; and 
 that I began to despise a little some of those who had been 
 silly and undisccrning enough to accredit such representa- 
 tions ; and one of them especially, who, though liberally 
 endowed with sunshiny temper and sweetness of disposi- 
 tion, was perhaps a person weak, intellectually, beyond 
 the ordinary standards of female weakness. 
 
 Hence began the waning of my friendship with the 
 Wordsworths. But, in reality, never after the first year or 
 so from my first introduction, had I felt much possibility 
 of drawing the bonds of friendship tight with a man of 
 Wordsworth's nature. He seemed to me too much like 
 his own Pedlar in the ' Excursion ; ' a man so diffused
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 247 
 
 amongst infiumerable objects of equal attraction, that he 
 had no cells left in his heart for strong individual attach- 
 ments. I was not singular in this feeling. Professor Wil- 
 son had become estranged from him : Coleridge, one of 
 his earliest friends, had become estranged : no one person 
 could be deemed fervently his friend. And, with respect 
 to Coleridge, he certainly had strong 'reasons to be es- 
 tranged; and equally certain it is that he held a profound 
 sense of those i-easons for some j'^ears. He told me him- 
 self, and this was his pecular inference from the case, and 
 what he made its moral, that married people rarely retain 
 much capacity of friendship. Their thoughts, and cares, 
 and anxieties, are all so much engrossed by those who 
 naturally and rightly sit nearest to their hearts, that other 
 friends, chosen, perhaps, originally for intellectual quali- 
 ties chiefly, and seen only at casual intervals, must, by 
 mere human necessity, come to droop and fade in their 
 remembrance. I see no absolute necessity for this ; nor 
 have I felt it since my own experience of the situation 
 supposed by Coleridge has enabled me to judge. But, at 
 all events, poor Coleridge had found it true in his own 
 case. The rupture between him and Wordsworth, which 
 rather healed itself by lapse of time and the burning dim 
 of fierce recollections, than by any formal reconciliation 
 or pardon exchanged between the parties, arose thus : — 
 An old acquaintance of Coleridge's happening to visit the 
 Lakes, proposed to carry Coleridge with him to London on 
 his return. This gentleman's wife, a lady of some dis- 
 tinction as to person and intellectual accomplishments, had 
 an equal pleasure in Coleridge's society. They had a 
 place disposable in their travelling carriage ; and thus all 
 things tallied towards the general purpose. Meantime, 
 Wordsworth, irrhated with what he viewed as excessive 
 vanity in this gentleman, (for his plan of taking Coleridge
 
 248 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 to London and making him an inmate in his house, had 
 oricrinated in a higher purpose of weaning Coleridge from 
 opium,) ridiculed the whole scheme pointedly, as a vision- 
 ary and Quixotic enterprise, such as no man of worldly 
 experience could ever seriously countenance. The dis- 
 pute — for it took that shape — tempted or drove Words- 
 worth into supporting his own views of Coleridge's abso- 
 lute incorrigibility, by all the anecdotes he could gather 
 together illustrative of the utter and irredeemable slavery 
 which had mastered the poor opium-martyr's will. And, 
 most assuredly, he drew such" a picture of Coleridge, and 
 of his sensual effeminacy, as ought not to have proceeded 
 from the hands of a friend. Notwithstanding all this, the 
 purpose held amongst the three contracting parties : they 
 went southwards; and, for a time, the plan was still farther 
 realized, of making Coleridge, not merely a travelling 
 companion, but also an inmate of their house. This plan, 
 however, fell through, in consequence of incompatible 
 habits. And, in the feud which followed, this gentleman 
 and his wife upbraided Coleridge with the opinions held of 
 him by his own oldest and most valued friend, William 
 Wordsworth ; and, perhaps as much to defend themselves 
 as to annoy Coleridge, they repeated many of the argu- 
 ments used by Wordsworth, and of the anecdotes by 
 which he supported them; anecdotes which, unfortunately, 
 vouched for their own authenticity, and were self-attested, 
 since none but Wordsworth could have known them. 
 
 I have mentioned the kind of wrongs which first caused 
 my personal feelings to grow colder towards the Words- 
 worths; and there were, afterwards, others added to these, 
 of a nature still more irritating, because they related to 
 more delicate topics. And, again and again, I was pro- 
 voked to wonder that persons, of whom some commanded 
 respect and attention simply as the near connections of a
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 249 
 
 great man, should so far forget the tenure on which their 
 influence rested, as to arrogate a tone of authority upon 
 their own merits. Meantime, however much my personal 
 feelings had altered gradually towards Wordsworth ; and 
 more, I think, in connection with his pride than through 
 any or all other causes acting jointly, (insomuch that I 
 used to say, Never describe Wordsworth as equal in pride 
 to Lucifer ; no, but if you have occasion to write a life of 
 Lucifer, set down that, by possibility, in respect to pride, 
 he might be some type of Wordsworth ;) still, I say, my 
 intellectual homage to Wordsworth had not been shaken. 
 Even this, however, in a course of years, had gradually 
 been modified. It is impossible to imagine the perplexity 
 of mind which possessed me when I heard Wordsworth 
 ridicule many books which I had been accustomed to 
 admire profoundly. For some years, so equally ineradi- 
 cable was either influence — my recollection, on the one 
 hand, of the books despised, and of their power over my 
 feelings ; on the other, my blind and unquestioning vene- 
 ration for Wordsworth — that I was placed in a strange 
 sort of contradictory life ; feeling that things were and 
 were not at the same instant ; believing and not believing 
 in the same breath. And not until I had read much in 
 German critics, of what they were the first to notice, viz., 
 the accident of einseitigkeit, or one-sidedness, as a pecu- 
 liarity not unfrequently besetting the strongest minds, did I 
 slowly come to the discovery that Wordsworth, beyond 
 all men, perhaps, that have ever lived, (and veiy likely as 
 one condhion towards the possibility of his own exceeding 
 originality,) was einseitig in extremity. This one-sidedness 
 shows itself most conspicuously in his dislikings; but 
 occasionally even in his likings. Cotton, for instance, 
 whom, in one of his critical disquisitions, he praises so 
 extravagandy for his fancy, has never found an admirer
 
 250 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 except in himself. And this mistake to be made in a field 
 of such enormous opulence as is that of fancy ! 
 
 . But, omitting many flagrant instances, the one which 
 most appalled myself was the following : — The ' Canter- 
 bury Tales' of the Miss Lees are sufficiently well known, 
 but not sufficiently appreciated ; and one reason may be, 
 that the very inferior tales of Miss Sophia Lee are mingled 
 with those of Miss Harriet. Two of those written by 
 Harriet, viz.. The Landlady'' s Tale and The German's, 
 are absolutely unrivalled as specimens of fine narration. 
 With respect to the latter, it is well known that Lord 
 Byron travestied this inimitable tale into a most miserable 
 drama ; interweaving with the dialogue of his piece every 
 word in the original conversations, unaltered nearly, and 
 assuredly not bettered. And the very act of borrowing a 
 plot from a tale in which so very much depends upon the 
 plot, and where it is of a kind that will not bend to altera- 
 tions, or modifications of any kind ; this in itself bespoke 
 a poor ambition, and the servile spirit* of a plagiarist. 
 This most splendid tale I put into the hands of Words- 
 worth ; and for once, having, I suppose, nothing- else to 
 read, he condescended to run through it. I shall not 
 report his opinion, which, in fact, was no opinion ; for the 
 whole colossal exhibition of fiendish gran^ieur in Conrad ; 
 the fine delineation of mixed power and weakness in 
 Siegendorf ; and the exquisite relief given to the whole 
 by the truly Shakspearian portrait of feminine innocence 
 and nobility in Josephine ; he had failed so much as to 
 guess at. All that he wondered at was the Machia- 
 velian insight into motives, and the play of human char- 
 
 * It is quite unknown to the world that Lord Byron's poem of ' Lara' 
 had already contained a gross plagiarism from Miss H. Lee. The 
 whole outline of the story, and many remarkable phrases, are borrowed 
 from the German's Tale.
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 251 
 
 acter ; with respect to which he said, coldly enough, that 
 it left an uncomfortable iiiopression of a woman as being 
 too clever. Schiller's ' Wallenstein,' again, was equally 
 unpleasing to him and unintelligible. Most people have 
 been enraptured with the beautiful group of Max. Piccolo- 
 mini and the Princess Thekla ; both because they furnish 
 a sweet relief to the general harsh impression from so 
 many worldly-minded, scheming, treacherous, malignant 
 ruffians, meeting together, in one camp, as friends, or 
 rivajs, or betrayers ; and also on their own separate ac- 
 count, even apart from the relation which they bear to 
 the whole ; for both are noble, both innocent, both young, 
 and both unfortunate : a combination of advantages to- 
 wards winning our pity which has rarely been excelled. 
 Yet Wordsworth's sole remark to me, upon Wallenstein, 
 was this ; that he could not comprehend Schiller's mean- 
 ing or object in entailing so much unhappiness upon these 
 young people ; a remark that, to me, was incomprehensi- 
 ble ; for why, then, did Shakspeare make Ophelia, Desde- 
 mona, Cordelia unhappy ? Or why, to put the question 
 more generally, did any man ever write a tragedy ? 
 
 Perhaps, to the public, it may illustrate Wordsworth's 
 one-sidedness more strikingly, if I should mention my 
 firm persuasion that he has never read one page of Sir 
 Walter Scott's novels. Of this I am satisfied ; though it 
 is true that, latterly, feeling more indulgently to the public 
 favorites as the public has come to appreciate himself 
 more justly, he has spoken of these tales in a tone of 
 assumed enthusiasm.* One of Mrs. Eadclifie's romances, 
 viz., ' The Italian,' he had, by some strange accident, 
 read ; read, but only to laugh at it ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Le Sage — 
 
 * ' Yarrow Revisited.'
 
 252 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 SO disgusting by their moral scenery and the whole state 
 of vicious society in which they keep the reader moving : 
 these, and merely for the ability of the execution, he 
 read and remembered with extreme delight. 
 
 Without going over any other examples, it may well 
 be understood that, by these striking instances of defective 
 sympathy in Wordsworth with the universal feelings of 
 his age J my intellectual, as well as my personal regard 
 for him, would be likely to suffer. In fact, I learned, 
 gradually, that he was not only liable to human error, but 
 that, in some points, and those of large extent, he was 
 frailer and more infirm than most of his fellow-men. I 
 viewed this defect, it is very true, as being the condition 
 and the price, as it were, or ransom of his own extraor- 
 dinary power and originality ; but still it raised a curtain 
 which had hitherto sustained my idolatry. I viewed him 
 now as a 7nixed creature, made up of special infirmity 
 and special strength. And, finally, I now viewed him as 
 no longer capable of an equal friendship. 
 
 With this revolution in my feelings, why did I not now 
 leave Westmoreland > I will say : Other attractions 
 had arisen ; different in kind ; equally potent in degree. 
 These stepped in to enchain me, precisely as my previous 
 chains were unlinking themselves, and leaving me in 
 freedom. 
 
 In these sketches (written with so much hurry as, in no 
 one instance that I remember, to have allowed me time 
 for once reading over a single paragraph of what I had 
 written), I have usually thought it best, in the few cases 
 where I had afterwards an opportunity of correcting the 
 press errors, simply to restore the word which it was 
 probable or apparent that I had originally written ; or 
 which, at least, I must have meant to write. Changes
 
 WALKING STEWART. 
 
 253 
 
 more extensive than this it could not be advisable to make, 
 in a case where I had no opening for a thorough recast of 
 the whole. Even in those instances wliere a thought, or 
 an expression, or a statement of facts, might be calculated 
 to do me some little injury, unless it were expanded, or 
 accompanied with an explanation, or more cautiously re- 
 stricted, I thought it better, on the whole, to abide the 
 hazard ; placing my reliance for the redress of any harsh 
 judgment on the absolute certainty, that each successive 
 month washes out of the public mind every trace of what 
 may have occupied it in any previous month. But, in this 
 sketch of Walkhig Stewart, there is something which 
 demands a more instant explanation ; for it happens that, 
 at this moment of revising the press errors, an anecdote 
 occurs to me, which illustrates the danger, in such a case, 
 of a permanent misconstruction. Many years ago, I was 
 spending a few days at the country-house of a foreign 
 merchant. His wife, a very intelligent, and even intel- 
 lectual person, came to me one morning with a book in 
 her hand, of which several leaves had been torn into frag- 
 ments. Her features, generally placid and amiable, wore 
 an expression of matronly scorn. She blushed, but it was 
 more with indignation than with feminine shame, as she 
 put the book into my hands. It was mine, she said, my 
 property ; and therefore she had not tossed it into the fire. 
 One of her infant children had found it, and had dealt 
 with it as I saw: 'and, if the child had destroyed the 
 whole of it, she could not think that I was much entitled 
 to complain.' It was one of my Peripatetic friend's 
 essays, under some such title as The Apocalypse of Na- 
 ture, or, The Revelation of Reason. 
 
 This accident, directing my eye to the part of the 
 volume which had been injured, reminded me of a fact 
 which otherwise I had naturally enough forgotten, viz.,
 
 254 LITERARY REBIINISCENCES. 
 
 that Walking Stewart had occasionally touched on sub- 
 jects quite unfitted for a public treatment ; or, at least, as 
 questions for philosophic speculation, calling for the dis- 
 guise of a learned language. I* made my peace with the 
 lady by assuring her, first, that (this particular A^olume 
 being one of many by the same author) I had not been 
 aware of the gross passages which appeared to disfigure 
 it near the end; and, secondly, (which part of my apology 
 it is that I now direct to my readers,) that my personal 
 knowledge of the man modified to my mind the doctrines 
 of the author. Things said broadly and coarsely, which 
 could not but shock strangers, to viy interpretation, were 
 blunted and defeated in their effect by the private know- 
 ledge I had of the writer's ultimate object, and of the 
 inartificial mode in which he dealt with his native lan- 
 guage. Language was too complex a machine for his 
 management. He had never been an accurate scholar; 
 and his idiom had entangled itself with the many exotic 
 idioms which at times he had used familiarly for years. 
 
 Under the spirit of this general apology, I beg to shel- 
 ter whatever I may have asserted of Mr. Stewart as a 
 philosophic speculator. He was a man religious by tem- 
 perament and the tendency of all his feelings ; yet it is 
 true that his mere understanding, yielding itself up to 
 speculations which he could not manage, has prompted 
 the most scornful expressions towards all doctrinal reli- 
 gions alike. He was pure and temperate in his habits of 
 life beyond the common standard of men; yet his page 
 was sometimes stained with sentiments too gross and 
 animal. Ignorant of philosophy in its forms and termi- 
 nology, he was, by capacity of profound reverie, a true 
 philosopher — in the sense that he felt his way to truths 
 greater and deeper than he could always explain ; and, 
 finally, though his books are filled with strong (oftentimes
 
 WALKING STEWART. 255 
 
 harsh) truths, ho was, as a man, the most comprehen- 
 sively benign, the most largely in sympathy with human 
 nature, of any whom I have yet known. He passed his 
 latter years in utter deafness ; [in noticing which, let me 
 observe that the image of the shell which I have used, 
 though not consciously, at the moment of writing, taken 
 from Wordsworth's ' Excursion,' or fron^ ]\Ir. Savage 
 Lander's ' Gebir,' must have been derived from one or 
 other of those poems :] he was deaf, as respected any 
 music that could come to him from the world : and he was 
 also dumb, as respected any music that could reach the 
 world from him : so profound was his inability to explain 
 himself, except at times, in conversation. Actually, there- 
 fore, he will be lost and forgotten. Potentially, he was a 
 great man.
 
 CHAPTEH XXII. 
 
 TALFOURD. — THE LONDON MAGAZINE. — JUNIUS. — 
 CLARE. — ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 
 
 Whilst T am upon the ground of London, that ' nation 
 
 of London,' (as I have elsewhere called it,) which I have 
 
 so often visited, and yet for periods so brief, that my entire 
 
 London life, if transposed from its dislocated periods into 
 
 one continuous aggregate, would not make above one and 
 
 a half year in the whole result, it may be as well to notice 
 
 some other circumstances, partly of a literary, partly of a 
 
 general interest, and which might be worthy of notice in 
 
 any man's life, but were so especially in the life of one 
 
 who held some peculiar principles — compromises, in 
 
 a measure between the extreme principles commonly 
 
 avowed — which I shall explain in connection with the 
 
 occasion. First, then, confining myself to my London 
 
 literary experience : it was not, certainly, extensive, nor 
 
 was I in spirits or circumstances to wish it such. I 
 
 lived in the most austere retirement ; and the few persons 
 
 whom I saw occasionally, or whose hospitalities I received, 
 
 were gens de plume, and professedly of my own order as 
 
 practising literati, but of the highest pretensions. Lamb 
 
 I have already mentioned. Serjeant Talfourd I became 
 
 acquainted with in the beautiful hall of the Middle 
 
 Temple, whence (after dining together in the agreeable 
 
 style inherited from elder days, and so pleasantly recalling
 
 TALFOURD. 257 
 
 the noble rcfeclories of Oxford amidst the fervent tumults 
 of London) wc sometuncs adjourned to our coffee at the 
 ch'ambers of the future author of Io7i, and enjoyed the 
 luxury of conversation, with the elite of the young 
 Templars, upon the most stirring themes of life or 
 literature. Ilim, indeed, I had known when a Temple 
 student. But, in 1821, when I went up to London 
 avowedly for the purpose of exercising my pen, as the 
 one sole source then open to me for extricating myself 
 from a special embarrassment, (failing which case of dire 
 necessity, I believe that I should never have written a line 
 for the press ;) Mr. Talfourd having become a practising 
 barrister, I felt that I had no right to trespass upon his 
 time, without some stronger warrant than any I could 
 plead in my own person. I had, therefore, requested a 
 letter of introduction to him from Wordsworth. That 
 was a spell which, with this young lawyer, I knew to be 
 all-potent ; and, accordingly, I now received from him a 
 gi'eat deal of kindness, which came specially commended 
 to a man in dejected spirhs, by the radiant courtesy and 
 the cheerfulness of his manners: for, of all the men whom 
 I have known, after long intercourse with the business of 
 the world, the Serjeant is the one who most preserves, to 
 all outward appeai'ance, the freshness and integrity of his 
 youthful spirits. 
 
 From him, also, I obtained an introduction to Messrs. 
 Taylor & Hessey, who had very recently, upon the 
 melancholy death of Mr. Scott, in consequence of his 
 duel with Mr. Christie, purchased The London Magazine^ 
 and were themselves joint editors of that journal. The 
 terms they held out to contributors were ultra-munificent 
 — more so than had yet been heard of in any quarter 
 whatsoever ; and, upon that understanding — seeing that 
 money was just tlten, of necessity, the one sole object to 
 
 VOL. II. 17
 
 258 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 which I looked in the cultivation of literature — naturally 
 enouo-h it happened that to the77i I ofFered my earliest 
 paper, viz., ' The Confessions of an English Opium- 
 Eater.' Of the two publishers, who were both hospi- 
 table and friendly men, with cultivated minds, one, viz., 
 Mr. Taylor, was himself an author, and, upon one subject, 
 a most successful one. He had written, indeed, at that 
 time, and since then, I understand, has written again upon 
 different parts of political economy. But to all v>'ho are 
 acquainted with the great reformation of this science, 
 effected by David Ricardo, it will appear, as a matter of 
 course, upon looking into Mr. Taylor's works, that he 
 sliould be found to have merely trifled. In reality, the 
 stern application of one single doctrine — that, namely, 
 which expounds the laws of value — would be sufficient, 
 as I believe, of itself, to demonstrate the reputation of Mr. 
 Taylor's, as of so many other erroneous views, in this 
 severe but much-bewildering science. In Mr. Taylor's 
 case, from what I saw of his opinions in 1821, I have 
 reason to think that Locke had been the chief instrument 
 in leading him astray. Mr. Taylor professed himself a 
 rehgious dissenter ; and, in all the poUtical bearings of 
 dissent, he travelled so far, that if, in any one instance, he 
 manifested an illiberal spirit, it was in the temper which 
 he held habitually towards the Church of England. Then 
 first, indeed, it was — and amongst the company which I 
 sometimes saw at Mr. Taylor's — that I became aware of 
 the deadly hatrq^^i — savage, determined hatred, made up 
 for mischief — which governed a large part of the well- 
 educated dissenters in their feelings towards the Church of 
 England. Being myself, not by birth and breeding only, 
 but upon the deliberate adoption of my judgment, an 
 affectionate son of that church, in respect to her doctrines, 
 her rites, her discipline, and her internal government, I
 
 THE LONDON MAGAZINE. 259 
 
 was both shocked and grieved to meet with what seemed 
 to me so much levity of rash judgment amongst the 
 thoughtful and well-principled — so harsh an illiberality 
 amongst the liberal, so little consideration amongst the 
 considerate. One thing was clear to me : that, in general, 
 this angry spirit of hostility was grounded upon a false, 
 because a superannuated, set of facts. Never, in any 
 great public corporation, had there been, as I well knew, 
 so large a reformation as in the Church of England, 
 during the last forty years. The collateral Church of 
 ]\Iethodists, hardly a Dissenting Church, raised up by John 
 Wesley, had, after one generation or so, begun to react 
 upon the Metropolitan Church, out of whose bosom it had 
 been projected. The two universities of England had 
 constantly fed from within this growing galvanism applied 
 from without : Mr. Simeon, Professor Parish, Dean Mihier, 
 in Cambridge ; Mr. Faber, the little society of Edmund 
 Hall, &c., in Oxford ; Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Babington, 
 Mr. Thornton, in the Senate ; Mrs. Hannah Mote in 
 literature ; severally offered a nucleus, around which, I 
 have understood, the open profession of a deeper, more 
 fervid, and apostolical spirit in religious opinions and 
 religious practices, had been emboldened to gather ; and 
 the result has been that, whilst the English Church, from 
 Queen Anne's day to the French Revolution, was at the 
 lowest point of its depression, and absolutely cankered to 
 the heart by the spirit of worldliness, that same Church in 
 our days, when standing on the brink, apparently, of great 
 trials, and summoned to put forth peculiar vigilance of 
 watch and ward, if not even to face great and trying 
 storms, has, by great examples, by extensive religious 
 associations, and by a powerful press, concurring with the 
 unusual thoughtfulness generated by the French Revo- 
 lution and the vast changes in its train, most seasonably
 
 260 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 been brought gradually into a frame and composition 
 which all who have looked with interest upon the case, 
 deem much nearer than at any other stage of its history 
 to the condition of a primitive and truly pastoral church. 
 
 With these views I was as much astonished as I was 
 grieved to find the Established Church an object, at this 
 particular crisis, of enmity so profound. Thus, however, 
 it was. Mr. Taylor, I apprehend, shared in all the 
 dominant feelings of the dissenters, such as I heard them 
 frequently expressed in his society ; and naturally, tliere- 
 fore, he entertained, amongst other literary opinions, a. 
 peculiar and perhaps blind veneration for Locke. Locke, 
 in fact, is made an idol amongst the ' Rational ' Dis- 
 senters : those whose religion begins and terminates in the 
 understanding. This idolatry is paid to him in a double 
 character, as the most eminent patron of religious liberty, 
 and as the propounder of views in Christianity pretty 
 much akin to their own in want of depth and in * anti- 
 mysticism,' as a friend might call it ; but, speaking 
 sincerely, in hostility to all that is unfathomable by the 
 mere discursive understanding. I am not here going to 
 entertain so large a theme as the philosophy of Locke. 
 In another place, I shall, perhaps, astonish the reader by 
 one or two of the yet undetected blunders he has com- 
 mitted in his philosophy. But, confining myself to his 
 political economy, I may take occasion to notice one error, 
 with regard to that part of his pretensions, which has 
 misled many. By mere accident, Locke was right, in his 
 dispute with Lowndes of the Treasury, upon a question 
 which arose in connection with the great recoinage of 
 King William's days. At the request of Lord Somers, 
 Locke undertook the discussion ; and, as he happened to 
 be right in opposition to a man whose official duty it was 
 to have understood the subject thoroughly upon which he
 
 THE LONDON MAGAZINE. 261 
 
 speculated so wildly, this advantage, settling, in Jiis case, 
 upon a novice matched against a doctor, procured for 
 Locke an enthusiasm of admiration which the case did 
 not really warrant; and it was afterwards imagined, by 
 those who looked back casually into Locke's treatises, that 
 he was a sound economist. But the fact is, political 
 economy had, in those days, no sort of existence : no one 
 doctrine, not so much as that which unfolds the benefits 
 from the division of labor, was then known : the notion, 
 again, that a nation did or could benefit by commerce, 
 otherwise than by the accident of selling more than she 
 bought, and, as a consequence, by accumulating the 
 balance in the form of the precious metals — this notion 
 was inconceivable to the human understanding at the era 
 of Locke : no progress had been made in dissipating that 
 delusion ; and Locke was as much enslaved by it as any 
 other man. Possibly — and there is some room to think 
 it — he was a little in advance of the Ciceronian idea, 
 that the very possibility of a gain, in any transaction of 
 sale between two parties, was logically conceivable only 
 upon the assumption of a deception on one side : that, 
 unless they would ' lie pretty considerably,' {7iisi admodum 
 mentiantur ,) merchants must resign all hope of profit. 
 The grounds of value, again, were as little known to 
 Locke as the consequences of those grounds ; and, in 
 short, he had not made one step ahead of his age in any 
 one branch of political economy. But, in his dispute 
 with Lowndes, the victory was gained, not over scientific 
 blunders by scientific lights ; no, but over mere logical 
 blunders, the very grossest, by common sense the most 
 palpable. It was no victory of a special science, but one 
 of general logic. There were no poshive truths elicited, 
 but simply a refutation, scarcely in that age needed, of 
 some self-contradictory errors. Lowndes had so far con-
 
 262 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 fused himself as to suppose that the same ounce of silver 
 might, at the same time and place, be worth more or less 
 than itself, when thrown into the shape of coin. The 
 most obvious truths Locke himself appears to have over- 
 looked, notwithstanding the English silver currency at 
 that moment illustrated some of them. Locke, therefore, 
 exposed a set of errors which could not have arisen in 
 anything short of Irish confusion of ideas ; and the truths 
 of an affirmative order belonging to the subject, which, 
 even under the feeble light of those times, might have 
 been detected, escaped him altogether. So much I have 
 thought it right to say on Mr. Taylor's Political Economy, 
 and the sort of sanction which he seeks to draw from 
 Locke, who has led many others astray, by the authority 
 of his name, upon a subject over which he has no sort 
 of jurisdiction ; neither did that age furnish any one who 
 had. 
 
 But if Mr. Taylor failed (as, honestly, I believe he did) 
 in this field, in another he effected a discovery so brilliant, 
 so powerfully sustained by evidences overwhelming and 
 irresistible, after (be it remembered) efforts the most 
 elaborate and numerous to solve the problem, that he 
 certainly deserves a high place, and perhaps next to 
 Bentley, in this species of exploratory literature. With 
 little or no original hints to direct him in his path, he 
 undertook the great literary enigma of Junius — Who and 
 what was he ? — and brought that question to a decision 
 that never can be unsettled or disturbed by any person 
 except one who is unacquainted with the arguments. I 
 have understood, but perhaps not upon sufficient authority, 
 that the notice of this work in The Edinlurgli Review 
 was drawn up by Lord Brougham. If so, I must confess 
 my surprise : there is not much of a lawyer's accuracy in 
 the abstract of the evidence, nor is the result stated with 
 
 «
 
 JUNIUS. 263 
 
 the boldness which the premises warrant. Chief Justice 
 Dallas, of the Common Pleas, was wont to say that a man 
 arraigned as Junius upon the evidence here accumulated 
 against Sir Philip Francis, must have been convicted in 
 any court of Europe. But I would go much farther : I 
 would say that there are single proofs, which (taken 
 separately and apart from all the rest) are sufhcient to 
 sustain the whole onus of the charge. I would also aro;ue 
 thus : — If a man in one character (his avowed character, 
 suppose, of Francis) uses a word in some peculiar sense, 
 or in some very irregular manner, then it will become 
 high argument against this man as liable to the suspicion 
 of having been the masque in the assumed character of 
 Junius, that this masque shall also be proved to have used 
 the same word in the same anomalous way. Suppose 
 now that any ordinary presumption, or any coincidence of 
 ordinary force shall be considered :zz a; ; then I may be 
 entitled to value this remarkable coincidence in anomalous 
 practice as x^; or, however, as equal to some higher 
 power of the same order. But, now, suppose further, that 
 Francis has also, in his mode of correcting ' proof-sheets ' 
 and ' revises ' from the press, fallen into a constant mis- 
 conception of the function assigned by compositors to a 
 particular mark ; and suppose that this misconception is 
 by no means a natural or obvious misconception, but one 
 which rests upon some accident of individual blundering ; 
 then I should say that if, upon examination pursued 
 through a multitude of specimens, it comes out flagrantly 
 that Junius has also fallen into the same very peculiar and 
 unoivious error; in this case, we have a presumption for 
 the- identity of the two characters, Francis and Junius, 
 which (taken separately) is entitled to be valued as a high 
 function of x. But I say further, that a second presumption 
 of the same order may lawfully demand to be reckoned
 
 264 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 as multiplying its own value into the second value. 
 Meantime the tendency of all the external, arguments 
 drawn from circumstantial or personal considerations, 'from 
 local facts, or the records of party, flows in the very same 
 channel ; with all the internal presumptions derived from 
 the style, from the anomalous use of words, from the 
 anomalous construction of the syntax, from the pecu- 
 liar choice of images, from the arbitrary use of the 
 technical short-hand for correcting typographical errors, 
 from capricious punctuation, and even from penmanship, 
 (which, of itself, taken separately, has sometimes deter- 
 mined the weightiest legal interests.) Proofs, in fact, 
 rush upon us more plentiful than blackberries : and the 
 case ultimately begins to be fatiguing, from the very 
 phlethora and riotous excess'of evidence. It would stimu- 
 late attention more, and pique the interest of curiosity 
 more pungently, if there were some conflicting evidence, 
 some shadow of presumptions against Francis. But there 
 are none, absolutely none. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the reader will begin to 
 say. How came it then that the controversy about Junius, 
 which has raged for upwards of half a century, and has 
 already produced books and pamphlets past all numbering, 
 (insomuch that I have heard of several persons projecting 
 a BiMiotheca Junia7ia, or Museum Juniamim ;) how came 
 it, the reader will ask, that this controversy did not drop 
 at once and for ever, as a question summarily but irrever- 
 sibly decided, as a balloon from which all the inflating air 
 had suddenly escaped ? How is it that we still see the old 
 Junian pompholyx, that ancient and venerable bubble, still 
 floatin .f in the upper air ? This may be explained out of 
 two facts : one being, that very few people have made 
 themselves familiar with the arguments. I have never 
 yet happened to meet anybody who had mastered the
 
 JUNIUS. 265 
 
 investigation so far as to be aware that there was anything 
 more made out against Sir Philip Francis than some vague 
 presumptions, founded "on similarity of handwritings, and 
 perhaps some coincidence between the main periods of 
 Junius as to his rise and setting, with certain known cnti- 
 cal incidents in the career of Francis. The coherence 
 and interdependency in the total chainwork of evidence, 
 and the independent strength of each particular link, is 
 little known to the public. That is one reason for the 
 non-decisiveness of this most decisive book. A second 
 is, the absurd tradition, which has tal^en root in the public 
 mind, that some all-superseding revelation is to be made 
 upon this subject at the death of some Pht or Grenville 
 unknown. For many a year it was asserted, every six 
 months, in the newspapers, that Lord Grenville was the 
 man at whose death a final discovery was to be inade, 
 such as nobody could gainsay. And to this day, though 
 the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Grenville, and every 
 other person of that generation in the Pitt and Grenville 
 families, has died and 'made no sign,' the same ridiculous 
 legend is occasionally repeated in the newspapers. But 
 the best possible answer to this idle fable is, simply, to 
 ask a man for one moment's reflection upon its meaning; 
 for what is it that any man could establish by his death, 
 or by any act consequent upon his death, such as a will 
 or codicil to a will ? Living, perhaps Lord Grenville 
 might have argued the case with Mr. Taylor upon the 
 basis of his own recollections ; but, being dead, what 
 more could he possibly do than leave behind him a 
 writing, certificate, or memorial, that somebody had told 
 him he was Junius, or that he had personal reasons for 
 suspecting that such or such a person might be Junius? 
 So that the utmost result would have been to make out 
 some rival case. A third reason is the same which
 
 266 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 influenced Mr. Woodfall : this gentleman having long 
 cherished the idea, an idea encouraged by various arti- 
 fices on the part of Junius, that the masqued writer was 
 a very great man, some leading statesman, it mortified 
 him, and threw a coloring of the burlesque upon the 
 aristocratic airs of Junius, to suppose him, after all, no 
 more than a clerk in the War-Office. These are the 
 common reasons for the non-satisfaction (dissatisfaction 
 it cannot be called) of most men whh the case as it stands 
 in popular repute. But there is ^fourth reason, stronger 
 than all the rest, which weighs much with many even of 
 those who have some personal acquaintance with the 
 evidence, and (so far as that acquaintance goes) are not 
 dissatisfied with its force. It is this, and I have once 
 stated it at length in a private letter to Mr. Taylor ; and 
 singular enough, it will be thought, that this objection to 
 the evidence turns out, when probed, its very strongest 
 confirmation. Thus it stands : — 
 
 People allege that Sir Philip Francis was a vain man, 
 fond of notoriety, and, beyond all things, fond of literary 
 notoriety ; and yet he never unmasked himself as Junius, 
 never hinted at any interest which he had in these thrice 
 celebrated letters ; and, at length, when the claim is made 
 on his behalf by a stranger, he not only does not come 
 forward to countersign this claim as authentic, but abso- 
 lutely, with some sternness, appears to disavow it. How 
 is this ? Here lies a glittering trophy ; a derelict, exposed 
 in the public highway. People have been known to 
 violate their consciences, under the most awful circum- 
 stances, in ordei' to establish a false pretension to it ; 
 people have actually died with a falsehood on their lips, 
 for the poor chance of gaining what, for tliem^ could be 
 no more than a posthumous reputation ; and this to be 
 enjoyed even in its visionary foretaste, only for a few
 
 JUNIUS. 267 
 
 fleeting moments of life, with a certainty of present 
 guilt, and at the hazard of future exposure. All this 
 has been done by those who are conscious of having 
 only a false claim. And here is the man who, by th^e 
 supposition, has the true claim ; a man, too, eminently 
 vain-glorious ; and yet he will not put forth his hand to 
 appropriate the prize ; nay, posuively rejects it. Such is 
 the objection. Now, hear the answer — First, he did not 
 reject it. The place in which he is supposed to have done 
 so, is a short letter addressed to Sir Richard Phillips, by 
 way of answer to a very impertinent demand, on that 
 worthy publisher's part, for a categorical answer to the 
 question — Was he, or loas he not, Junius 7 Now, Sir 
 Philip seems to say — ' No : ' and he certainly framed his 
 letter with a view to be so understood. But, on a nicer 
 inspection of this answer, we may perceive that it is most 
 jesuitically adapted to convey an impression at variance 
 with the strict construction which lurks in the literal 
 wording. Even that artifice, however, lets us behind the 
 scenes, by showing that Sir Phihp had a masqued design 
 before him — a design to evade an acknowledgment which, 
 in conscience, he could not boldly and blankly refute, 
 and which, by vanity, he longed to establish. Yet, had 
 this been otherwise, had he even pointedly and unambig- 
 uously said No, we could not, in the circumstances of the 
 case, have built much upon that. For we know, and 
 Sir Philip knew, what had been Dr. Johnson's casuistry, 
 applied to this very case of Junius. Burke having been, 
 named, improbably enough, as Junius, the Doctor said 
 ' No :' he acquitted Burke altogether ; not because he had 
 disowned the authorship ; for that he had a right to do, 
 even if really Junius ; since, if veracity could be supposed 
 any duty in such a case, then it was idle, from the first, 
 to assume a masque ; a masque that would be at th^
 
 268 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 mercy of the first person who chose to go beyond others 
 in impertinence. Surely impertinence ought to create no 
 special right over another man's secret. And, therefore, 
 along with the disguise, any sensible man must be pre- 
 sumed to take up the privilege of saying ' No,'' as one 
 essential accessory and adjunct to that disguise. But, 
 argued Johnson, Burke vohmteered the disavowal ; made 
 it spontaneously, when nobody questioned him. Being, 
 therefore, not called on for this as a measure of defence, 
 on that ground I hold him to have spoken the truth in 
 disavowing Junius. This defence of a prudential untruth, 
 in a case supposed, was well known to Francis. Armed 
 with this authoritative sanction. Sir Philip — a mere lax 
 man of the world — would readily have resorted to a 
 falsehood, even in a case no stronger than Dr. Johnson's 
 casuistry supposed. But, in fact, as we shall see, Ms 
 was a great deal stronger ; so that, a fortiori, he had 
 the doctor's permission to make the boldest denial ; and 
 such a denial we should, in such a case, be entitled to 
 hold as none at all. And yet, after all, he only allows 
 himself an apparent denial ; one which depends, for its 
 effect, upon the haste and inaccuracy of the reader. 
 
 What then was the case of Sir Philip, which I affirm to 
 be so much stronger than that which had been contem- 
 plated by Dr. Johnson, as a case justifying a denial of the 
 truth ? It was this : Sir Philip Francis was the creature 
 of Junius. Whatever Sir Philip had — his wealth, his 
 honors, his consideration, were owing to the letters of 
 Junius ; to the power which he had obtained under that 
 signature ; and to the mode in which, having obtained 
 power like a thief, he had sold it like a traitor. Armed 
 with that potent spell, he had made himself, first, formi- 
 dable to the King and to his Cabinet ; secondly, had 
 brought himself, when thus armed, into the market for
 
 JUNIUS. 269 
 
 sale. But how ? By wliat means ? I answer : By the 
 blackest treachery ; by a double treachery ; by treachery, 
 as respected the way in which he rose into Junius ; and 
 by an equal treachery to his own principles, as Junius, in 
 his mode of laying down that character. How is it, do 
 we suppose, that Junius had won the national ear ? Not 
 by the means (generally presumed) of fine composition. 
 No : but by the reputation he enjoyed of having won the 
 ear of the King's government. And he had so ; it was no 
 false reputation. But again I say, in this case also, 
 How ? If the public could be won by such tinkling 
 music, is any man childish enough to suppose that the 
 care-laden Ministers of a great nation, overwhelmed by 
 business, would find leisure to read Cato or Piihlicola, 
 purely for the value of their style or their tropes ? No : 
 the true cause was, that Ministers found, in these letters, 
 proofs of some enemy, some spy, being amongst them. 
 Did they join the popular cry — 'Here is a great rheto- 
 rician ? ' Never believe it ; but, ' Here is a great thief.' 
 Not the eloquence, but the larceny moved their anxieties. 
 State secrets were betrayed. Francis was the spy. He 
 picked Lord Barrington's locks ; he practised daily as an 
 eavesdropper upon Lord Barrington's private communica- 
 tions with Ministers : he abused, for his own purposes, the 
 information, select and secret, which often came before 
 him officially, in his character of clerk at the War-Office. 
 In short, he was an unfaithful servant, who, first of all, 
 built himself up into terror and power as Junius, on a 
 thorough-going plan of disloj'alty to his patron, and after- 
 wards built himself up into the Right Honorable Sir Philip 
 Francis, Knight of the Bath, Privy Councillor, one of the 
 Supreme Council in Bengal, with ^12,000 per annum ; 
 all this upon a disloyalty equally deliberate to all the 
 principles and the patriotism which he had professed as
 
 270 LITEKARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 Junius. The first perfidy would only have put a gay 
 feather into his cap; this he improved Into a second, 
 which brought him place, honor, ' troops of friends,' this 
 world's wealth, in short, and every mode of prosperity but 
 one ; which one was peace of mind and an unclouded 
 conscience. Such was the brief abstract of Sir Philip's 
 history. Now, though most men would not, yet there 
 were still surviving very many who would, upon any 
 direct avowal that he was Junius, at once put ' this ' and 
 'that' together, and, in one moment of time, come to 
 unlock what had always been something of a mystery to 
 Mr. Francis's friends at home — viz., how it was that he, 
 the obscure clerk of the War-Office, notoriously upon bad 
 terms with Lord Barrington, his principal, had, neverthe- 
 less, shot up all at once into a powerful Oriental satrap. 
 The steps, the missing gradation, would suddenly be 
 recovered, and connected into a whole. ' Thou hast it, 
 Cawdor ! ' The metamorphosis of Francis into the Ben- 
 gal potentate was unintelligible : but the intermediation 
 of Junius would harmonize all difficulties. Thus grew 
 Francis the clerk into Junius, (viz., by treason.) Thus 
 grew Junius the demagogue into Francis the Rajah, viz., 
 by selling his treason. ' You are Junius ? ' it would be 
 said: ' Why then, you are a very hriUiant fellow.'' That 
 would be the first reflection ; but then would come a 
 second on the heels of that : — ^And a most unprincij^led 
 knave, 7v]io rose into great consideration hy filching his 
 master''s secrets.' 
 
 Here, then, we read the true secret of his chicanery in 
 replying to Sir R. Phillips. Had he been thoroughly 
 determined to disavow Junius, could he have brought his 
 heart to do so, we may be sure that he would not have 
 needed (Junius would have known how to find clear 
 language) to speak so obscurely as he has done in this
 
 jUNiirs. 271 
 
 short reply. Neither would he have contented himself 
 with any simple denial; he would have recited some 
 facts in his life circumstantiating his denial. But this 
 was not in his power to do ; nor did he sincerely wish 
 it. Naturally he must have clung, with a perfect 
 rapture of vanity, to his own too famous production. 
 Respect for his own character forbade him to avow it. 
 Parental vanity forbade him so to disavow it, as that he 
 could never have reclaimed it. Sir Philip Francis had 
 been a great criminal ; but his crime produced its own 
 intolerable punishment. The tantalization of his heart 
 when denied the privilege, open to every other human 
 being, of claiming the products of his own brain and of 
 his own excessive * labor, must have been a perpetual 
 martyrdom. And, in this statement of the case, we read 
 a natural solution of two else inexplicable facts : first, 
 why Sir P. Francis (supposing him Junius) did not 
 come forward to claim his work. And, secondly, why* 
 Junius, the mysterious Junius, old ' Nominis umhra^ 
 (supposing him Francis,) did not come forwai'd to pro- 
 claim his own name. To presume Francis and Junius 
 one and the same person, at once explains both mysteries. 
 Upon the Taylorian hypothesis, all is made clear as day- 
 light why Junius did not avow his name — why Francis 
 did not claim his literary honors. Upon such an account 
 only is it possible to explain the case. All other accounts 
 leave it a perpetual mystery, unfathomable upon any 
 principles of human nature, why Junius did not, at least, 
 make his claim by means of some last will and testa- 
 ment. We cannot imagine that a writer, evidently under 
 
 * ' His own excessive labor ; ' — 'Is there no labor in these letters ? ' 
 asks JuqIus, in a tone of triumphant appeal. And, on other occasions, 
 he insists upon the vast toil which the composition cost him.
 
 272 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 the most intense worldly influences of vain-glory and 
 ambition, should voluntarily have made a sacrifice (and 
 a sacrifice with no apparent motive) of what, in the 
 pardonable exaggeration of an author's vanity, must, to 
 him, have appeared one of the greatest works in political 
 as also in rhetorical literature. Such an act of austere 
 self-mortification is inconceivable, except amongst the 
 most rapturous devotees of the Romish church : shame 
 only or fear * can avail to solve the enigma. But fear, 
 if at all admitted as applicable to the case, could not 
 extend beyond his own term of life : that motive cannot 
 explain the silence of his last will and testament. There, 
 at least, he would have spoken out to posterity, and his 
 own surviving compatriots. ' If I live,' says he, in his 
 Dedication to the People of England, ' you shall often 
 hear of me.' And, doubtless, even in dying, if he forgot 
 tliem^ he would remember himself and his own really 
 /nemorable pretensions. He would not forget, at least, 
 to order some inscription on his own grave, pointing 
 backwards to the gay trophies of him who had extorted 
 fear from kings, and admiration from angry senates, f 
 This he would have done : this he has not done ; and a 
 principle of shame only, operating in the way 1 have 
 mentioned, is a case capable of explaining it. That case 
 is precisely the case of Sir Philip Francis. 
 
 * ' Fear : ' — ' Sir William would meet me in the field : others would 
 assassinate.' — Junius to Sir Win. Draper. 
 
 t ' He icould not have forgotten, at least, to order some inscription on 
 his own grave,' &c. Accordingly, there is in The Anti-Jacobin Review, 
 a story told of a stranger dying at a village inn, somewhere, I think, in 
 Buckinghamshire, and directing that no memorial should be placed upon 
 his grave, beyond the initial letters of his name, and the motto of Junius, 
 ' Stat nominis umbra.' So much weight was attached to the story, that 
 Charles Fox is said to have visited his grave. Probably the whole is a 
 fiction.
 
 JUNIUS. 273 
 
 It remains only to say, that, by neglecting to press 
 these facts and their natural construction against Sir 
 Philip, Mr. Taylor allowed the only powerful argument 
 against his hypothesis to stand unanswered. A motive of 
 kindness towards the unhappy Sir Philip himself, and 
 consideration for the pious feelings of his son and 
 daughter, may have influenced Mr. Taylor in this for- 
 bearance. All are now dead ; and these restraints can 
 operate no longer. But even in the lifetime of the 
 parties, surely enough might have been hinted to main- 
 tain the impregnability of the hypothesis, without seri- 
 ously wounding the sensibilities of Sir Philip. These 
 sensibilities merited respect ; inasmuch, as though point- 
 ing to a past chapter of deep criminality, it is not 
 impossible that they had long connected themselves with 
 virtuous feelings of remorse, and a suffering sense of 
 honor ; most assuredly they brought along with them the 
 bitterest chastisement, by that unexampled self-sacrifice 
 which they entailed. But all this might have been met 
 and faced by Mr. Taylor : the reader might have been 
 summoned in general terms, before allowing an unneces- 
 sary weight to the fact of Sir Philip's apparent renuncia- 
 tion of the claim made on his behalf, to consider two 
 capital points ; first, whether he really had, renounced it, 
 and in such terms as admitted of no equivocal construc- 
 tion ; secondly, whether (even supposing him to have 
 done this in the amplest sense, and with no sort of 
 reserve) there might not appear some circumstances in 
 the past recital of Sir Philip's connection with the 
 War-Office and Lord Barrington, which would forcibly 
 restrain him in old age, when clothed with high state 
 characters, of senator and privy counsellor, invested 
 therefore with grave obligations of duty ; I say, restrain 
 him from seeming, by thus assuming the imputed author- 
 
 VOL. II. 18
 
 274 LITEKARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ship, to assume, along with it, the responsibility attaching 
 to certain breaches of confidence, which the temptations 
 of ambition, and the ardor of partisanship, might palliate 
 in a young man, but which it would not become an 
 old one to adopt and own, under any palliations whatever, 
 or upon any temptations of literary gain. Such an 
 appeal as this could not greatly have distressed Sir Philip 
 Francis, or not more, however, than he had already been 
 distressed by the inevitable disclosures of the investiga- 
 tion itself, as connected with the capital thesis of Mr. 
 Taylor, that Francis and Junius were the self-same 
 person. 
 
 Here, therefore, was a great oversight of Mr, Taylor ; 
 and over the results of this oversight — his discoveries — 
 the unconquerable points of his exposure have not yet 
 established their victory. I may mention, however, that 
 Sir Philip so far dallied with the gratification offered to 
 his vanity in this public association of his name with 
 Junius as to call upon Mr. Taylor. His visit seemed 
 partly a sort of tentative measure, adopted in a spirit of 
 double uncertainty — uncertainty about the exact quantity 
 of proof that Mr. Taylor might have accumulated ; and 
 uncertainty again, about the exact temper of mind in 
 which it became him to receive the new discoveries. He 
 affected to be surprised that anybody should ever have 
 thought of him in connection with Junius. Now, possi- 
 bly, this was a mere careless expression, uttered simply 
 by way of an introduction to the subsequent conversation. 
 Else, and if it were said deliberately, it showed great 
 weakness ; for, assuredly, Sir Philip was too much a man 
 of shrewd sagacity to fail in perceiving that, were it even 
 possible for presumptions, so many and so strong, to be, 
 after all, compatible with final falsehood, still a case had 
 been made out far too strong for any man unaffectedly to
 
 JUNIUS. 275 
 
 pretend surprise at its winning soxwc prima facie credit. 
 Mr. Taylor naturally declined re-arguing the case ; he 
 resigned it to its own merits, which must soon dispose of 
 it in public estimation, but at the same time protested 
 against having viewed his discovery in any other light 
 than that of honor to Sir Philip ; indeed, in a literary 
 sense, who would not be honored (he asked) by the 
 imputation of being Junius ? So closed the conversation 
 substantially on the respondent's part. But the appellant, 
 Sir Philip, gave a singular turn to his part, which thus far 
 had been rather to him a tone of expostulation, by saying 
 in conclusion — 
 
 ' Well, at least, I think, you can do no less than send 
 me a copy of your book.' 
 
 This, of course, was done ; and, with some slight 
 interchange of civilities attending the transmission of the 
 book, I believe the intercourse terminated. 
 
 Sir Philip suffered under a most cruel disease, which 
 soon put an end to his troubled life ; and my own belief 
 is, that there ended as agitated an existence as can have 
 been supported by frail humanity. He was naturally a 
 man of bad and harsh disposition : insolent, arrogant, and 
 ill-tempered. Constitutionally, he was irritable ; bodily 
 sufferings had exasperated the infirmities of his temper; 
 and the mixed agony of body and mind in which .he 
 passed his latter years, must have been fearful even to 
 contemplate. The Letters of Junius certainly show very 
 little variety or extent of thought ; no comprehensive 
 grasp ; no principles of any kind, false or sound ; no 
 powers, in fact, beyond the powers of sarcasm ; but they 
 have that sort of modulated rhythm, and that air of clas- 
 sical chastity, (perhaps arising more from the penury of 
 ornament, and the absence of any impassioned eloquence, 
 than from any positive causes,) which, co-operating with
 
 276 LITERARY REMINISCENCES, 
 
 the shortness of the periods, and the unparalleled felicity 
 of their sarcasms, would, at any rate, have conciliated 
 the public notice. They have exactly that sort of talent 
 which the owner is sure to overrate. But the inten- 
 sity, the sudden growth, and the durability* of their 
 fame, were due, (as I must ever contend,) not to any 
 qualities of style or composition — though, doubtless, 
 these it is which co-operated with the thick cloak of 
 mystery, to sustain a reputation once gained — but to the 
 knowledge dispersed through London society, that the 
 Government had been appalled by Junius, as one who, 
 in some way or other, had possessed himself of their 
 secrets. 
 
 The London Magazine, of whose two publishers (editors 
 also) I have thus introduced to the reader that one who 
 had also distinguished himself as an author, was at that 
 time brilliantly supported. And strange it is, and also has 
 been to others as well as myself, that such a work should 
 not have prospered ; but prosper it did not. Meantime, 
 the following writers were, in 1821-23, amongst my own 
 collalorateurs : — Charles Lamb ; Hazlitt ; Allan Cunning- 
 ham; Hood; Hamilton Reynolds; Carey, the unrivalled 
 translator of Dante ; Crow, the Public Orator of Oxford. 
 And so well were all departments provided for, that even 
 the monthly abstract of politics, brief as it necessarily 
 was, had been confided to the care of Phillips, the cele- 
 brated Irish barrister. Certainly a Yiterary Pleiad might 
 have been gathered out of the stars connected with this 
 journal; and others there were, I believe, occasional con- 
 
 * ' The durability,' &c. — It is, however, remarkable that, since the 
 great expansion of the public mind by political discussions consequent 
 upon the Reform Bill, Junius is no longer found a saleable book : so, at 
 least, I have heard from various persons.
 
 CLAKE. 277 
 
 tributors, who could not be absolutely counted upon, and 
 therefore I do not mention them. One, however, who 
 johied The London in 1823, I think, calls /or a separate 
 mention — namely, Clare, the peasant poet of Northamp- 
 tonshire. 
 
 Our Scottish brethren are rather too apt, in the excess 
 of that nationality, (which, dying away in some classes, is 
 still burning fervently in others,) and which, though giving 
 a just right of complaint to those who suffer by it, and 
 though direfully disfiguring the liberality of the national 
 manners, yet stimulates the national rivalship usefully ; — 
 our Scottish brethren, 1 say, are rather too apt to talk as 
 if, in Scotland only, there were any precedents to be 
 found of intellectual merit struggling upwards in the class 
 of rustic poverty. Whereas there has, in England, been 
 a larger succession of such persons than in Scotland. 
 Inquire, for instance, as to the proportion of those who 
 have risen to distinction by mere weight of unassisted merit, 
 in this present generation, at the English bar : and then 
 inquire as to the corresponding proportion at the Scotch 
 bar. Oftentimes it happens that, in the poetry of this 
 class, little more is found than the gift of a tolerable good 
 ear for managing the common metres of the language. 
 But in Clare it was otherwise. His poems were not the 
 mere reflexes of his readino;. He had studied for himself 
 in the fields, and in the woods, and by the side of brooks. 
 I very much doubt if there could be found, in his poems, 
 a single commonplace image, or a description made up 
 of hackneyed elements. In that respect, his poems are 
 original, and have even a separate value, as a sort of 
 calendar (in extent, of course, a very limited one) of 
 many rural appearances, of incidents in the fields not 
 elsewhere noticed, and of the loveliest flowers most felici- 
 tously described. The description is often true even to a
 
 278 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 botanical eye ; and in that, perhaps, lies the chief defect ; 
 not properly in the scientific accuracy, but that, in search- 
 ing after this too earnestly, the feeling is sometimes too 
 much neglected. However, taken as a whole, liis poems 
 have a very novel quality of merit, though a quality too 
 little, I fear, in the way of public notice. Messrs. Taylor 
 & Hessey had been very kind to him; and, through 
 them, the late Lord Fitzwilliam had settled an annuity 
 upon him. In reality, the annuity had been so far in- 
 creased, I believe, by the publishers, as to release him 
 from the necessities of daily toil. He had thus his time at 
 his own command ; and, in 1824, perhaps upon some 
 literary scheme, he came up to London, where, by a few 
 noble families and by his liberal publishers, he was wel- 
 comed in a way that, I fear, from all I heard, would but 
 too much embitter the contrast with his own humble 
 opportunities of enjoyment in the country. The contrast 
 of Lord Radstock's brilliant parties, and the glittering 
 theatres of London, would have but a poor effect in train- 
 inff him to bear that v/ant of excitement which even 
 already, I had heard, made his rural life but too insup- 
 portable to his mind. It is singular that what most 
 fascinated his rustic English eye, was not the gorgeous 
 display of Englisli beauty, but the French style of beauty 
 as he saw it amongst the French actresses in Tottenham 
 Court Road. He seemed, however, oppressed by the 
 glare and tumultuous existence of London ; and being ill 
 at the time, from an affection of the liver, which did not, 
 of course, tend to improve his spirits, he threw a weight 
 of languor upon any attempt to draw him out into conver- 
 sation. One thing, meantime, was very honorable to him, 
 that even in this season of dejection, he would uniformly 
 become animated when anybody spoke to him of Words- 
 worth — animated with the most hearty and almost rap-
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. - 279 
 
 turous spirit of admiration. As regarded his own poems, 
 this admiration seemed to have an unhappy effect of 
 depressing his confidence in himself. It is unfortunate, 
 indeed, to gaze too closely upon models of colossal excel- 
 lence. Compared with those of his own class, I feel satis- 
 fied that Clare will always maintain an honorable place. 
 
 Very different, though originally in the very same class 
 of rustic laborers and rustic poets, (a fact which I need 
 not disguise, since he proclaims it himself upon every 
 occasion with a well-directed pride,) is another of that 
 London society in 1821-23, viz., Allan Cunningham. 
 About this author I had a special interest. I had read, 
 and with much pleasure, a volume called ' Nithisdale 
 and Galloway Song,' which professed to contain fugitive 
 poems of that country, gathered together by Mr. Cromek, 
 the engraver : the same person, I believed, who published 
 a supplementary volume to Dr. Currie's edition of Burns. 
 The whole of these, I had heard, were a forgery by Allan 
 Cunningham; and one, at any rate, was so — by far the 
 most exquisite gem in the volume. It was a fragment of 
 only three stanzas ; and the situation must be supposed 
 that of a child lying in a forest amongst the snow, just at 
 the point of death. The child must be supposed to speak : 
 
 ' Gone were but the cold. 
 
 And gone were but the snow, 
 I could sleep in the wild woods, 
 Where the primroses blow. 
 
 * Cold 's the snow at my head, 
 
 And cold 's the snow at my feet ; 
 And the finger of death 's at my eyes ; 
 Closing them to sleep. 
 
 ' Let none tell my fixther. 
 
 Or my mother so dear ; 
 I'll meet them both in heaven, 
 At the spring-time of the year. '
 
 280 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 These lines of Allan Cunningham (so I call him, for so 
 he called himself upon his visiting cards) had appeared 
 to me so exquisite a breathing of the pastoral muse, that, 
 had it been for these alone, I should have desired to 
 make his acquaintance. But I had also read some 
 papers on gipsy life, embodying several striking gipsy 
 traditions, by the same author. These were published 
 in early numbers of Blackwood'' s Magazine ; and had, 
 apparently, introduced situations, and scenes, and inci- 
 dents, from the personal recollections of the author. 
 Such was my belief, at least. In parts, they were 
 impressively executed : and a singular contrast they 
 afforded to the situation and daily life of the same 
 Allan, planted and rooted, as it were, amongst London 
 scenery. Allan was — (what shall I say ? To a man of 
 genius, I would not apply the coarse mercantile term of 
 foreman ; and the fact is, that he stood on a more confi- 
 dential footing than is implied by that term, with his 
 employer) — he was then a sort of right-hand man, an 
 agent equally for mechanical and for intellectual pur- 
 poses, to Chantrey the sculptor : he was an agent, also, 
 in transactions not strictly either the one or the other ; 
 cases which may be called, therefore, mechanico-intel- 
 lectual ; or, according to a pleasant distinction of Pro- 
 fessor Wilson's, he was an agent for the ' coarse ' arts 
 as well as the ' fine ' arts ; sometimes in separation, 
 sometimes in union. This I mention, as arguing the 
 versatility of his powers : few men beside himself could 
 have filled a station running through so large a scale of 
 duties. Accordingly, he measured out and apportioned 
 each day's work to the several working sculptors in 
 Chantrey's yard : this was the most mechanical part of 
 his services. On the other hand, at the opposite pole of 
 his functions, he was often (I believe) found useful to
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 281 
 
 Chantrey as an umpire ia questions of taste, or, perhaps, 
 as a suggester of original hints, in the very higliest wallcs 
 of the art. Various indications of natural disposition for 
 these efforts, aided greatly, and unfolded by daily con- 
 versation with all the artists and amateurs resorting to 
 Chantrcy's studio, will be found in his popular ' Lives of 
 the Painters and Sculptors.' His particular opinions are, 
 doubtless, often liable to question ; but they show proof 
 everywhere of active and sincere thinking : and, in two 
 of his leading peculiarities, upon questions of cBsthetics^ 
 (to speak Gernianice,) I felt too close an approach in 
 Cunningham to opinions which I had always entertained 
 myself, not to have been prejudiced very favorably in his 
 behalf. They were these : — He avowed an unqualified 
 scbrn of Ossian ; such a scorn as every man that ever 
 looked at Nature with his own eyes, and not through 
 books, must secretly entertain. Heavens ! what poverty : 
 secondly, what monotony : thirdly, what falsehood of 
 imagery ! Scorn, therefore, he avowed of Ossian ; and, 
 in the next place, scorn of the insipidities — when applied 
 to the plastic arts, (sculpture or painting) — embalmed by 
 modern allegory. Britannia, supported by Peace on one 
 side and Prosperity on the other, beckons to Inoculation 
 — ' Heavenly maid ' — and to Vaccination in the rear, 
 who, mounted upon the car of Liberality, hurls her spear 
 at the dragon of Small-Pox-Hospitalism, &c. «S:c. But 
 why quote instances of that which every stone-cutter's 
 yard supplies in nauseous prodigality ? These singu- 
 larities of taste, at least, speaking of Ossian,* (for, as to 
 
 * With respect to Ossian, I liave heard it urged, by way of an argu- 
 mentum ad homincm, in arguing the case with myself, as a known devo- 
 tee of Wordsworth, that he, Wordsworth, had professed honor for Ossian, 
 by writing an epitaph for his supposed grave in Glen Alvun'ii. By no 
 means: Wordsworth's fine lines are not upon the pscudo- Ossian of
 
 282 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 allegory, it is rather tolerated by the public mind than, 
 positively approved,) plead thus far iu any man's favor, 
 that they argue a healthy sincerity of the sensibilities, not 
 liable to be duped by the vague, the superficial, or the 
 unreal ; nor, finally, by precedent and authority. 
 
 Such were the grounds upon which I looked forward, 
 with some pleasure, to my first interview with Allan 
 Cunningham. This took place at a dinner given by my 
 publishers, soon after the publication of the Opium 
 Confessions ; at which dinner, to say the truth, I soon 
 after suspected (and with some vexation) that I had 
 myself, unconsciously, played the part of lion. At that 
 time I was ill, beyond what any man would, believe, who 
 saw me out of bed : and, in the mere facility of unre- 
 flecting good nature, I had consented to attend, on the 
 assurance that ' only a friend or two ' would be present. 
 However, it proved to be a general gathering,/ frequent 
 and full,' of all the wits, keen and brilliant, associated in 
 the literary journal to which I had committed my earliest 
 experiences. Dinner was fixed at ' half-past five, for 
 six;'' and, from some mistake, it happened that I was 
 amongst the earliest arrivals. As an invalid, or, as the 
 hero of the day, I was planted inexorably, without retreat, 
 in the place of honor by the fireside ; for the month was 
 deep November. Judge of my despair, when there 
 began to file in one suspicious-looking fellow after 
 another — {suspicious to me at that moment ; because, 
 by the expression of the eye, looking all made up for 
 'play,' and some of them for 'mischief') — one after 
 another, I say ; annunciation upon annunciation suc- 
 
 Macpherson, not upon the cataphysical one-stringed lutanist of Morven, 
 but upon Ossian, the hero and the poet, of Grelic tradition. We scorn 
 the Ossian of 1766. No man scorns Ossian the son of Fingal of A. D. 
 366.
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 
 
 283 
 
 ceeded with frightful rapidity, until the small back 
 drawinsc-room of our host bccjan to overflow. I believe 
 the fashion of not introducing dinner visiters to each 
 other was just then (1821) beginning to be popular: 
 either for that reason, or not to overwhelm my weak 
 spirits, I was not often summoned to this ceremony : but, 
 on two or three more select arrivals, I toas : in such cases 
 I had to stand formal presentation to the parties. One of 
 these was Mr. (no, he will be as angry as O'Gorman 
 Mahon or The Chisholm, if I say Mr.) Allan Cunning- 
 ham ; and, from the light of a November fire, I first saw 
 reflected the dark flashing guerilla eye of Allan Cunning- 
 ham. Dark it was, and deep w^ith meaning ; and the 
 meaning, as in all cases of expressive eyes, was com- 
 prehensive, and, therefore, equivocal. On the whole, 
 however, Allan Cunningham's expression did not belie 
 his character, as afterwards made known to me : he was 
 kind, liberal, hospitable, friendly ; and his whole natural 
 disposition, as opposed to his acquifed, was genial and 
 fervent. But he had acquired feelings in which I as an 
 Englishman, was interested painfully. In particular, like 
 so many Scotsmen of his original rank, he had a preju- 
 dice — or, perhaps, that is not the word : it was no 
 feeling that he had derived from experience — it was an 
 old Scottish o;rudo;e : not a feelins that he indulged to his 
 own private sensibiUties, but to his national conscience — 
 a prejudice against Englishmen. He loved, perhaps, this 
 and that Englishman, Tom and Jack ; but he hated us 
 English as a body: it was in vain to deny it. As is the 
 master, such is the company ; and too often, in the kind 
 and hosphable receptions of Allan Cunningham and Mrs. 
 Cunningham, or other Scottish families residing in Lon- 
 don, I heard, not from the heads of the house, but from 
 the visiters, rueful attacks upon us poor English, and,
 
 284 LITERARY REBIINISCENCES. 
 
 above all, upon us, poor Oxonians. Oxford received no 
 mercy. O heavens ! how my fingers itched to be amidst 
 the row ! Yet, oftentimes I had no pretext for intermix- 
 ing in the dispute — if dispute it could be called, where, 
 generally speaking, all were of one mind. 
 
 The fact is this : — Far be it from me to say anything 
 of Mr. Allan Cunningham's original rank, had he not 
 taken a pride (and a meritorious pride) in asserting it 
 himself. Now, that granted, all is plain. The Scotch, 
 (or, to please the fancy of our Transtweedian brethren, 
 the Scots,*) in the lower orders of society, do not love the 
 English. Much I could say on this subject, having lived 
 in Scotland for six or seven years, and observed closely. 
 The Scotch often plead that the English retaliate this 
 dislike, and that no love is lost. I think otherwise ; and, 
 for the present, I will only report my experience on last 
 Sunday night but one, January 28, 1838, in a coffee-room 
 of Edinburgh. I refer to a day so recent, in order that 
 the reader may understand how little I wish to rest upon 
 any selected case : the chance case which happens to stand 
 last in one's experience may be presumed to be a fair 
 average case. Now, upon that evening, two gentlemen 
 were sitting in a box together ; one of them an Englishman, 
 one a Scotchman. High argument reigned between them. 
 The Englishman alleged much and weighty matter, if it 
 had been true, violently and harshly against the Scotch : 
 the Scotchman replied firmly, but not warmly : the Eng- 
 lishman rejoined with fierceness ; both, at length, rose in a 
 state of irritation, and went to the fire. As they went, 
 the Scotchman offered his card. The Englishman took 
 it ; and, without so much as looking at it, stuffed it into 
 
 * It is remarkable that, for what mysterious reason I never could dis- 
 cover, thorough Scolchmen feel exceedingly angry at being so called ; and 
 demand, for some cabalistical cause, to be entitled Scotsmen.
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 285 
 
 the fire. Upon this, up started six gentlemen in a 
 neighboring, box, exclaiming to the soi-disant Englishman 
 — ' Sir, you are a disgrace to your country ! ' and often- 
 times eivinir him to understand that, in their belief, he was 
 not an Englishman. Aftervvai'ds, the quarrel advanced : 
 the Englishman throwing off his coat, or making motions 
 to do so, challenged the Scotchman to a pugilistic combat. 
 The Scotchman, who appeared thoroughly cool, and de- 
 termined not to be provoked, persisted in his original 
 determination of meeting his antagonist with pistols, were 
 it on the next morning ; but steadily declined to fight on 
 the coarse terms proposed. And thus the quarrel threat- 
 ened to prove interminable. But how, meantime, did the 
 neutral part of the company (all, by accident. English- 
 men) conduct themselves towards their own countryman > 
 Him they justly viewed as the unprovoked aggressor, and 
 as the calumniator of Scotland, in a way that no provo- 
 cation could have justified. One and all, they rose at 
 length ; declared the conduct of their countryman in- 
 sufferable ; and two or three of them, separately, offered 
 their cards, as willing to meet him either on the next 
 morning, or any morning when his convenience might 
 allow, by way of evading any personal objection he 
 might plead to his original challenger. The Englishman 
 (possibly* a Scotchman) peremptorily declined all chal- 
 lenges. 
 
 ' What ! six or seven upon one ? ' 
 
 ' Oh no, sir ! ' the answer was ; ' not so : amongst Eng- 
 
 * ' Possibly a Scolchman,' and very probably ; for there are no more 
 bitter enemies of Scotland and Scotehmenj and all tilings Scotch, than 
 banished Scotchmen — who may be called renegade Scotchmen. There 
 is no enemy like an old friend ; and many a Scotchman (or Scotsman — 
 let us not forget that) remembers Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, simjily 
 as the city that ejected him.
 
 286 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 lishmen, if you are one, you must be well aware that no 
 man meets with foul play : any one of ourselves would 
 protect you against the man that should offer less than 
 fair play to yourself.' 
 
 The libeller, however, intrenched himself in his deter- 
 mination to hear of no pistol warfare ; and hence, though 
 two of the Englishmen were of colossal build, and well 
 able to have smashed his pugilistic pretensions, yet, as 
 all but himself were opposed to that mode of fighting, 
 he, in fact, took shelter under his own limited mode of 
 offering satisfaction. The others would not fight as he, 
 nor he as they ; and thus all openings being closed to any 
 honorable mode of settling the dispute, at the request of 
 the company, the master of the coffee-room, with his long 
 * tail ' of waiters, advanced to him with a quiet demeanor, 
 but with words so persuasive as induced him quietly to 
 withdraw. And so terminated the dispute. 
 
 And now, let me ask, Is an Englishman likely to meet 
 with six Scotchmen, in London, starting up on behalf of 
 calumniated England ? O, no ; painful it is to tell of men 
 whom we, English, view as our brothers, and whose land, 
 and institutions, and literature, have, in our days, been the 
 subject of an absolute ' craze^' or, at all events, of a m.ost 
 generous enthusiasm in England, that nineteen out of 
 twenty, among those who are of humble birth and con- 
 nections, are but too ready to join fervently in abuse of 
 the land which shelters them, and supports their house- 
 hold charities. Scotchmen, you cannot deny it. Now, 
 you hear from my story, which is not a fortnight old, how 
 different, in the same circumstances, is the conduct of 
 Englishmen. All, observe, joined, with one consent, in 
 the same service — and there were six, without counting 
 myself, who did not belong to either party ; and not one 
 of my countrymen stirred upon any principle of selfish
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 287 
 
 honor ; none liad been wounded ; but upon a generous 
 regard to the outraged character of a country which at 
 that moment was affording a shelter to themselves, which 
 they loved and honored, and which was accidentally 
 without a defender. 
 
 Would that, upon such an impulse, I could have heard 
 Allan Cunningham undertaking the defence of England or 
 of Englishmen ! But this I have not heard from any 
 Scotchman, excepting only Professor Wilson ; and he, to 
 show the natural result of such generosity, is taxed with 
 Anglomania by many of his countrymen. Allan Cunning- 
 ham offended somewhat in this point, not so much in act^ 
 as by discovering his propensities. I, for my part, quar- 
 relled also with his too oriental prostrations before certain 
 regular authors — chiefly Sir Walter Scott and Southey. 
 With respect to them, he professed to feel himself nobody, 
 in a way which no large estimator of things as they are 
 — of natural gifts, and their infinite distribution through 
 an infinite scale of degrees, and the compensating 
 accomplishments which take place in so vast a variety 
 of forms — could easily tolerate. Allan Cunningham 
 would say — 'I don't think myself worthy to be ac- 
 counted an author in comparison of such men ; ' and 
 this he would say, in a tone that too much had the sound 
 of including, in his act of prostration, his hearer at the 
 moment; who might very possibly disdain so absolute 
 and unlimited an avowal of inferiority — a Chinese 
 kotou so unconditional J knowing, as know he must, that 
 if in one talent or one accomplishment he were much 
 inferior, hopelessly inferior, not the less in some other 
 power, some other talent, some other accomplishment, 
 he might have a right to hold himself greatly superior ; 
 nay, might have a right to say — that power I possess in 
 some degree ; and Sir Walter Scott or Mr. Southey in no
 
 288 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 degree whatever. For example : every mode of philoso- 
 phic power was denied to both of these authors ; so that 
 he who had that power, in any degree, might reasonably 
 demur to tliis prostration, performed before their images. 
 With respect to Sir Walter Scott, in particular, the 
 homage of Allan Cunningham was the less merited, as 
 Sir Walter had not treated him with the respect due to a 
 man of so much original genius : the aristocratic phrase, 
 'honest Allan,' expressed little of the courtesy due from 
 one man of letters to another. And, in the meantime, 
 whilst Allan Cunningham was thus ready to humble 
 himself before a countryman of his own, who had not 
 treated him, in public, with the proper consideration, he 
 spoke of Wordsworth [but certainly with this excuse — 
 that, in those days, he knew nothing at all of his works] 
 with something like contempt : in fact, he had evidently 
 adopted the faith of the wretched journals. This alien- 
 ated my feelings from Cunningham, spite of his own 
 kind and liberal nature ; nay, spite of his own natural 
 genius. 
 
 One — opinion shall I call it, fancy, or dream — of 
 Allan Cunningham's, is singular enough to deserve men- 
 tion : he maintained that the Scottish musical airs must 
 have an eternal foundation in nature ; that is to say, must 
 have a co-eternal existence with the musical sense, for 
 the following most extraordinary reason ; nay, consider- 
 ing that his veracity was unimpeachable, I may say 
 marvellous reason : namely, that he, Cunningham, had, 
 without any previous knowledge of these airs, invented 
 all or most of them propria marte ; so that, like the 
 archetypal ideas in some systems of philosophers, one 
 might afrirm, upon his representation of things, that 
 Scottish airs were eternally present to the ear of the 
 Demiurgus, and eternally producing themselves afresh.
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 289 
 
 This seemed fanciful, if not extravagant ; and one, at 
 least, of Cunningham's works — that which relates to 
 Robert Bruce — is also extravagant in an outrageous 
 degree. And, by the way, on that ground, I should have 
 guessed him to be a man of genius, were there even no 
 other ground ; for no man but a man of genius, and with 
 the inequality of genius, can, in one state of mind, write 
 beautifully, and, in another, write the merest extrava- 
 gance ; nay, (with Cunningham's cordial assent, I pre- 
 sume, that I may say,) awful extravagance. Meantime, 
 in practical life, Cunningham was anything but extrava- 
 gant: he was, (as I have said,) in a high intellectual 
 sense, and in the merest mechanical sense, the right-hand 
 man of Chantrey, whom, by the way, he always spoke of 
 with the highest and evidently the sincerest respect : he 
 was his right-hand man, also, in a middle sense, or, as I 
 have said, a mechanico-intellectual way. For example, 
 he purchased all the marble for Chantrey; which might 
 require, perhaps, mixed qualifications : he distributed the 
 daily labors of the workmen ; which must have required 
 such as were purely mechanic. He transacted, also, all 
 the negotiations for choosing the site of monuments to 
 be erected in Westminster Abbey ; a commission which 
 might frequently demand some diplomatic address in the 
 conduct of the negotiations with the Abbey authorities ; a 
 function of his duties which chiefly regarded the interest 
 of his principal. Sir Francis Chantrey, as also a just eye 
 for the effect of a monument, combined with a judicious 
 calculation of the chances it had, at one point rather than 
 another, for catching the public notice : this latter func- 
 tion of his complex office, regarding mainly the interests 
 of the defunct persons or his relations, and those of 
 Chantrey, only in a secondary way. 
 
 This aspect of Cunningham's ofRcial or ministerial life, 
 
 VOL. n. 19
 
 290 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 reminds me, by the way, of the worst aspect under which 
 his nationaUty or civic illiberahty revealed itself ; an illib- 
 erality which here took the shape of bigotry. A Scotch- 
 man, or Scotsman, who happens to hate England, is sure 
 a fortiori, to hate the English Church ; which, on account 
 of its surplice, its organs, its cathedrals, and its mitred 
 prelates, he has been taught to consider as the sister of 
 the Babylonian Rome. Strange, indeed, that the Scottish 
 Church should have been the favorite church of the poor, 
 which began so undeniably upon the incitement of the 
 rich. They, the rich and the aristocratic, had revelled in 
 the spoils of the monastic orders, at the dissolution of the 
 Romish Church. Naturally unwilling to resign their booty, 
 they promoted a church built upon a principle of poverty 
 and humility : a church that would not seek to resume 
 her plundered property. Under their political intrigues 
 it was that all the contests arose, in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury : first, by slight prelusive efforts during the long 
 reign of James the Sixth or First: and, secondly, by a 
 determinate civil war in that of Charles the First and 
 Second. But in this last case, the ' martyrs,' as they are 
 called — those who fought atDrumclog, &c. — waiving all 
 question of their real temper and religious merits, were, 
 upon one single ground, incapable of founding a national 
 church : they were too few : a small body, reckoned by 
 hundreds, and not by thousands, never could pretend to 
 represent the million of souls, or upwards, to which, even 
 in those days, the Scottish nation amounted. What I 
 maintain, therefore, is, that no matter how the Presby- 
 terian Church came to have its legal establishment 
 revived and ratified, it cannot be pretended, historically, 
 that this establishment owed much to the struggles in 
 Charles the Second's days, by which (so far as affected at 
 all) it was injured. This church, dated from older times,
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 291 
 
 went back to those times for sanction and for arguments 
 of its conformity to the national taste ; seeing that, in 
 those elder times, it did really count upon the great 
 majority of the nation as its affectionate and zealous 
 supporters: whereas, in the Cameronian days, none but 
 the very slenderest minority, and that minority, again, 
 not numbering any people of weight or consideration for 
 either property or intelligence or talent — no party of 
 any known account — no party who were even nominally 
 known to the people of Scotland — had chosen, at any 
 crisis in the reign of the second Charles, to join these 
 religious malcontents. Much more might be said with 
 truth; but this may suffice — that the insurrectionary 
 movements in Scotland, during that reign, were, rela- 
 tively to the state and to the public peace of Scotland, 
 pretty much the same as the rising in the cotton districts 
 
 at the instigation of Edwards, in the year , to the 
 
 general stability of the British government at that era. 
 The Church of Scotland, therefore, does not, in fact, 
 connect itself — for any part of the impulse to which it 
 owes its birth, however in words or false pretences it may 
 do so — with any of the movements, whether prosperous 
 for the moment, or hopelessly ruinous, made about 1677 
 by the religious Whigs of Scotland. In fact, like the 
 insurgent cotton spinners, these turbulent people were 
 chiefly from the west. The 'Western' people they were 
 then called, and the ' Westlanders' — so little were they 
 at that time supposed to represent Scotland. Such is the 
 truth of history. Nevertheless, in our insurrectionary 
 days, (insurrectionary, I mean, by the character of the 
 pretensions advanced — not by overt acts,) it has been a 
 delightful doctrine to lay the foundations of the Scottish 
 Kirk in rebellion ; and hence the false importance 
 assigned to the Cameronian insurgents. And hence
 
 292 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 partly it has happened, that Scottish nationality and 
 hatred of England has peculiarly associated itself with 
 the latter church history of Scotland ; for, as to the 
 earlier, and really important era of Scottish Church 
 struggles with the civil power, the English were looked to 
 as their brethren and effectual allies : and as the Scottish 
 Church necessarily recalls to the mind the anti-pole of 
 the English Church, thus also it has happened, that all 
 symbols or exponents of the English Episcopal Church, 
 are, to a low-born Scottish patriot, so many counter- 
 symbols of his own national or patriotic prejudices. 
 
 Thus, or in some such v/ay, it happened that Cunning- 
 ham never showed his illiberality so strongly as with 
 reference to his negotiations with Westminster Abbey. 
 The ' rapacity ' and ' avarice ' of the Church of England 
 is the open theme of his attacks in his paper upon Lord 
 Byron's funeral; though, perhaps, he would find it hard 
 to substantiate his charge. Notoriously the church, 
 whether as Dean and Chapter, or as Collegiate Corpora- 
 tions, or as Episcopal Sees, has ever been found the most 
 lenient of all masters under which to hold property ; and 
 it is not very probable that the church would suddenly 
 change its character under a treaty with a popular artist. 
 
 However, if all his foibles or infirmities had been 
 summed up, Allan Cunningham still remained a man to 
 admire and love : and by comparison with those of his 
 own order, men raised, that is to say, by force of genius, 
 from the lowest rank, (the rank, in Ms case, of a work- 
 ing mason, as I have heard him declare,) his merits 
 became best appreciable. The faults of men self-taught, 
 (the avroSiSaxroi,^ and men self-raised, are almost prover- 
 bial. The vanity and inflation of heart, the egotism and 
 arrogance of such men, were as alien from the character 
 of Cunningham as of any man I ever knew ; and, in
 
 ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 293 
 
 Other respects, he was no less advantageously dis- 
 tinguished from his order. Hogg, for instance, was 
 absolutely insufferable in conversation. Egotism the 
 most pertinacious might have been excused ; but the 
 matter of this egotism was so trivial and insane, seldom 
 relating to any higher subject than a conflict with a 
 ' sawmon,' that human patience could not weather the 
 infliction. In Cunningham there was rarely an allusion 
 to himself. Some people, it is true, might be annoyed 
 by his too frequent allusions to his own personal strength 
 and size, which he overrated ; for they were not remarka- 
 ble ; or, if they had been, what does one man care about 
 another man's qualities of person, this way or that, unless 
 in so far as he may sometimes be called upon to describe 
 them, in order to meet the curiosity of others. But 
 Cunningham's allusions of this kind, though troublesome 
 at times, seemed always jocose, and did not argue any 
 shade of conceit. In more serious and natural subjects 
 of vanity, he seemed to be as little troubled with any 
 morbid self-esteem. And, in all other respects, Cunning- 
 ham was a whole world above his own order of self- 
 raised men — not less in gravity, sense, and manliness 
 of thought, than in the dignified respectability of his 
 conduct. He was rising an inch in the v/orld every day 
 of his life ; for his whole day, from sunrise to bedtime, 
 was dedicated to active duties cheerfully performed. 
 And on this subject, one anecdote is memorable, and 
 deserves a lasting record among the memorials of literary 
 men. I have mentioned and described his station and its 
 manifold duties, in relation to Sir Francis Chantrey. 
 Now, he has told me himself repeatedly, and certainly, 
 from my own observation and that of others, I have no 
 doubt of his literal veracity, that, in the course of his 
 whole connection with that eminent sculptor, he never
 
 294 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 borrowed one single hour from his ministerial labors on 
 account of his principal, either to compose or to correct 
 one of those many excellent, sometimes brilliant, pages, 
 by which he has delighted so many thousands of readers, 
 and won for himself a lasting name in the fine literature 
 of modern England.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOUHNAL. 
 
 This mention of Allan Cunningham recalls to my 
 recollection an affair which retains one part of its interest 
 to this day, arising out of the very important casuistical 
 question which it involves. We Protestant nations are in 
 the habit of treating casuistry as a field of speculation, 
 false and baseless per se ; nay, we regard it not so much 
 in the light of a visionary and idle speculation, as one 
 positively erroneous in its principles, and mischievous for 
 its practical results. This is due in part to the dispropor- 
 tionate importance which the Church of Rome has always 
 attached to casuistry ; making, in fact, this supplementary 
 section of ethics take precedency of its elementary doc- 
 trines in their Catholic simplicity : as though the plain and 
 broad highway of morality were scarcely ever the safe 
 road, but that every case of human conduct were to be 
 treated as an exception, and never as lying within the 
 universal rule : and thus forcing the simple, honest- 
 minded Christian to travel upon a tortuous by-road, in 
 which he could not advance a step in security without 
 a spiritual guide at his elbow ; and, in fact, whenever the 
 hair-splitting casuistry is brought, with all its elaborate 
 machinery, to bear upon the simplicities of household 
 life, and upon the daily intercourse of the world, there it
 
 296 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 has the effect (and is expressly cherished by the Romish 
 Church with a view to the effect) of raising the spiritual 
 pastor into a sort of importance which corresponds to that 
 of an attorney. The 'consuhing casuist is, in fact, to all 
 intents and purposes, a moral attorney. For, as the plain- 
 est man, with the most direct purposes, is yet reasonably 
 afraid to trust himself to his own guidance in any affair 
 connected with questions of law ; so also, when taught to 
 believe that an upright intention and good sense are equally 
 insufficient in morals, as they are in law, to keep him 
 from stumbling or from missing his road, he comes to 
 regard a conscience-keeper as being no less indispensable 
 for his daily life and conversation than his legal agent, or 
 his professional ' man of business,' for tho' safe manage- 
 ment of his property, and for his guidance amongst the 
 innumerable niceties which beset the real and inevitable 
 intricacies of rights and duties, as they grow out of human 
 enactments and a complex condition of society. 
 
 Fortunately for the happiness of human nature and its 
 dignity, those holier rights and duties which grow out of 
 laws heavenly and divine, written by the finger of God 
 upon the heart of every rational creature, are beset by no 
 such intricacies, and require, therefore, no such vicarious 
 agency for their practical assertion. The primal duties 
 of life, like the primal charities, are placed high above us 
 — legible to every eye, and shining like the stars, with a 
 splendor that is read in every clime, and translates itself 
 into every language at once. Such is the imagery of 
 Wordsworth. But this is otherwise estimated in the policy 
 of papal . Rome ; and casuistry usurps a place in her 
 spiritual economy, to which our Protestant feelings demur. 
 So far, however, the question between us and Rome is a 
 question of degrees. They push casuistry into a general 
 and unlimited application ; we, if at all, into a very
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 297 
 
 naiTow one. But another difference there is between us 
 even more important ; for it regards no mere excess in 
 the quantity of range allowed to casuistry, but in the 
 quality of its speculations ; and which it is (more than any- 
 other cause) that has degraded the office of casuistical 
 learnbg amongst us. Questions are raised, problems are 
 entertained, by the Romish casuistry, which too often 
 offend against all purity and manliness of thinking. And 
 that objpction occurs forcibly here, which Southey (either 
 in The Quarterly Review or in his ' Life of Wesley ') has 
 urged aid expanded with regard to the Romish and also 
 the Methodist practice of auricular confession^ viz. — 
 that, as it is practically managed, not leaving the person 
 engaged ii this act to confess according to the light of his 
 own conscience, but at every moment interfering, on the 
 part of the confessor, to suggest leading questions (as law- 
 yers call them,) and to throw the light of confession upon 
 parts of the experience which native modesty would leave 
 in darkness, ~- so managed, the practice of confession is 
 undoubtedly fie most demoralizing practice known to any 
 Christian society. Innocent young persons, whose thoughts 
 would never hive wandered out upon any impure images 
 or suggestions, have their ingenuity and their curiosity 
 sent roving upai unlawful quests ; they are instructed to 
 watch what else would pass undetained in the mind, 
 and would pass unblamably, on the Miltonic principle : 
 (' Evil into the rftind of God or man may come unblam- 
 ed,' &c.) Nay, which is worst of all, unconscious or 
 semi-conscious thoughts and feelings or natural impulses, 
 rising, like a breath of wind under some motion of nature, 
 and again dying avay, because not made the subject of 
 artificial review and interpretation, are now brought pow- 
 erfully under the focal light of the consciousness ; and 
 whatsoever is once made the subject of consciousness,
 
 298 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 can never again have the privilege of gay, careless 
 thoughtlessness — the privilege by which the mind, Ike 
 the lamps of a mail-coach, moving rapidly through the 
 midnight woods, illuminate, for one instant, the foliage or 
 sleeping umbrage of the thickets ; and, in the nest in- 
 stant, have quitted them, to carry their radiance forward 
 upon endless successions of objects. This happy privi- 
 lege is forfeited for ever, when the pointed signi4cancy 
 of the confessor's questions, and the direct knowledge 
 which he plants in the mind, have awakened s. guilty 
 familiarity with every form of impurity and unlallowed 
 sensuality. 
 
 Here, then, are objections sound and deep, to casuistry, 
 as managed in the Romish Church. Every possible ob- 
 jection ever made to auricular confession afplies with 
 equal strength to casuistry ; and some objections, besides 
 these, are peculiar to itself. And yet, after all, these arc 
 but objections to casuistry as treated by a particular 
 Church. Casuistry in itself — casuistry as a possible, as a 
 most useful, and a most interesting speculation — remains 
 unaffected by any one of these objections ; for none ap- 
 plies to the essence of the case, but only to its accidents, or 
 separable adjuncts. Neither is this any cirious or subtle 
 observation of little practical value. The fact is as far 
 otherwise as can be imagined — the defeat to which I am 
 here pointing, is one of the most clamorous importance. 
 Of what value, let me ask, is Paley's Moral Philosophy ? 
 What is its imaciined use ? Is it that in substance it re- 
 veals any new duties, or banishes as false any old ones ? 
 No; but because the known and admitted duties — duties 
 recognised in every system of ethics — are here placed 
 (successfully or not) upon new foundations, or brought 
 into relation with new principles not previously perceived 
 to be in any relation whatever. This, in fact, is the very
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 
 
 meaning of a theory* or contemplation, [OtuiQia,'] when 
 A, B, C, old and undisputed facts, have their relations to 
 each other developed. It is not, therefore, fer any prac- 
 tical benefit in action, so much as for the satisfaction of 
 the understq^iding, when reflecting on a man's own actions, 
 the wish to see what his conscience or his heart prompts 
 reconciled to general laws of thinking — this is the par- 
 ticular service performed by Paley's Moral Philosophy. It 
 does not so much profess to tell tohat you are to do, as the 
 icJiy and the wherefore; and, in particular, to show how 
 one rule of action may be reconciled to some other rule 
 of equal authority, but which, apparently, is in hostility 
 to the first. Such, then, is the utmost and highest aim of 
 the Paleyian or the Ciceronian ethics, as they exist. 
 Meantime, the grievous defect to which I have adverted 
 above — a defect equally found in all systems of morality, 
 from the Nichomachean ethics of Aristotle downwards — 
 is the want of a casuistry, by way of supplement to the 
 main system, and, governed by the spirit of the very same 
 
 * No terms of art are used so arbitrarilj', and with such perfect levitj'^, 
 as the terms hypothesis, ihcorij, system. Most writers use one or other 
 with the same indifference that they use in constructing the title of a 
 novel, or, suppose, of a pamphlet, where the phrase thoughts, or stric- 
 tures, or consideriitions,wpon so and so, are used ad libitum. Meantime, 
 the distinctions are essential. That is properly an hypothesis where the 
 question is about a cause : certain phenomena are Icnown and given : the 
 object is to place below these phenomena a basis [vjioSeatc] capable of 
 supporting them, and accounting for them. Thus, if you were to assign 
 a cause sufficient to account for the aurora borealis, that would he an 
 hypothesis. But a theory, on the other hand, takes a multitude of facts 
 all disjointed, or, at most, suspected, of some interdependency : these it 
 takes and places under strict laws of relation to each other. But here 
 there is no question of a cause. Finally, a system is the synthesis of a 
 theory and an hypothesis : it states the relations as amongst an undi- 
 gested mass, rudis indigestaque moles, of known phenomena ; and it 
 assigns a basis for the whole, as in an hypothesis. These distinctions 
 would become vivid and convincing by the help of proper illustrations.
 
 300 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 laws, which the writer has previously employed in the 
 main body of his work. And the immense superiority of 
 this supplementary section, to the main body of the sys- 
 tems, would appear in this, that the latter, I have just been 
 saying, aspires only to guide the reflecting judgment in 
 harmonizing the different parts of his own conduct, so as 
 to bring them under the same law ; whereas the casuisti- 
 cal section, in the supplement, would seriously undertake 
 to guide the conduct, in many doubtful cases, of action — 
 cases which are so regarded by all thinking persons. 
 Take, for example, the case which so often arises between 
 master and servant, and in so many varieties of form — a 
 case which requires you to decide between some violation 
 of your conscience, on the one hand, as to veracity, by 
 saying something that is not strictly true, as well as by 
 evading (and that is often done) all answer to inquiries 
 which you are unable to meet satisfactorily — a violation 
 of your conscience to this extent, and in this way ; or, on 
 the other hand, a still more painful violation of your 
 conscience in consigning deliberately some young woman 
 — faulty, no doubt, and erring, but yet likely to derive a 
 lesson from her own errors, and the risk to which they 
 have exposed her — consigning her, I say, to ruin, by 
 refusing her a character, and thus shutting the door upon 
 all the paths by which she might retrace her steps. This 
 I state as one amongst the many cases of conscience 
 daily occurring in the common business of the world. It 
 would surprise any reader to find how many they are ; in 
 fact, a very large volume might be easily collected of 
 such cases as are of ordinary occurrence. Casuistry, 
 the very word casuistry expresses the science which 
 deals with such cases : for as a case, in the declension of 
 a noun, means a falling away, or a deflection from the 
 upright nominative, {rectus,) so a case in ethics implies
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 301 
 
 some falling off, or deflection from the high road of 
 catholic morality. Now, of all such cases, one, perhaps 
 the most difficult to manage, the most intractable, whether 
 for consistency of thinking as to the theory of morals, or 
 for consistency of action as to the practice of morals, is 
 the case of duelling. 
 
 As an introduction, I will state my story — the case for 
 the casuist ; and then say one word on the reason of the 
 case. 
 
 First, let me report the case of a friend — a distin- 
 guished lawyer at the English bar. I had the circum- 
 stances from himself, which lie in a very small compass; 
 and, as my friend is known, to a proverb almost, for his 
 literal accuracy in all statements of fact, there need be no 
 fear of any mistake as to the main points of the case. 
 He was one day engaged in pleading before the Commis- 
 sioners of Bankruptcy ; a court then newly appointed, 
 and differently constituted, I believe, in some respects, 
 from its present form. That particular commissioner, as 
 it happened, who presided at the moment when the case 
 occurred, had been recently appointed, and did not know 
 the faces of those who chiefly practised in the court. All 
 things, indeed, concurred to favor his mistake : for the 
 case itself came on in a shape or in a stage which was 
 liable to misinterpretation, from the partial view which it 
 allowed of the facts, under the hurry of the procedure ; 
 and my friend, also, unluckily, had neglected to assume 
 his barrister's costume, so that he passed, in the commis- 
 sioner's appreciation, as an attorney. ' What if he had 
 been an attorney } ' it may be said : ' was he, therefore, 
 less entitled to courtesy or justice ? ' Certainly not ; nor 
 is it my business to apologize for the commissioner. But 
 it may easily be imagined, and (making allowances for 
 the confusion of hurry and imperfect knowledge of the
 
 302 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 case) it does ofFer something in palliation of the judge's 
 rashness, that, amongst a large heap of ' Old Bailey ' 
 attorneys who notoriously attended this court for the 
 express purpose of whitewashing their clients, and who 
 were in bad odor as tricksters, he could hardly have been 
 expected to make a special exception in favor of one 
 particular man, who had not protected himself by the 
 insignia of his order. His main error, however, lay in 
 misapprehending the case : this misapprehension lent 
 strength to the assumption that my friend was an ' Old 
 Bailey' (?". e., a sharking) attorney ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, that assumption lent strength to his misapprehension 
 of the case. Angry interruptions began : these, being 
 retorted or resented with just indignation, produced an 
 irritation and ill-temper, which, of themselves, were 
 quite sufficient to raise a cloud of perplexity over any 
 law process, and to obscure it for any understanding. 
 The commissioner grew warmer and warmer ; and, at 
 length, he had the presumption to say, — 'Sir, you are a 
 disgrace to your profession.' When such sugar-plums, 
 as Captain M'Turk the peacemaker observes, were flying 
 between them, there could be no room for further parley. 
 That same night the commissioner was waited on by a 
 friend of the barrister's, who cleared up his ov/n miscon- 
 Qeptions to the disconcerted judge ; placed him, even to 
 his own judgment, thoroughly in the wrong ; and then 
 most courteously troubled him for a reference to some 
 gentleman, who would arrange the terms of a meeting 
 for tlie next day. The commissioner was too just and 
 grave a man to be satisfied with himself, on a cool review 
 of his own conduct. Here was a quarrel ripened into a 
 mortal feud, likely enough to terminate in wounds, or, 
 possibly, in death to one of the parties, which, on his 
 side, carried with it no palliations from any provocation
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOUKNAL. 303 
 
 received, or from wrong and insult, in any form, sustained : 
 these, in an aggravated shape, could he pleaded by my 
 friend, but with no opening for retaliatory pleas on the 
 part of the magistrate. That name, again, of magistrate, 
 increased his offence and pointed its moral : he, a con- 
 servator of the laws — he, a dispenser of equity, sitting 
 even at the very moment on the judgment seat — he to 
 have commenced a brawl, nay, to have fastened a quarrel 
 upon a man even then of some consideration and of high 
 promise; a quarrel which finally tended to this result — 
 shoot or be shot. That commissioner's situation and state 
 of mind, for the succeeding night, were certainly not en- 
 viable : like Southey's erring painter, who had yielded to 
 the temptation of the subtle fiend, 
 
 ' With repentance his only companion he lay ; 
 And a dismal companion is she.' 
 
 Meantime, my friend — what was Ids condition ; and 
 how did he pass the interval } I have heard him feelingly 
 describe the misery,' the blank anguish of this memorable 
 night. Sometimes it happens that a man's conscience is 
 wounded : but this very wound is the means, perhaps, by 
 which his feelings are spared for the present : sometimes 
 his feelings are lacerated ; but this very laceration makes 
 the ransom for his conscience. Here, on the contrary, his 
 feelings and his happiness were dimmed by the very same 
 cause which ofiered pain and outrage to his conscience. 
 He was, upon principle, a hater of duelling. Under any 
 circumstances, he would have condemned the man who 
 could, for a light cause, or almost for the weightiest, have 
 so much as accepted a challenge. Yet, here he was posi- 
 tively offering a challenge ; and to whom } To a man 
 whom he scarcely knew by sight ; whom he had never 
 spoken to until this unfortunate afternoon ; and towards
 
 304 LITERAKY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 whom (now that the momentary excitement of anger had 
 passed away) he felt no atom of passion or resentment 
 whatsoever. As a free ' unhoused ' young man, therefore, 
 had he been such, without ties or obhgations in life, he 
 would have felt the profoundest compunction at the antici- 
 pation of any serious injury inflicted upon another man's 
 hopes or happiness, or upon his own. But what was his 
 real situation ? He was a married man, married to the 
 woman of his choice within a very few years : he was 
 also a father, having one most promising son, somewhere 
 about three years old. His young wife and his son com- 
 posed his family ; and both were dependent, in the most 
 absolute sense, for all they possessed or they expected — 
 for all they had or ever could have — upon his own exer- 
 tions. Abandoned by him, losing him, they forfeited, in 
 one hour, every chance of comfort, respectability, or se- 
 curity from scorn and humiliation. The mother, a woman 
 of strong understanding and most excellent judgment — 
 good and upright herself — liable, therefore, to no habit 
 of suspicion, and constitutionally cheerful, went to bed 
 with her young son, thinking no evil. Midnight came, 
 one, two o'clock; mother and child had long been asleep ; 
 nor did either of them dream of that danger which even 
 now was yawning under their feet. The barrister had 
 spent the hours from ten to two in drawing up his will, 
 and in writing such letters as might have the best chance, 
 in case of fatal issue to himself, for obtaining some aid to 
 the desolate condition of those two beings whom he would 
 leave behind unprotected and without provision. Often- 
 times he stole into the bedroom, and gazed with anguish 
 upon the innocent objects of his love ; and, as his con- 
 science now told him, of his bitterest perfidy. ' Will you 
 then leave us ? Are you really going to betray us ? 
 Will you deliberately consign us to life-long poverty.
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 305 
 
 and scorn, and grief? ' These aficcting apostrophes he 
 seemed, in the silence of the night, to hear almost with 
 bodily ears. Silent reproaches seemed written upon their 
 sleeping features ; and once, when his wife suddenly- 
 awakened under the glare of the lamp which he carried, 
 he felt the strongest impulse to fly from the room ; but he 
 faltered, and stood rooted to the spot. She looked at him 
 smilingly, and asked why he was so long in coming to 
 bed. He pleaded an excuse, which she easily admitted, 
 of some law case to study against the morning, or some 
 law paper to draw. She was satisfied ; and fell asleep 
 again. He, however, fearing, above all things, that he 
 might miss the time for his appointment, resolutely abided 
 by his plan of not going to bed ; for the meeting was to 
 take place at Chalk Farm, and by half-past five in the 
 morning : that is, about one hour after sunrise. One hour 
 and a half before this time, in the gray dawn, just when 
 the silence of Nature and of mighty London was most 
 absolute, he crept stealthily, and like a guilty thing, to the 
 bedside of his sleeping wife and child ; took, what he be- 
 lieved might be his final look of them; kissed them softly; 
 and, according to his own quotation from Coleridge's ' Ee- 
 
 morse ' 
 
 > 
 
 ' In agony that could not be remembered,' 
 
 and a conflict with himself that defied all rehearsal, he 
 quitted his peaceful cottage at Chelsea in order to seek for 
 the friend who had undertaken to act as his second. He 
 had good reason, from what he had heard on the night 
 before, to believe his antagonist an excellent shot ; and, 
 having no sort of expectation that any interruption could 
 offer to the regular progress of the duel, he, as the chal- 
 lenger, would have to stand the first fire ; at any rate, con- 
 ceiving this to be the fair privilege of the party challenged, 
 he did not mean to avail himself of any proposal for draw- 
 VOL. II. 20
 
 306 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 ing lots upon the occasion, even if such a proposal should 
 happen to be made. Thus far the affair had travelled 
 through the regular stages of expectation and suspense ; 
 but the interest of the case as a story was marred and 
 brought to an abrupt conclusion by the conduct of the 
 commissioner. He was a man of known courage, but he 
 also was a man of conscientious scruples ; and, amongst 
 other instances of courage, had the courage to own him- 
 self in the wrong. He felt that his conduct hitherto had 
 not been wise or temperate, and that he would be sadly 
 aggravating his original error, by persisting in aiming at a 
 man's life, upon which life hung also the happiness of 
 others, merely because he had offered to that man a most 
 unwarranted insult. Feeling this, he thought fit, at first 
 coming upon the ground, to declare that, having learned, 
 since the scene in court, the real character of his antago- 
 nist, and the extent of his own mistake, he was resolved 
 to brave all appearances and ill-natured judgments, by 
 making an ample apology ; which, accordingly, he did ; 
 and so the affair terminated. I have thoueht it risht, 
 however, to report the circumstances, both because they 
 were really true in every particular, but, much more, be- 
 cause they place in strong relief one feature which is 
 often found in these cases, and which is allowed far too 
 little weight in distributing the blame between the 
 parties ; to this I wish to solicit the reader's attention. 
 During the hours of this never-to-be-forgotten nicht of 
 wretchedness and anxiety, my friend's reflection was nat- 
 urally forced upon the causes which had produced it. In 
 the world's judgment, he was aware that he himself, as 
 the one charged with the most weighty responsibility, 
 (those who depend upon him being the most entirely help- 
 less,) would have to sustain by much the heaviest censure : 
 and yet what was the real proportion of blame between
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 307 
 
 the parties ? He, when provoked and publicly insulted, 
 had retorted angrily : that was almost irresistible under 
 the constitution of human feelings ; the meekest of men 
 could scarcely do less. But surely the true onus of wrong 
 and moral responsibility for all which might follow, rested 
 upon that party who, giving way to mixed impulses of 
 rash judgment, and of morose temper, had allowed him- 
 self to make a most unprovoked assault upon the charac- 
 ter of one whom he did not know ; well aware that such 
 words, uttered publicly by a person in authority, must, by 
 some course or other, be washed out and cancelled ; or, 
 if not, that the party submitting to such defamatory in- 
 sults, would at once exile himself from the society and 
 countenance of his professional brethren. Now, then, in 
 all justice, it should be so ordered, that the weight of pub- 
 lic indignation might descend upon him, whoever he might 
 be, (and, of course, the more heavily, according to the 
 authority of his station, and his power of inflicting wrong,) 
 who should thus wantonly abuse his means of influence, 
 to the dishonor or injury of an unoflending party. We 
 clothe a public officer with power, we arm him with influ- 
 ential authority over public opinion ; not that he may ap- 
 ply these authentic sanctions to the backing of his own 
 malice, and giving weight to liis private caprices : and, 
 wherever such abuse takes place, then it should be so 
 contrived that some reaction in behalf of the injured per- 
 son might receive a sanction equally public. And, upon 
 this point, 1 shall say a word or two more, after first stat- 
 ing my own case ; a case where the outrage was far more 
 insufferable, more deliberate, and more malicious; but, 
 on the other hand, in this respect less effectual for 
 injury, that it carried with it no sanction from any official 
 station or repute in the unknown parlies who offered the 
 wrong.
 
 •308 LITERAKY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 The circumstances were these : — In 1824, I had come 
 up to London upon an errand, in itself sufficiently vexa- 
 tious — of fighting against pecuniary embarrassments, by 
 literary labors; but, as had always happened hitherto, 
 with very imperfect success, from the miserable thwart- 
 ings I incurred through the deranged state of the liver. 
 My zeal was great, and my application was unintermit- 
 ting ; but spirits radically vitiated, chiefly through the 
 direct mechanical depression caused by one important 
 organ deranged ; and, secondly, by a reflex effect of de- 
 pression through my own thoughts, in estimating my 
 prospects ; together with the aggravation of my case, by 
 the inevitable exile from my own mountain home, — all 
 this reduced the value of my exertions in a deplorable 
 way. It was rare indeed that I could satisfy my own 
 judgment, even tolerably, with the quality of any literary 
 article I produced ; and my power to make sustained 
 exertions, drooped, in a way I could not control, every 
 other hour of the day : insomuch, that what with parts to be 
 cancelled, and what with whole days of torpor and pure 
 defect of power to produce any thing at all, very often it 
 turned out that all my labors were barely sufficient (some- 
 times not sufficient) to meet the current expenses of my 
 residence in London. Three months' literary toil termi- 
 nated, at times in a result = ; the whole plus being just 
 equal to the minus, created by two separate establish- 
 ments, and one of them in the most extensive city of tliQ. 
 world. Gloomy, indeed, was my state of mind at that 
 period : for, though I made prodigious efforts to recover 
 my health, (sensible that all other efforts depended for 
 their result upon this elementary effort, which was the 
 conditio sine qua nan for the rest,) yet all availed me not ; 
 and a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then under- 
 took. Such was my frame of mind on reaching London :
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 309 
 
 in fact it never varied. One canopy of murky clouds (a 
 copy of tliat dun atmosphere which settles so often upon 
 London) brooded for ever upon my spirits, which were in 
 one uniformly low key of cheerless despondency ; and, on 
 this particular morning, my depression had been deeper 
 than usual, from the effects of a long continuous journey 
 of three hundred miles, and of exhaustion from want of 
 sleep. I had reached London, about six o'clock in the 
 morning, by one of the northern mails ; and, resigning 
 myself as usual in such cases, to the chance destination of 
 the coach, after delivering our bags in Lombard street, I 
 was driven down to a great city hotel. Here there were 
 hot baths ; and, somewhat restored by this luxurious re- 
 freshment, about eisrht o'clock I was seated at a breakfast 
 table ; upon which, in a few minutes, as an appendage 
 not less essential than the tea-service, one of the waiters 
 laid that morning's Tunes, just reeking from the press. 
 The Times, by the way, is notoriously the leading journal 
 of Europe anywhere; but, in London, and more pe- 
 culiarly in the city quarter of London, it enjoys a pre- 
 eminence scarcely understood elsewhere. Here it is not 
 a morning paper, but the morning paper : no other is 
 known, no other is cited as authority in matters of fact. 
 Strolling with my eye indolently over the vast Babylonian 
 confusion of the enormous columns, naturally as one of 
 the corps Uiteraire, I found my attention drawn to those 
 regions of the paper which announced forthcoming publi- 
 cations. Amongst them was a notice of a satirical jour- 
 nal, very low priced, and already advanced to its third or 
 fourth number. My heart palpitated a little on seeing 
 myself announced as the principal theme for the malice 
 of the current number. The reader must not suppose 
 that 1 was left in any doubt as to the quality of the notice 
 with which I had been honored ; and that, by possibility,
 
 310 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 I was solacing my vanity with some anticipation of honeyed 
 compliments. That, I can assure him, was made altogeth- 
 er impossible by the kind of language which flourished in 
 the very foreground of the programme, and even of the 
 running title. The exposure and dej)luming (to borrow a 
 good word from the fine old rhetorician. Fuller,) of the 
 leading 'humbugs' of the age — that was announced as 
 the regular business of the journal : and the only question 
 which remained to be settled was, the more or less of the 
 degree ; and also one other question, even more interest- 
 ing still, viz. — whether personal abuse were intermingled 
 with literary. Happiness, as I have experienced in other 
 periods of my life, deep domestic happiness, makes a man 
 comparatively careless of ridicule, of sarcasm, or of abuse. 
 But calamity — the degradation, in the world's eye, of 
 every man who is fighting with pecuniary difficulties — 
 exasperates beyond all that can be imagined, a man's 
 sensibility to insult. He is even apprehensive of insult — 
 tremulously, fantastically apprehensive, where none is 
 intended ; and like Wordsworth's shepherd, with his very 
 understanding consciously abused and depraved by his 
 misfortunes, is ready to say, at all hours — 
 
 ' And every man I met or faced, 
 Methought he knew some ill of me.' 
 
 Some notice, perhaps, the newspaper had taken of this 
 new satirical journal, or some extracts might have been 
 made from it ; at all events, I had ascertained its character 
 so well that, in this respect, I had nothing to learn. It 
 now remained to get the number which professed to be 
 seasoned with my particular case ; and it may be sup- 
 posed that I did not loiter over my breakfast after this 
 discovery. Something which I saw or suspected amongst 
 the significant hints of a paragraph or advertisement.
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 311 
 
 made me fear that there might possibly be insinuations or 
 downright assertion in the libel requiring instant public 
 notice ; and, therefore, on a motive of prudence, had I 
 even otherwise felt that indifference for slander which now 
 I do feel, but which, in those years, morbid irritability of 
 temperament forbade me to affect, I should still have 
 thouo;ht it ri^ht to look after the work : which now I did : 
 and, by nine o'clock in the morning — an hour at which 
 few people had seen me for years — I was on my road to 
 Smitlifield. Smithfield ? Yes ; even so. All known and 
 respectable publishers having declined any connection 
 with the work, the writers had facetiously resorted to this 
 aceldama, or slaughtering quarter of London — to these 
 vast shambles, as typical, I suppose, of their own slaugh- 
 tering spirit. On my road to Smithfield, I could not but 
 pause for one moment to reflect on the pure defecated 
 malice which must have prompted an attack upon myself. 
 Eetaliation or retort it could not pretend to be. To most 
 literary men, scattering their written reviews, or their 
 opinions, by word or mouth, to the right and the left with 
 all possible carelessness, it never can be matter of sur- 
 prise, or altogether of complaint, (unless as a question of 
 degrees,) that angry notices, or malicious notices, should 
 be taken of themselves. Few, indeed, of literary men 
 can pretend to any absolute innocence from offence, and 
 from such even as may have seemed deliberate. But I, 
 for my part, could. Knowing the rapidity with which all 
 remarks of literary men upon literary men are apt to 
 circulate, I had studiously and resolutely forborne to say 
 anything, whether of a writer or a book, unless where it 
 happened that I could say something that would be felt as 
 complimentary. And as to written reviews, so much did 
 I dislike the assumption of judicial functions and authority 
 over the works of my own brother authors and contem-
 
 312 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 poraries, that I have, in my whole life, written only two ; 
 at that time only one ; and that one, though a review of 
 an English novel, was substantially a review of a German 
 book, taking little notice, or none, of the English trans- 
 lator; for, although he, a good German scholar now, was 
 a very imperfect one at that time, and was, therefore, 
 every way open to criticism, I had evaded this invidious 
 office applied to a novice in literature, and (after pointing 
 out one or two slight blemishes of trivial importance) all 
 that I said of a general nature was a compliment to him 
 upon the felicity of his verses. Upon the German author 
 I was, indeed, severe, but hardly as much as he deserved. 
 The other review was a tissue of merriment and fun ; and 
 though, it is true, I did hear that the fair authoress was 
 offended at one jest, I may safely leave it for any reader 
 to judge between us. She, or her brother, amongst other 
 Latin epigrams, had one addressed to a young lady 2ipon 
 the loss of her keys. This, the substance of the lines 
 showed to have been the intention ; but (by a very venial 
 error in one who was writing Latin from early remem- 
 brance of it, and not in the character of a professing 
 scholar) the title was written De clavis instead of De 
 clavibus amissis ; upon which I observed that the writer 
 had selected a singular topic for condolence with a young 
 lady, — viz., ' on the loss of her cudgels ; ' {clavis, as an 
 ablative, coming clearly from clava.) This (but I can 
 hardly believe it) was said to have offended Miss H. ; and, 
 at all events, this was the extent of my personalities. 
 Many kind things I had said; much honor, much admira- 
 tion, I had professed at that period of my life in occa- 
 sional papers or private letters, towards many of my 
 contemporaries, but never anything censorious or harsh ; 
 and simply on a principle of courteous forbearance which 
 I have felt to be due towards those who are brothers of
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 313 
 
 the same liberal profession witli one's self. I could not 
 feel, when reviewing my whole life, that in any one 
 instance, by act, by word, or by intention, I had offered 
 any unkindncss, far less any wrong or insult, towards a 
 brother author. I was at a loss, therefore, to decipher the 
 impulse under which the malignant libeller could have 
 written, in making (as I suspected already) my private 
 history the subject of his calumnies. Jealousy, 1 have 
 since understood, jealousy, was the foundation of the 
 whole. A little book of mine had made its way into 
 drawina-rooms where some book of his had not been 
 heard of. 
 
 On reaching Smithfield, I found the publisher to be a 
 medical bookseller, and, to my surprise, having every 
 appearance of being a grave, respectable man ; notwith- 
 standing this undeniable fiict, that the libellous journal, to 
 which he thought proper to affix his sanction, trespassed 
 on decency, not only by its slander, but, in some in- 
 stances, by downright obscenity ; and, worse than that, by 
 prurient solichations to the libidinous imagination, through 
 blanks, seasonably interspersed. I said nothing to him in 
 the way of inquiry ; for I easily guessed that the knot of 
 writers who were here clubbing their virus, had not so ill 
 combined their plans as to leave them open to detection 
 by a question from any chance stranger. Having, there- 
 fore, purchased a set of the journal, then amounting to 
 three or four numbers, I went out ; and in the elegant 
 promenades of Smithfield, I read the lucubrations of my 
 libeller. Fit academy for such amenities of literature ! 
 Fourteen years have gone by since then; and, possibly, 
 the unknown hound who yelled, on that occasion, among 
 this kennel of curs, may, long since, have buried himself 
 and his malice in the grave. Suffice it here to say, that 
 calm as I am now, and careless on recalling the remem-
 
 314 LITERAKY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 brance of this brutal libel, at that time I was convulsed 
 with wrath. As respected myself, there was a depth of 
 malignity in the article which struck me as perfectly 
 mysterious. How could any man have made an enemy 
 so profound, and not even have suspected it ? That 
 puzzled me. For, with respect to the other objects of 
 attack, such as Sir Humphiy Davy, &c., it was clear 
 that the malice was assumed ; that, at most, it was the 
 gay impertinence of some man upon town, armed with 
 triple Irish brass from original defect of feeling, and 
 willing to raise an income by running amuck at any 
 person just then occupying enough of public interest to 
 make the abuse saleable. But, in my case, the man flew 
 like a bull-dog at the throat, with a pertinacity and 
 acharnement of malice that would have caused me to 
 laugh immoderately, had it not been for one intolerable 
 wound to my feelings. These mercenary libellers, whose 
 stiletto is in the market, and at any man's service for a 
 fixed price, callous and insensible as they are, yet retain 
 enough of the principles common to human nature, under 
 every modification, to know where to plant their wounds. 
 Like savage hackney coachmen, they knew where there 
 is a rmo. And the instincts of human nature teach them 
 that every man is vulnerable through his female con- 
 nections. There lies his honor ; there his strength ; there 
 his weakness. In their keeping is the heaven of his 
 happiness ; in them and through them the earthy of its 
 fragility. Many there are who do not feel the maternal ^ 
 relation to be one in which any excessive freight of honor 
 or sensibility is embarked. Neither is the name of sister, 
 though tender in early years, and impressive to the fire- 
 side sensibilities, universally and through life the same 
 magical sound. A sister is a creature whose very pro- 
 perty and tendency {qua sister) is to alienate herself, not
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 315 
 
 to gather round your centre. But the names of icifc and 
 daughter, these arc the supreme and starry charities of 
 life : and he who, under a mask, fighting in darkness, 
 attacks you there, that coward has you at disadvantage. 
 I stood in those hideous shambles of Smithficld : upwards 
 I looked to the clouds, downwards to the earth, for ven- 
 geance. I trembled with excessive wrath — such was my 
 infirmity of feeling at that time, and in that condition of 
 health; and had I possessed forty thousand lives, all, and 
 every one individually, I would have sacrificed in vindi- 
 cation of her that was thus cruelly libelled. Shall I give 
 currency to his malice, shall I aid and promote it by 
 repeating it? No. And yet why not.? Why should I 
 scruple, as if afraid to challenge his falsehoods? — why 
 should I scruple to cite them ? He, this libeller, asserted 
 — But fuugh! 
 
 This slander seemed to have been built upon some spe- 
 cial knowledge of me ; for I had often spoken with horror 
 of those who could marry persons in a condition which 
 obliged them to obedience — a case which had happened 
 repeatedly within my own knowledge ; and I had spoken 
 on this ground, that the authority of a master might be 
 supposed to have been interposed, whether it really were 
 so or not, in favor of his designs ; and thus a presumption, 
 however false it might be, always remained that his woo- 
 ing had been, perhaps, not the wooing of perfect freedom, 
 so essential to the dignity of woman, and, therefore, es- 
 sential to his own dignity ; but that, perhaps, it had been 
 favored by circumstances, and by opportunities created,- 
 if it had not. even been favored, by express exertions of 
 authority. The libeller, therefore, did seem to have 
 some knowledge of my peculiar opinions : yet, in other 
 points, either from sincere ignorance or from affectation, 
 and by way of turning aside suspicion, he certainly mani-
 
 316 LITEKAKY REMINISCENCES, 
 
 fested a non-acquaintance with facts relating to me 
 that must have been familiar enough to all within my 
 circle. 
 
 Let me pursue the case to its last stage. The reader 
 will say, perhaps, Why complain of a paltry journal that 
 assuredly never made any noise ? for I, the reader, never 
 heard of it till now. No, that is very possible ; for the 
 truth is, and odd enough it seems, this malicious journal 
 prospered so little, that, positively, at the seventh No. it 
 stopped. Laugh I did, and laugh I could not help but 
 do, at this picture of baffled malice ; writers willing and 
 ready to fire with poisoned bullets, and yet perfectly unable 
 to get an effective aim, from sheer want of co-operation 
 on the part of the public. 
 
 However, the case as it respected me, went farther than 
 it did with respect to the public. Would it be believed 
 that human malice, with respect to a man not even known 
 by sight to his assailants, as was clear from one part of 
 their personalities, finally — that is to say, months after- 
 wards — adopted the following course : — The journal had 
 sunk under public scorn and neglect; neglect at first, 
 but, perhaps, scorn at the last; for, when the writers 
 found tliat mere malice availed not to draw public atten- 
 tion, they adopted the plan of baiting their hooks with 
 obscenity ; and they published a paper, professing to be 
 written by Lord Byron, called, ' My Wedding Night ; ' 
 and very possible, from internal evidence, to have been 
 really written by him ; and yet the combined forces of 
 Byron and obscenity failed to save them — which is rather 
 remarkable. Having sunk, one might suppose the journal 
 was at an end, for good and evil ; and, especially, that all, 
 who had been molested by it, or held up to ridicule, might 
 now calculate on rest. By no means : First of all they 
 made inquiries about the localities of my residence, and
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 317 
 
 the town nearest to my own family. Nothing was effected 
 unless they carried the insult, addressed to my family, 
 into the knowledge of that family and its circle. My cot- 
 tage in Grasmere was just 280 miles from London, and 
 eighteen miles from any town whatsoever. The nearest 
 was Kendal, a place of perhaps 16,000 inhabitants ; and 
 the nearest, therefore, at which there were any newspa- 
 pers printed. There were two ; one denominated The 
 Gazette ; the other The Chronicle. The first was Tory 
 and Conservative ; had been so from its foundation ; and 
 was, besides, generous in its treatment of private charac- 
 ter. My own contributions to it I will mention hereafter. 
 The Chronicle, on the other hand, was a violent reforming 
 journal, and conducted in a partisan spirit. To this news- 
 paper the article was addressed; by this newspaper it 
 was published ; and by this it was carried into my own 
 ' next-door ' neighborhood. Next-door neighborhood ? But 
 that surely must be the veiy best direction these libellers 
 could give to their malice ; for there, at least, the false- 
 hood of their malice must be notorious. Why, yes : and 
 in that which loas my neighborhood, according to the 
 most literal interpretation of the term, a greater favor 
 could not have been done me, nor a more lauchable hu- 
 miliation for my unprovoked enemies. Commentary or 
 refutation there needed none ; the utter falsehood of the 
 main allegations was so obvious to every man, woman, 
 and child, that, of necessity, it discredited even those 
 parts which might, for any thing known to my neighbors, 
 have been true. Nay, it was the means of procuring for 
 me a generous expression of sympathy, that would else 
 have been wanting ; for some gentlemen of the neighbor- 
 hood, who were but slightly known to me, put the malig- 
 nant journal into the fire at a public reading-room. So 
 far w^as well ; but, on the other hand, in Kendal, a town
 
 318 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 nearly twenty miles distant, of necessity I was but imper- 
 fectly known ; and though there was a pretty general ex- 
 pression of disgust at the character of the publication, and 
 the wanton malignity which it bore upon its front, since, 
 true or not true, no shadow of a reason was pleaded for 
 thus bringing forward statements expressly to injure me, or 
 to make me unhappy ; }' et there must have been many, 
 in so large a place, who had too little interest in the ques- 
 tion, or too limited means of inquiry, for ever ascertaining 
 the truth. Consequently, in their minds, to this hour, my 
 name, as one previously known to them, and repeatedly 
 before the town in connection with political or literary arti- 
 cles in their conservative journals, must have suffered. 
 
 But the main purpose for which I have reported the 
 circumstances of these two cases, relates to the casuistry 
 of duelling. Casuistry, as I have already said, is the 
 moral philosophy of cases — that is, of anomalous combi- 
 nations of circumstances — that, for any reason whatso- 
 ever, do not fall, or do not seem to fall, under the general 
 rules of morality. As a general rule, it must, doubtless, 
 be unlawful to attempt another man's life, or to hazard 
 your own. Very special circumstances must concur to 
 make out any case of exception ; and even then it is evi- 
 dent that one of the parties must always be deeply in 
 the^vrong. But it does strike me, that the present casu- 
 istry of society upon the question of duelling, is pro- 
 foundly wrong, and wrong by manifest injustice. Very 
 little distinction is ever made, in practice, by those who 
 apply their judgments to such cases, between the man 
 who, upon principle, practises the most cautious self-re- 
 straint and moderation in his daily demeanor, never under 
 any circumstances offering an insult, or any just occasion 
 of quarrel, and resorting to duel only under the most in- 
 sufferable provocation, between this man, on the one side,
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BT A LONDON JOURNAL. 319 
 
 and the most wanton rufilan, on the other, who makes a 
 common practice of playing upon other men's feelings, 
 whether in reliance upon superior bodily strength, or upon 
 the pacific disposition of conscientious men, and fathers 
 of families. Yet, surely, the difference between them 
 goes the whole extent of the interval between wrong and 
 right. Even the question, ' Who gave the challenge ? ' 
 which is sometimes put, often merges virtually in the 
 transcendent question, ' Who gave the provocation ? ' 
 For it is important to observe, in both the cases which I 
 have reported, that the onus of offering the challenge was 
 thrown upon the unoffending party ; and thus, in a legal 
 sense, that party is made to give the provocation who, in 
 a moral sense, received it. But surely, if even the law 
 makes allowances for human infirmity, when provoked 
 beyond what it can endure, — we, in our brotherly judg- 
 ments upon each other, ought, a fortiori, to take into the 
 equity of our considerations the amount and quality of the 
 offence. It will be objected that the law, so far from allow- 
 ing for, expressly refuses to allow for, sudden sallies of 
 anger or explosions of vindictive fury, unless in so far as 
 they are extempore, and before the reflecting judgment 
 has had time to recover itself. Any indication that the 
 party had leisure for calm review, or for a cool selection 
 of means and contrivances in executing his vindictive 
 purposes, will be fatal to a claim of that nature. This is 
 true ; but the nature of a printed libel is, continually to 
 renew itself as an insult. The subject of it reads this 
 libel, perhaps, in solitude ; and, by a great exertion of 
 self-command, resolves to bear it with fortitude and in 
 silence. Some days after, in a public room, he sees 
 strangers reading it also : he hears them scoffing and 
 laughing loudly: in the midst of all this, he sees himself 
 pointed out to their notice by some one of the party who
 
 3-20 LITERARY REBIINISCENCES. 
 
 happens to be acquainted with his person ; and, possibly, 
 if the libel take that particular shape which excessive 
 malice is most likely to select, he will hear the name of 
 some female relative, dearer, it may be to him, and more 
 sacred in his ears, than all this world beside, bandied 
 about with scorn and mockery by those who have not the 
 poor excuse of the original libellers, but are, in fact, 
 adopting the second-hand malignity of others. Such 
 cases, with respect to libels that are quickened into popu- 
 larity by interesting circumstances, or by a personal in- 
 terest attached to any of the parties, or by wit, or by 
 extraordinary malice, or by scenical circumstances, or by 
 circumstances unusually ludicrous, are but too likely to 
 occur ; and, with every fresh repetition, the keenness of 
 the original provocation is renewed, and in an accelerated 
 ratio. 
 
 Again, with reference to my own case, or to any case 
 resembling that, let it be granted that I was immoderately 
 and unreasonably transported by anger at the moment; — 
 I thought so myself, after a time, when the journal which 
 published the libel sank under the public neglect ; but 
 this was an after consideration; and, at the moment, how 
 heavy an aggravation was given to the stings of the malice, 
 by the deep dejection, from embarrassed circumstances 
 and from disordered health, which then possessed me : 
 aggravations, perhaps, known to the libellers as encour- 
 agements for proceeding at the time, and often enough 
 likely to exist in other men's cases. Now, in the case as 
 it actually occurred, it so happened that the malicious 
 writers had, by the libel, dishonored themselves too deeply 
 in the public opinion, to venture upon coming forward, in 
 their own persons, to avow their own work ; but suppose 
 them to have done so, (as, in fact, even in this case, they 
 might have done, had they not published their intention of
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 321 
 
 driving a regular trade in libel and in slander;) suppose 
 them insolently to beard you in public haunts; to cross 
 your path continually when in company with the very 
 female relative upon whom they had done their best to 
 point the finger of public scorn ; and suppose them fur- 
 ther, by the whole artillery of contemptuous looks, words, 
 gestures, and unrepressed laughter, to republish, as it 
 were, ratify, and publicly to apply, personally, their own 
 original libel, as often as chance or as opportunity (eagerly 
 improved) should throw you together in places of general 
 resort; and suppose, finally, that the central figure — nay, 
 in their account, the very butt throughout this entire 
 drama of malice — should chance to be an innocent, 
 gentle-hearted, dejected, suffering woman, utterly un- 
 known to her persecutors, and selected as their martyr 
 merely for her relationship to yourself — suppose her, 
 in short, to be your wife — a lovely young woman sus- 
 tained by womanly dignity, or else ready to sink into the 
 earth with shame, under the cruel and unmanly insults 
 heaped upon her, and having no protector on earth but 
 yourself: lay all this together, and then say whether, in 
 such a ca^e, the most philosophic or the most Christian 
 patience might not excusably give way ; whether flesh 
 and blood could do otherwise than give way, and seek 
 redress for the past, but, at all events, security for the 
 future, in what, perhaps, might be the sole course open to 
 you — an appeal to arms. 
 
 Let it not be said that the case here proposed, by way 
 of hypothesis, is an extreme one : for the very argument 
 has contemplated extreme cases : since, whilst conceding 
 that duelling is an unlawful and useless remedy for cases 
 of ordinary wrong, where there is no malice to resist a 
 more conciliatory mode of settlement, and where it is 
 difficult to imagine any deliberate insult except such as is 
 
 VOL. II. 21
 
 322 LITERAKY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 palliated by intoxication — conceding this, I have yet 
 supposed it possible that cases may arise, with circum- 
 stances of contumely and outrage, growing out of deep 
 inexorable malice, which cannot be redressed, as tilings 
 noto are, without an appeal to the voye de fait. * But 
 this is so barbarous an expedient in days of high civiliza- 
 tion.' Why, yes, it labors with the semi-barbarism of 
 chivalry : yet, on the other hand, this mention of chivalry 
 reminds me to say, that if this practice of duelling share 
 the blame of chivalry, one memorable praise there is, 
 which also it may claim as common to them both. It is 
 a praise which I have often insisted on; and the very 
 sublime of prejudice I would challenge to deny it. 
 Burke, in his well known apology for chivalry, thus 
 expresses his sense of the immeasurable benefits which 
 it conferred upon society, as a supplementary code of 
 law, reaching those cases which the weakness of muni- 
 cipal law was then unavailing to meet, and at a price so 
 trivial in bloodshed or violence — he calls it ' the cheap 
 defence of nations.' Yes, undoubtedly; and surely the 
 same praise belongs incontestably to the law of duelling. 
 For one duel in esse, there are ten thousand, every day 
 of our lives, amid populous cities, hi posse : one challenge 
 is given, a myriad are feared : one life (and usually the 
 most worthless, by any actual good rendered to society) 
 is sacrificed, suppose triennially, from a nation ; every life 
 is endangered by certain modes of behavior. Hence, 
 then, and at a cost inconceivably trifling, the peace of 
 society is maintained in cases which no law, no severity 
 of police, ever could effectually reach. Brutal strength 
 would reign paramount in the walks of public life ; 
 brutal intoxication would follow out its lawless impulses, 
 were it not for the fear which now is always in the rear 
 — the fear of being summoned to a strict summary
 
 LIBELLOTTS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 323 
 
 account, liable to the most perilous consequences. This 
 is not open to denial : the actual basis upon which reposes 
 the security of us all, the peace of our wives and our 
 daughters, and our own immunity from the vilest degra- 
 dations under their eyes, is the necessity, known to every 
 gentleman, of answering for his outrages in a way which 
 strips him of all unfair advantages, except one, (which is 
 not often possessed,) which places the weak upon a level 
 with the strong, and the quiet citizen upon a level with 
 the military adventurer, or the ruffian of the gambling- 
 house. The fact, I say, cannot be denied ; neither can 
 the low price bo denied at which this vast result is 
 obtained. And it is evident that, on the principle of 
 expediency, adopted as the basis of morality by Paley, 
 the justification of duelling is complete : for the greatest 
 sum of immediate happiness is produced at the least 
 possible sacrifice.* But there are many men of high 
 
 * Neither would it be open to Paley to plead that the final or remotest 
 consequences must be taken into the calculation ; and that one of these 
 would he the weakening of all moral sanctions, and thus, indirectly, aa 
 injury to morality, which might more than compensate the immediate 
 benefit to social peace and security ; for this mode of arguing the case 
 would bring us back to the very principle which his own implicitly, or by 
 involution, rejects : since it would tell us to obey the principle itself 
 without reference to the apparent consequences. By the by, Paley has 
 an express section of his work against the law of honor as a valid rule 
 of action; but, as Cicero says of Epicurus, it matters little what he 
 says ; the question for us is qiiam sibi convcnicnter, how far consistently 
 with himself. Now, as Sir James Mackintosh justly remarks, all that 
 Paley says in refutation of the principle of worldly honor is hollow and 
 unmeaning. In fact, it is merely one of the commonplaces adopted by 
 satire, and no philosophy at all. Honor, for instance, allows you, upon 
 paying gambling debts, to neglect or evade all others: honor, again, 
 allows you to seduce a married woman : and he would secretly insinuate 
 that honor enjoins all this ; but it is evident that honor simply forbears 
 to forbid all this ; in other words, it is a very limited rule of action, not 
 applying to one case of conduct in fifty. It might as well be said, that 
 Ecclesiastical Courts sanction murder, because that crime lies out of 
 their jurisdiction.
 
 324 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 moral principle, and yet not professing to rest upon 
 Christianity, who reject this prudential basis of ethics as 
 the death of all morality. And these men hold, that the 
 social recognition of any one out of the three following 
 dangerous and immoral principles, viz. — 1st, That a 
 man may lawfully sport with his own life ; 2dly, That he 
 may lawfully sport with the life of another ; 3dly, That 
 he may lawfully seek his redress for a social wrong, by 
 any other channel than the law tribunals of the land : 
 that the recognition of these, or any of them, by the 
 jurisprudence of a nation, is a mortal wound to the very 
 key-stone upon which the whole vast arch of morality 
 reposes. Well, in candor, I must admit that, by justify- 
 ing, in courts of judicature, through the verdicts of juries, 
 that mode of personal redress and self-vindication, to heal 
 and prevent which was one of the original motives for 
 gathering into social communities, and setting up an 
 empire of public law as paramount to all private exercise 
 of power, a fatal wound is given to the sanctity of moral 
 right, of the public conscience, and of law in its ele- 
 mentary field. So much I admit ; but I say also, that the 
 case arises out of a great dilemma, with difficulties on 
 both sides ; and that, in all practical applications of 
 philosophy, amongst materials so imperfect as men, just 
 as in all attempts to realize the rigor of mathematical 
 laws amongst earthly mechanics, inevitably there will 
 arise such dilemmas and ca§es of opprobrium to the 
 reflecting intellect. However, in conclusion, I shall say 
 four things, which I request my opponent, whoever he 
 may be, to consider ; for they are things which certainly 
 ought to have weight ; and some important errors have 
 arisen by neglecting them. 
 
 First, Then, let him remember that it is the principle at 
 stake — viz., the recognition by a legal tribunal, as lawful
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 325 
 
 or innocent of any attempt to violate the laws, or to take 
 the law into our own hands : this it is, and the mortal taint 
 which is thus introduced into the public morality of a 
 Christian land, thus authentically introduced ; thus sealed 
 and countersigned by judicial authority; the majesty of 
 law actually interfering to justify, with the solemnities of 
 trial, a flagrant violation of law ; this it is, this only, and 
 not the amount of injury sustained by society, which 
 gives value to the question. For, as to the injury, I have 
 already remarked, that a very trivial annual loss — one 
 life, perhaps, upon ten millions, and that life as often as 
 little practically valuable as any amongst us — that pays 
 our fine or ransom in that account. And, in reality, 
 there is one popular error made upon this subject, when 
 the question is raised about the institution of some Court 
 of Honor, or Court of Appeal in cases of injury to the 
 feelings, under the sanction of Parliament, which satis- 
 factorily demonstrates the trivial amount of injury sus- 
 tained : it is said on such occasions, that de minimis non 
 curat lex — that the mischief, in fact, is too narrow and 
 limited for the regard of the legislature. And we may 
 be assured that, if the evil were ever to become an 
 extensive one, the notice of Parliament soon loould be 
 attracted to the subject : and hence we may derive a hint 
 for an amended view of the policy adopted in past ages. 
 Princes not distinguished for their religious scruples, 
 made it, in different ages and places, a capital offence to 
 engage in a duel : whence it is inferred, falsely, that, in 
 former times, a more public homage was paid to Christian 
 principle. But the fact is, that not the anti-Christian 
 character of the offence so much as its greater frequency, 
 and the consequent extension of a civil mischief was the 
 ruling consideration with the lawgiver. Among other 
 causes for this greater prevalence of duels, was the
 
 326 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 composition of armies, more often brought together upon 
 mercenary principles from a large variety of different 
 nations, whose peculiar usages, points of traditional honor, 
 and even the oddness of their several languages to the 
 ear, formed a perpetual occasion of insult and quarrel. 
 Fluellen's affair with Pistol, we may be sure, was no rare 
 but a representative case. 
 
 Secondly, In confirmation of what I have said about 
 duelling, as the great conductor for carrying off the 
 excess of angry irritation in society, I will repeat what 
 was said to me by a man of great ability and distin- 
 guished powers, as well as opportunities for observation, 
 in reference to a provincial English town, and the cabals 
 which prevailed there. These cabals — some political, 
 arising out of past electioneering contests ; some muni- 
 cipal, arising out of the corporation disputes ; some 
 personal, arising out of family rivalships, or old tradi- 
 tionary disputes — had led to various feuds that vexed 
 the peace of the town in a degree very considerably 
 beyond the common experience of towns reaching the 
 same magnitude. How was this accounted for? The 
 word tradesman is, more than even the term middle class, 
 liable to great ambiguity of meaning; for it includes a 
 range so large as to take in some who tread on the heels 
 even of the highest aristocracy, and some at the other 
 end, who rank not at all higher than day-laborers or 
 handicraftsmen. Now, those who ranked with gentle- 
 men, took the ordinary course of gentlemen in righting 
 themselves under personal insults ; and the result was, 
 that, amongst the7ii or their families, no feuds were 
 subsisting of ancient standing. No ill blood was nursed ; 
 no calumnies or conspicuous want of charity prevailed. 
 Not that they often fought duels : on the contrary, a duel 
 was a very rare event amongst the indigenous gentry of
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 327 
 
 the place ; but it was sufficient to secure all the effects of 
 duelling, that it was known, with respect to this class, 
 that, in the last resort, they were ready to fight. Now, 
 on the other hand, the lowest order of tradesmen had their 
 method of terminating quarrels — the old English method 
 of their fathers — viz., by pugilistic contests. And they 
 also cherished no malice against each other or amongst 
 their families. ' But,' said my informant, * some of those 
 who occupied the intermediate stations in this hierarchy 
 of trade, found themselves most awkwardly situated. So 
 far they shared in the refinements of modern society, that 
 they disdained the coarse mode of settling quarrels by 
 their fists. On the other hand, there was a special and 
 peculiar reason pressing upon this class, which restrained 
 them from aspiring to the more aristocratic modes of 
 fighting. They were sensible of a ridicule, which every- 
 where attaches to many of the less elevated or liberal 
 modes of exercising trade in going out to fight with sword 
 and pistol. This ridicule was sharpened and made more 
 effectual, in their case, from the circumstance of the 
 Royal Family and~ the Court making this particular town 
 a frequent place of residence. Besides that apart from 
 the ridicule, many of them depended for a livelihood 
 upon the patronage of royalty or of the nobility, attached 
 to their suite ; and most of these patrons would have 
 resented their intrusion upon the privileged ground of the 
 aristocracy in conducting disputes of honor. What was 
 the consequence ? These persons, having no natural 
 outlet for their wounded sensibilities, being absolutely 
 debarred from any mode of settling their disputes, cher- 
 ished inextinguishable feuds : their quarrels in fact had 
 no natural terminations ; and the result was, a spirit of 
 malice and most unchristian want of charity, which could 
 not hope for any final repose, except in death.' Such
 
 328 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 was the report of my observing friend : the particular 
 town may be easily guessed at ; and I have little doubt 
 that its condition continues as of old. 
 
 Thirdly, It is a very common allegation against 
 duelling, that the ancient Romans and Grecians never 
 practised this mode of settling disputes ; and the infer- 
 ence is, of course, unfavorable, not to Christianity, but to 
 us as inconsistent disciples of our own religion ; and a 
 second inference is, that the principle of personal honor, 
 well understood, cannot require this satisfaction for its 
 wounds. For the present I shall say nothing on the 
 former head, but not for want of something to say. 
 With respect to the latter, it is a profound mistake, 
 founded on inacquaintance with the manners and the 
 spirit of manners prevalent amongst these imperfectly 
 civilized nations. Honor was a sense not developed in 
 many of its modifications amongst either Greeks or 
 Romans. Cudc:ellino; was at one time used as the 
 remedy in cases of outrageous libel and pasquinade. 
 But it is a point very little to the praise of either people, 
 that no vindictive notice was taken of any possible 
 personalities, simply because the most hideous license 
 had been established for centuries in tongue license and 
 unmanly Billingsgate. This had been promoted by the 
 example hourly ringing in their ears of vernile scurrility. 
 Verna — that is, the slave born in the family — had each 
 from the other one universal and proverbial character of 
 foul-mouthed eloquence, which, heard from infancy, could 
 not but furnish a model almost unconsciously to those who 
 had occasion publicly to practise vituperative rhetoric. 
 What they remembered of this vernile licentiousness, 
 constituted the staple of their talk in such situations. 
 And the horrible illustrations left even by the most 
 accomplished and lita^ry of the Roman orators, of their
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 329 
 
 shameless and womanly fluency in, this dialect of un- 
 licensed abuse, arc evidences, not to be resisted, of such 
 obtuseness, such coarseness of feeling, so utter a defect 
 of all the gentlemanly sensibilities, that no man, alive to 
 the real state of things amongst them, would ever think 
 of pleading their example in any other view than as an 
 object of unmitigated disgust. At all events, the long- 
 established custom of deluging each other in the Forum, 
 or even in the Senate, with the foulest abuse, the prece- 
 dent traditionally delivered through centuries before the 
 time of CfEsar and Cicero, had so robbed it of its sting, 
 that, as a subject for patient endurance, or an occasion 
 for self-conquest in mastering the feelings, it had no 
 merit at all. Anger, prompting an appeal to the cudgel, 
 there might be, but sense of wounded honor, requiring a 
 reparation by appeal to arms, or a washing away by 
 blood, no such feeling could have been subdued or over- 
 come by a Roman, for none such existed. The feelings 
 of wounded honor on such occasions, it will be allowed, 
 are mere reflections (through sympathetic agencies) of 
 feelings and opinions already existing, and generally 
 dispersed through society. Now, in Roman society, the 
 case was a mere subject for laughter ; for there were no 
 feelings or opinions pointing to honor, personal honor 
 as a principle of action, nor, consequently, to wounded 
 honor as a subject of complaint. The Romans were 
 not above duelling, but simply not up to that level of 
 civilization. 
 
 FinaUy, With respect to the suggestion of a Court of 
 Honor^ much might be said that my limits will not allow ; 
 but two suggestions I will make. First, Recurring to a 
 thing I have already said, I must repeat that no justice 
 would be shown, unless (in a spirit very diflerent from that 
 which usually prevails in society) the weight of public
 
 330 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 indignation, and the displeasure of the court, were made 
 to settle conspicuously upon the aggressor ; not upon the 
 challenger, who is often the party suffering under insuf- 
 ferable provocation, (provocation which even the sternness 
 of penal law, and the holiness of Christian faith allow for,) 
 but upon the author of the original offence. Secondly, 
 A much more searching investigation must be made into 
 the conduct of the seconds, than is usual in the unpro- 
 fessional and careless inquisitions of the public into such 
 affairs. Often enough, the seconds hold the fate of their 
 principals entirely in their hands ; and instances are not a 
 few, within even my limited knowledge, of cases where 
 murder has been really committed, not by the party who 
 fired the fatal bullet, but by him who, (having it in his 
 power to interfere without loss of honor to any party) has 
 cruelly thought fit — [and, in some instances, apparently 
 for no purpose but that of decorating himself with the 
 name of an energetic man, and of producing a public 
 '•sensation,'' as it is called — [a sanguinary affair] — to 
 goad on the tremulous sensibility of a mind distracted 
 between the sense of honor on the one hand, and the 
 agonizing claims of a family on the other, into fatal ex- 
 tremities that might, by a slight concession, have been 
 avoided. I could mention several instances ; but, in some 
 of these, I know the circumstances only by report. In 
 one, however, I had my information from parties who 
 were personally connected with the unhappy subject of the 
 affair. The case was this : — A man of distinguished 
 merit, whom I shall not describe more particularly, be- 
 cause it is no part of my purpose to recall old buried feuds, 
 or to insinuate any personal blame whatsoever (my busi- 
 ness being not with this or that man, but with a system 
 and its principles ;) this man, by a step well meant, but 
 injudicious, and liable to a very obvious misinterpretation,
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 331 
 
 as though taken in a view of self-interest, had entangled 
 himself in a quarrel. That quarrel would have been set- 
 tled amicably, or, if not amicably, at least without blood- 
 shed, had it not been for an unlucky accident, combined 
 with a very unwise advice. One morning, after the main 
 dispute had been pretty well adjusted, he was standing at 
 the fireside after breakfast, talking over the affair so far 
 as it had already travelled, when it suddenly and most un- 
 happily came into his head to put this general question — 
 ' Pray, does it strike you that people will be apt, on a 
 review of this whole dispute, to think that there has been 
 too much talking and too little doing ? ' His evil genius 
 so ordered it, that the man to whom he put this question 
 was one who, having no military character to rest on, 
 could not (or thought he could not) recommend those pa- 
 cific counsels which a truly brave man is ever ready to 
 suggest — I put the most friendly construction upon his 
 conduct — and his answer was this — ' Why, if you in- 
 sist upon my giving a faithfid reply, if you ^cill require 
 me to be sincere, (though I really wish you would not,) 
 in that case my duty is to tell you, that the world has been 
 too free in its remarks — that it has, with its usual injus- 
 tice, been sneering at literary men and paper pellets, as 
 the ammunition in which they trade ; in short, my dear 
 friend, the world has presumed to say that not you only, 
 
 but that both parties, have shown a little of ' Yes ; 
 
 I know what you are going to say,' interrupted the other, 
 ' of the ichite feather. Is it not so .? ' — ' Exactly ; you 
 have hit the mark — that is what they say. But how un- 
 just it is : for, says I, but yesterday, to Mr. L. M., who 
 was going on making himself merry with the affair, in a 
 
 way that was perfectly scandalous — " Sir," says I,' 
 
 but this says I never reached the ears of the unhappy 
 man : he had heard enough ; and, as a secondary dispute
 
 332 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 was still going on, that had grown out of the first, he seized 
 the very first opening which offered itself, for provoking 
 the issue of a quarrel. The other party was not back- 
 ward or slack in answering the appeal ; and thus, in one 
 morning, the prospect was overcast — peace was no longer 
 possible ; and a hostile meeting was arranged. Even at 
 this meeting, much still remained in the power of the 
 .seconds: there was an absolute certainty that all fatal 
 consequences mightliave been evaded, with perfect con- 
 sideration for the honor of both parties. The principals 
 must unquestionably have felt that ; but if the seconds 
 would not move in that direction, of course their lips 
 were sealed. A more cruel situation could not be imag- 
 ined ; two persons, who never, perhaps, felt more than 
 that fiction of enmity which belonged to the situation, that 
 is to say, assumed the enmity which society presumes 
 rationally incident to a certain position — assumed it as a 
 point of honor, but did not heartily feel it ; and even for 
 the slight shade of animosity which, for half an hour, they 
 might have really felt, had thoroughly quelled it before the 
 meeting ; these two persons — under no impulses whatever, 
 good or bad, from within, but purely in a hateful neces- 
 sity of servile obedience to a command from without — 
 prepared to perpetrate what must, in that frame of dispas- 
 sionate temper, have appeared to each, a purpose of 
 murder, as regarded his antagonist — a purpose of suicide, 
 as regarded himself. Simply a word, barely a syllable, 
 was needed from the 'Friends' (such Friends!) of the 
 parties, to have delivered them, with honor, from this 
 dreadful necessity : that word was not spoken ; and be- 
 cause a breath, a motion of the lips, was wanting — be- 
 cause, in fact, the seconds were thoughtless and without 
 feeling, one of the parties has long slept in a premature 
 grave — his early blossoms scattered to the wind — his
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 333 
 
 golden promise of fruit blasted ; and the other has since 
 lived that kind of life, that, in my mind, he was happier 
 who died. Something of the same kind happened In the 
 duel between Lord Camelford and his friend, Mr. Best ; 
 something of the same kind in that between Colonel Mont- 
 gomery and Captain Macnamara. In the former case, the 
 quarrel was, at least, for a noble subject; it concerned a 
 woman. But in the latter, a dog, and a thoughtless lash 
 applied to his troublesome gambols, was the sole subject 
 of dispute. The colonel, as is well-known, a very elegant 
 and generous young man, fell; and Captain Macnamara 
 had thenceforwards a worm at his heart, whose gnawings 
 never died. He was a post-captain ; and my brother 
 afterwards sailed with him in quality of midshipman. 
 From him I have often heard affecting instances of the 
 degree in which the pangs of remorse had availed, to 
 make one of the bravest men in the service a mere panic- 
 haunted, and, in a moral sense, almost a paralytic wreck. 
 He that, whilst his hand was unstained with blood, would 
 have faced an army of fiends in discharge of his duty, now 
 fancied danger in every common rocking of a boat : he made 
 himself, at times, the subject of laughter at the messes of 
 the junior and more thoughtless officers ; and his hand, 
 whenever he had occasion to handle a spy-glass, shook, 
 (to use the common image,) or, rather, shivered, like an 
 aspen tree. Now, if a regular tribunal, authenticated, by 
 Parliament, as the fountain of law, and by the Sovereign, 
 as the fountain of honor, were, under the very narrowest 
 constitution, to apply itself merely to a review of the whole 
 conduct pursued by the seconds, even under this restriction 
 such a tribunal would operate with great advantage. It 
 is needless to direct any severity to the conduct of the 
 principals, unless when that conduct has been outrageous 
 or wanton in provocation : supposing any thing tolerably
 
 334 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 reasonable and natural in the growth of the quarrel, after 
 the quarrel is once ' constituted,' (to borrow a term of 
 Scotch law,) the principals, as they are called, with rela- 
 tion to the subject of dispute, are neither principals, nor 
 even secondaries for the subsequent management of the 
 dispute : they are delivered up, bound hand and foot, into 
 the hands of their technical ' friends ; ' passive to the law 
 of social usage, as regards the general necessity of pur- 
 suing the dispute ; passive to the directions of their sec- 
 onds, as regards the particular mode of pursuing it. It 
 is, therefore, the seconds who are the proper objects of 
 notice for courts of honor; and the error has been, in 
 framing the project of such a court, to imagine the inquiry 
 too much directed upon the behavior of those who cease 
 to be free agents from the very moment that they become 
 liable to any legal investigation whatever : simply as 
 quarrellers, the parties are no objects of question ; they 
 are not within the field of any police review; and the 
 very first act which brings them within that field, trans- 
 lates the responsibility (because the free agency) from 
 themselves to their seconds. The whole questio vexata, 
 therefore, reduces itself to these logical moments, (to 
 speak the language of mathematics:) the two parties 
 mainly concerned in the case of duelling, are Society and 
 the Seconds. The first, by authorizing such a mode of 
 redress ; the latter, by conducting it. Now, I presume, it 
 will be thought hopeless to arraign Society at the bar of 
 any earthly court, or apply any censure or any investiga- 
 tion to its mode of thinking. * To the principals, for the 
 
 * If it be asked by what title I represent Society as authorizing (nay, 
 as necessitating) duels, I answer, that I do not allude to any floating 
 opinions of influential circles in society : for these are in continual con- 
 flict, and it may be difiicult even to guess in which direction the pre- 
 ponderance would lie. I build upon two undeniable results, to be
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 335 
 
 reasons given, it would be unjust to apply them : and the 
 inference is, that the seconds are the parties to whom their 
 main agency should be directed — as the parties in whose 
 hands lies the practical control of the whole affair, and the 
 whole machinery of opportunities, (so easily improved by 
 a wise humanity) — for sparing bloodshed, for promoting 
 reconciliation, for making those overtures of accommo- 
 dation and generous apology, which the brave are so 
 ready to agree to, in atonement for hasty words or rash 
 movements of passion, but which it is impossible for them 
 to originate. In short, for impressing the utmost possible 
 spirit of humanizing charity and forbearance upon a prac- 
 tice which, after all, must for ever remain somewhat of an 
 opprobrium to a Christian people ; but which, tried by the 
 law of worldly wisdom, is the finest bequest of chivalry, 
 
 anticipated ia any regular case of duel, and supported by one uniform 
 course of precedent : — First, That, in a civil adjudication of any such 
 case, assuming only that it has been fairly conducted, and agreeably to 
 the old received usages of England, no other verdict is ever given by a 
 jury than one of acquittal. Secondly, That, before military tribunals, 
 the result is still stronger ; for the party liable to a challenge is not 
 merely acquitted, as a matter of course, if he accepts it with any issue 
 whatsoever, but is positively dishonored and degraded (nay, even dis- 
 missed the service, virtually under color of a request that he will sell 
 out) if he does not. These precedents form the current law for English 
 society, as existing amongst gentlemen. Duels, pushed a Poulrance, and 
 on the savage principles adopted by a few gambling ruffians on the Con- 
 tinent, (of which a good description is given in the novel of The most un 
 fortunate Man in the World,) or by old buccaneering soldiers of Napoleon, 
 at war with all the world, and, in the desperation of cowardice, demand- 
 ing to fight in a saw-pit or across a table, — this sort of duels is as little 
 recognised by the indulgence of English law, as, in the other extreme, 
 the mock duels of German Burschen are recognised by the gallantry of 
 English society. Duels of the latter sort would be deemed beneath the 
 dignity of judicial inquiry : duels of the other sort, beyond its indulgence. 
 But all other duels, fairly managed in the circumstances, are undeniably 
 privileged amongst non-military persons, and commanded to those who 
 are military.
 
 336 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 the most economic safety-valve for man's malice, that 
 man's wit could devise ; the most absolute safeguard of 
 the weak against the brutal ; and, finally, (once more to 
 borrow the words of Burke.) in a sense the fullest and 
 most practical, ' the cheap defence of nations ;' not in- 
 deed against the hostility which besieges from without, 
 but against the far more operative nuisance of bad pas- 
 sions that vex and molest the social intercourse of men, 
 by ineradicable impulses from within. 
 
 I may illustrate the value of one amongst the sugges- 
 tions I have made, by looking back and applying it to part 
 of my last anecdote : the case of that promising person 
 who was cut off so prematurely for himself, and so ruin- 
 ously for the happiness of the surviving antagonist. I 
 may mention, (as a fact known to me on the very best 
 authority,) that the Duke of Wellington was consulted by 
 a person of distinction, who had been interested in the 
 original dispute, with a view to his opinion upon the total 
 merits of the affair, on its validity, as a ' fighting ' quarrel, 
 and on the behavior of the parties to it. Upon the last 
 question, the opinion of his Grace was satisfactory. His 
 bias, undoubtedly, if he has any, is likely to lie towards 
 the wisdom of the peace-maker ; and possibly, like many 
 an old soldier, he may be apt to regard the right of pur- 
 suing quarrels by arms as a privilege not hastily to be 
 extended beyond the military body. But, on the other 
 question, as to the nature of the quarrel, the duke denied 
 that it required a duel ; or that a duel was its natural 
 solution. And had the duke been the mediator, it is 
 highly probable that the unfortunate gentleman would 
 now have been living. Certainly, the second quarrel in- 
 volved far less of irritating materials than the first. It 
 grew out of a hasty word and nothing more ; such as 
 drops from parliamentary debaters every night of any in-
 
 LIBELLOUS ATTACK BY A LONDON JOURNAL. 337 
 
 teresting discussion — drops hastily, is as hastily recalled, 
 or excused, perhaps, as a venial sally of passion, either 
 by the good sense or the magnanimity of the party inter- 
 ested in the wrong. Indeed, by the unanimous consent 
 of all who took notice of the affair, the seconds, or one 
 of them at least, in this case, must be regarded as deeply 
 responsible for the tragical issue ; nor did I hear of one 
 person who held them blameless, except that one who, of 
 all others, might the most excusably have held them wrong 
 in any result. But now, from such a case brought under 
 the review of a court, such as I have supposed, and im- 
 proved in the way I have suggested, a lesson so memora- 
 ble might have been given to the seconds, by a two years' 
 imprisonment — punishment light enough for the wreck of 
 happiness which they caused — that soon, from this single 
 case, raised into a memorable precedent, there would have 
 radiated an effect upon future duels for half a century to 
 come. And no man can easily persuade me that he is in 
 earnest about the extinction of duelling, who does not 
 lend his countenance to a suggestion which would, at least, 
 mitigate the worst evils of the practice, and would, by 
 placing the main agents in responsibility to the court, 
 bring the duel itself immediately under the direct control 
 of that court ; would make a legal tribunal not reviewers 
 subsequently, but, in a manner, spectators of the scene ; 
 and would carry judicial moderation and skill into the 
 very centre of angry passions ; not, as now they act, in- 
 efficiently to review, and, by implication, sometimes to 
 approve their most angry ebullitions, but practically to 
 control, and repress them. 
 
 VOL. II. 22
 
 N T E 
 
 WITH rvEFERENCE TO THE PLAGIARISMS OP COLERIDGE. 
 
 [1353.] 
 
 I HAVE somewhere seen it remarked with respect to 
 these charges of plagiarism, that, however incontroverti- 
 ble, they did not come with any propriety or grace from 
 myself as the supposed friend of Coleridge, and as 
 writing my sketch of slight reminiscences on the imme- 
 diate suggestion of his death. My answer is this : I 
 certainly was the first person (first, I believe, by some 
 years) to point out the plagiarisms of Coleridge, and above 
 all others that circumstantial plagiarism, of v/hich it is 
 impossible to suppose him unconscious, from Schelling. 
 Many of his plagiarisms were probably unintentional, and 
 arose from that confusion between things floating in the 
 memory and things self-derived, which happens at times to 
 most of us that deal much with books on the one hand, 
 and composition on the other. An author can hardly 
 have written much and rapidly, who does not sometimes 
 detect himself, and perhaps, therefore, sometimes fail to 
 detect himself, in appropriating the thoughts, images, or 
 striking expressions of others. It is enough for his con- 
 scientious self-justification, that he is anxiously vigilant to 
 guard himself from such unacknowledged obligations, 
 and forward to acknowledge them as soon as ever they 
 are pointed out. But no excess of candor the most in- 
 dulgent will allow us to suppose that a most profound
 
 340 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 speculation upon the original relations inter se of the sub- 
 jective and the objective, literally translated from the 
 German, and stretching over some pages, could, after 
 any interval of years, come to be mistaken by the transla- 
 tor for his own. This amounted to an entire essay. But 
 suppose the compass of the case to lie within a single 
 word, yet if that word were so remarkable, so provoca- 
 tive to the curiosity, and promising so much weight of 
 meaning (which reasonably any great departure from 
 ordinary diction jnust promise), as the word ese7nplastic* 
 we should all hold it impossible for a man to appropriate 
 
 * ' Escmplastic' — A writer in ' Biacliwood,' who carried a wrath 
 into the discussion for which I and others found it hard to account, 
 made it a sort of charge against myself, that I had overlooked this 
 remarkable case. If I had, there would have been no particular reason 
 for anger or surprise, seeing that the particular German work in which 
 these plagiarisms were traced, had been lent to me under most rigorous 
 limitations as to the time for returning it ; the owner of the volume 
 was going out of London, and a very few hours (according to my pres- 
 ent remembrance only two) were all that he could allow me for hunting 
 through the most impracticable of metaphysical thickets, (what Cole- 
 ridge elsewhere calls ' the holy jungle of metaphysics.') Meantime I 
 had not overlooked the case o( esemplastic ; I had it in my memory, 
 but hurry of the press, and want of room, obliged me to omit a good 
 deal. Indeed, if such omissions constituted my reproach, then the 
 critic in ' Blackwood ' was liable to his own censure. For I remember 
 to this hour several Latin quotations made by Sciielling, and repeated 
 by Coleridge as his own, which neither I nor my too rigorous reviewer 
 had drawn out for public exposure. As regarded myself, it was quite 
 sufBcient that I had indicated the grounds, and opened the paths, on 
 which the game must be sought ; that I left the rest of the chase to 
 others, was no subject for blame, but part of my purpose ; and, under 
 the circumstances, very much a matter of necessity. 
 
 In taking leave of this affair, I ought to point out a ground of com- 
 plaint against my reviewer under his present form of expression, which 
 1 am sure could not have been designed. It happened that I had for- 
 gotten the particular title of Schelling's work : naturally enough in a 
 situation where no foreign books could be had, I quoted it under a 
 false one. And this inevitable error of mine on a matter so entirely 
 irrelevant is so described, that the neutral reader might suppose me
 
 PLAGIARISMS OF COLEKIDGE. 341 
 
 this word inadvertently. I, therefore, greatly understated 
 the case against Coleridge, instead of giving to it an 
 undue emphasis. Secondly, in stating it at all, I did so 
 (as at the time I explained) in pure kindness. Well I 
 knew that, from the direction in which English philo- 
 sophic studies were now travelling, sooner or later these 
 appropriations of Coleridge must be detected ; and I felt 
 that it would break the force of the discovery, as an un- 
 mitigated sort of police detection, if first of all it had 
 been announced by one who, in the same breath, was 
 professing an unshaken faith in Coleridge's philosophic 
 power. It could not be argued that one of those who 
 most fervently admired Coleridge, had professed such 
 feelings only because he was ignorant of Coleridge's ob- 
 ligations to others. Here was a man who had actually 
 for himself, unguided and unwarned, discovered these 
 obligations ; and yet, in the very act of making that dis- 
 covery, this man clung to his original feelings and faith. 
 But, thirdly, I must inform the reader, that I was not, nor 
 ever had been, the ' friend ' of Coleridge in any sense 
 which could have a right to restrain my frankest opinions 
 upon his merits. 
 
 I never had lived in such intercourse with Coleridge as 
 to give me an opportunity of becoming his friend. To 
 him I owed nothing at all : but to the public, to the body 
 of his own readers, every writer owes the truth, and es- 
 
 to have committed against Coleridge the crime of Lauder against 
 Milton — that is, taxing him with plagiarism by referring, not to 
 real works of Schelling, but to pretended works, of which the very 
 titles were forgeries of my own. This, I am sure, my unknown critic 
 never could have meant. The plagiarisms were really there ; more and 
 worse in circumstances than any denounced by myself: and, of all men, 
 the 'Blackwood' critic was the most bound to proclaim this : or else 
 what became of his own clamorous outcry ? Being, therefore, such as 
 I had represented, of what consequence was the special title of the 
 German volume to which these plagiarisms were referred ?
 
 342 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 peclally on a subject so important as that which was then 
 before me. 
 
 With respect to the comparatively trivial case of Pytha- 
 goras, an author of great distinction in literature, and in 
 the Anglican Church has professed himself unable to un- 
 derstand what room there could be for plagiarism in a 
 case where the solution ascribed to Coleridge was amongst 
 the commonplaces of ordinary English academic tuition. 
 Locally this may have been so ; but hardly, I conceive, in 
 so large an extent as to make that solution puhlici juris. 
 Yet, however this may be, no help is given to Coleridge ; 
 since, according to Mr. Poole's story, whether the inter- 
 pretation of the riddle were or were 7iot generally diffused, 
 Coleridge claimed it for his own. 
 
 Finally — for distance from the press and other incon- 
 veniences of unusual pressure oblige me to wind up sud- 
 denly — the whole spirit of my record at the time (twenty 
 years ago), and in particular the special allusion to the 
 last Duke of Ancaster's case, as one which ran parallel to 
 Coleridge's, involving the same propensity to appropriate 
 what generally were trifles in the midst of enormous and 
 redundant wealth, survives as an indication of the animus 
 with which I approached this subject, starting even from 
 the assumption I was bound to consider myself under the 
 restraints of friendship — which, for the second time let 
 me repeat, I was not. In reality, the notes contributed to 
 the Aldine edition of the ' Biographia Literaria,' by Cole- 
 ridge's admirable daughter, have placed this whole subject 
 in a new light ; and in doing this, have unavoidably 
 reflected some degree of justification upon myself Too 
 much so, I understand to be the feeling in some quarters. 
 This lamented lady is thought to have shown partialities in 
 her distributions of praise and blame upon this subject. I 
 will not here enter into that discussion. But, as respects
 
 PLAGIARISMS OF COLERIDGE. 343 
 
 the justification of her father, I regard her mode of argu- 
 ment as unassailable. Filial piety the most tender never 
 was so finely reconciled with candor towards the fiercest 
 of his antagonists. Wherever the plagiarism was unde- 
 niable, she has allowed it ; whilst palliating its fauUiness 
 by showing the circumstances under which it arose. But 
 she has also opened a new view of other circumstances 
 under which an apparent plagiarism arose that was not 
 real. I myself, for instance, knew cases where Coleridge 
 gave to young ladies a copy of verses, headed thus — 
 
 ' Lines on , from the German of Holty.' Other 
 
 young ladies made transcripts of these lines ; and, caring 
 nothing for the German authorship, naturally fathered 
 them upon Coleridge, the translator. These lines were 
 subsequently circulated as Coleridge's, and as if on Cole- 
 ridge's own authority. Thus arose many cases of appa- 
 rent plagiarism. And, lastly, as his daughter most truly 
 reports, if he took — he gave. Continually he fancied 
 other men's thoughts his own ; but such were the confu- 
 sions of his memory, that continually, and with even 
 greater liberality, he ascribed his own thoughts to others. 
 
 [ ADUITIONAL.] 
 
 An important oversight occurs in this long final note upon 
 Coleridge's plagiarisms. The solution of the Pythagorean 
 dark saying about beans, (concerning the appropriation of 
 which by Coleridge such varied opinions have been pro- 
 nounced,) does not need to be sought in German editions 
 of Pythagoras, nor in the traditions of academic tuition : 
 it is to be found in Plutarch. An hour or two after I had 
 sent off this final note to the press, [distant unfortunately 
 seven miles, and accessible only by a discontinuous or 
 zigzag line of communications,] I remembered from a
 
 344 LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 
 
 foot-note on Jeremy Taylor's ' Holy Living,' the follow 
 ing reference to Plutarch ; which the bishop has choser 
 (against his usual practice) to give in Latin rather than h 
 Qi-eek : — ' Fahis abstine,'' dixit Pythagoras, ' olim enim 
 magistratus per suiTragia fahis lata creabantur.' Abstain 
 from beans, said Pythagoras, for in former times magiste- 
 rial offices were created through suffrages conveyed by 
 beans. 
 
 END OF VOL. II.
 
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