THE SCOTT LIBRARY. 
 
 PROSE WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH. 
 
* FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES, 
 SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK. 
 
PROSE WRITINGS OF WORDS- 
 WORTH; SELECTED AND EDITED, 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY 
 WILLIAM KNIGHT, LLD. 
 
 LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, LTD. 
 24 WARWICK LANE. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TITLES . i 
 
 POLITICAL AND MORAL VIRTUES .... 4 
 
 THE HARDRANE WATERFALL .... 5 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS IN 
 
 FORMING THE CHARACTER OF NATIONS . IO 
 
 CUMBRIAN "STATESMEN" 12 
 
 THE DECAY OF THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS . 13 
 
 THE LYRICAL BALLADS 15 
 
 POETRY AND PROSE 17 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POET . . . .18 
 
 THE POETIC ART 19 
 
 POETRY AND SCIENCE .... . . . 21 
 
 THE VOCATION OF THE POET .... 23 
 
 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES ... 25 
 
 THE MOSS-HUT, DOVE COTTAGE .... 27 
 
 THE PRELUDE 28 
 
 THE MOSS-HUT, AND THE COMPLETION OF THE 
 
 PRELUDE 30 
 
 ENGLISH LANDSCAPE GARDENING ... 32 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LORD NELSON 38 
 
 THE WINTER GARDEN AT COLEORTON . 39 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN . . . .51 
 THE DESTINY OF HIS POEMS . . . . 53 
 
 THE POET AND POSTERITY 60 
 
 FLEET STREET AND ST. PAUL'S IN WINTER . 61 
 PROGRESS OF HUMAN NATURE .... 62 
 THE ANGLO-SPANISH ALLIANCE . . . -75 
 THE INTRODUCTION TO WILKINSON'S DRAWINGS 
 
 OF THE LAKE DISTRICT 78 
 
 DEATH AND LIFE 79 
 
 THE CUMBRIAN COAST AT BOOTLE . . .81 
 
 INSCRIPTIONS 83 
 
 POETRY AS A STUDY 86 
 
 RELIGION AND POETRY 86 
 
 POETIC ORIGINALITY . . . . . .88 
 
 THE POPULAR IN POETRY 89 
 
 THE POWERS REQUISITE FOR THE PRODUCTION 
 
 OF POETRY ....... 91 
 
 IMAGINATION AND FANCY ..... 93 
 
 IDIOTS 96 
 
 LITERARY BIOGRAPHY 97 
 
 BURNS 99 
 
 VANITY AND SELF-CONCEIT . . . .103 
 
 A TOUR IN THE LAKES 106 
 
 FURNESS ABBEY 108 
 
 MONUMENTS TO LITERARY MEN . . . .109 
 TOUR ON THE CONTINENT 112 
 
CONTENTS. vii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LONG MEG AND HER DAUGHTERS . . -115 
 
 MODERN TRAGEDY 116 
 
 RAMBLE IN -NORTH WALES 117 
 
 RYDAL MOUNT 119 
 
 DIRECTIONS FOR TRAVEL IN WALES AND 
 
 IRELAND . . . . . . . .120 
 
 MODES OF CONQUEST . . . . . .121 
 
 EDUCATION IN DUTY 123 
 
 T" SONNET 124. 
 
 DEMOCRACY 125 
 
 "THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH" . . . .126 
 
 CRIME AND POVERTY 127 
 
 REFORM, NOT RECONSTRUCTION . . 129 
 
 THE ORDER OF CURATES 130 
 
 THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CLERGY . .132 
 THE SCENERY OF THE LAKES . . . .133 
 
 THE MERES . . . , . . . . 139 
 
 MOUNTAIN TARNS . . .... 143 
 
 DAYS IN SPRING AND AUTUMN . . . .144 
 
 COTTAGES . . . . . . . . 149 
 
 WHITE COLOUR IN NATURE . . . . 152 
 
 ENGLISH WARBLERS . . . . -154 
 
 COMPARISONS OF SCENERY . . . . .156 
 
 REFLECTIONS IN STILL WATER . . . . 159 
 
 STORMS IN THE LAKES 160 
 
 ASCENT OF SCAWFELL 161 
 
 ULLSWATER 165 
 
 IMMORTALITY, ETC 171 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM WORDSWORTH'S NOTES IN 
 ILLUSTRATION OF HIS POEMS 
 
 Prefatory Lines 172 
 
 An Evening Walk. Addressed to a 
 
 Young Lady 173 
 
 The Forsaken 175 
 
 The Borderers 176 
 
 The Lyrical Ballads 177 
 
 Musings near Aquapendente . . .180 
 
 At Rome 181 
 
 The River Duddon 182 
 
 The White Doe of Rylslone . . .185 
 
 Yarrow Revisited 186 
 
 Roslin Chapel during a Storm . .190 
 A Us a Crag during an Eclipse of the 
 
 Sun ....... 191 
 
 Lines Written in Germany . . .192 
 
 Ode to Duty 193 
 
 ^^^ The Lawn at Rydal Mount . . .193 
 
 Rydal Mount 195 
 
 Intimations of Immortality, from Recol- 
 lections of Early Childhood . .196 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 MANY of the extracts in this little book are 
 from letters written by Wordsworth, who not- 
 withstanding his dislike to the labour of cor- 
 respondence was a voluminous letter-writer, 
 especially if the work of transcription could be r ^r 
 done for him by his sister or his wife. Most of 
 them, however, are taken from the Prefaces, 
 Appendices, and Notes to the successive 
 editions of his own Poems, and from his longer 
 prose Essays, especially his " Description of the 
 Scenery of the Lakes in the North of England." 
 For the selection, the arrangement, and the title 
 given to each extract, the editor is exclusively 
 responsible. 
 
 It should be added that in some cases 
 sentences, and in others entire paragraphs, 
 are left out from the passages quoted, for the 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 omission of which the editor is also respons- 
 ible. His aim has been to collect, from all 
 sources, the most interesting specimens of 
 Wordsworth's prose writing, not so much jis 
 samples of his style, as of his mode of treating^ 
 both great and small problems. They illustrate 
 the genius of the poet, cutting directly down 
 through difficulties, and thus solving problems, 
 with which the logical understanding is less 
 competent to deal, by the simple force of in- 
 tuition. The perusal of these extracts may 
 lead some persons to the study of Words- 
 worth's prose-works, as a whole ; and the 
 publication of a part of them, in this form, 
 may prepare the way for a more complete 
 edition of his Entire Works than any that 
 at present exists. 
 
 Several things contained in this book will not 
 be found, either in what was published in Words- 
 worth's lifetime, or in the Memoirs by his nephew 
 written in 1850, or in the Prose Works issued in 
 1876, or in any subsequent Life of the poet. 
 It contains material which has come to 
 light since the Poems and Prose Works were 
 published e.g., the letters to the Beaumont 
 family at Coleorton, to Henry Crabb Robinson, 
 to Rowan Hamilton, and to several others, from 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 unexhausted sources which are still available for 
 future use. 
 
 An elaborate Preface to this volume is un- 
 necessary. It would be " caviare to the general." 
 Although Wordsworth's main achievements, and 
 the debt which posterity owes to him, rest 
 chiefly on his poetic work and although the 
 great range of his prose writings is not generally 
 known a detailed critical estimate of each of 
 the latter would require a volume as long as 
 the present. Besides, it would not subserve the 
 end, which the present book tries to fulfil, as 
 regards the appreciation of our great Nature- 
 Poet. A chronological list of his prose-works, 
 and of various writings unpublished by himself, 
 will be of greater use to the future student of 
 Wordsworth than any comments of mine can 
 be ; and it is given at the close of this preface. 
 Discarding the details of that list, Wordsworth's 
 most important contributions were (i) the 
 Prefaces, Appendices, and Notes to his own 
 poems ; (2) the Memoranda which he dictated 
 to Miss Fenwick ; (3) his occasional Essays on 
 the Political Questions of the Day ; (4) his 
 familiar Letters to his Sister, to Coleridge, 
 John Wilson, Walter Scott, De Quinccy, the 
 Beaumonts, Henry Crabb Robinson, Rowan 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 Hamilton, Professor Reed, and many others ; 
 (5) -a^5 abuVC St his Description of the 
 Scenery of the^Lakes. 
 
 It is undeniably true that, for the permanent 
 purposes of Literature, a collection of Extracts 
 from a notable writer has no special value. On 
 the other hand, for the instruction and delight 
 of the many, who do not (and perhaps cannot) 
 resort to the classical editions of the great 
 Masters, such a collection may be of special 
 use, if it is accurately made ; and, if the 
 thoughtful reader has a clue, by which to follow 
 up each extracted passage, and to read its 
 context, if he desires to do so. I have therefore, 
 in all cases, given the source whence the 
 quotation is taken. Every one knows that each 
 item in the omnia opera, even of "great writers," 
 is not of equal value. We have plenty of literary 
 charcoal beside the diamoncT Much chaff exists 
 along with the wheat ; and the thought is often 
 entertained, if the remark is not made, 
 " Would that So-and-so had not written, or had 
 not published, one half of what he has given 
 us." Some of our greatest writers have been 
 least conscious of the point at which their 
 insight, and their faculty of expression, have 
 failed them. They have been ignorant of the 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 width of the interval between their moments 
 of supreme inspiration and their moods of 
 commonplace. Wordsworth was certainly no 
 exception to this ; and one who has read all 
 his prose writings that have been published, 
 and some that remain as yet unpublished, may 
 well shrink from offering them in their entirety 
 to the world. Whatever future opportunity 
 there may be for a detailed literary treatment 
 of Wordsworth's prose, the aim of this little 
 book is merely to let the ordinary reader 
 know how much of real and abiding value the 
 refined gold of clear insight and profound 
 philosophy is to be found in these prose 
 writings. 
 
 The general characteristics of Wordsworth's 
 Prose are its lucidity, its freshness, its whole- 
 someness, its elevation, and its marvellous 
 divination of the truth of things. It is an 
 inaccurate eulogy to describe all the cTust of 
 his writings as gold-dust. Not only in his 
 prose, but in his poetry, we occasionally find__a 
 too obvious descent to commonplace. On the 
 other hand, there can be little doubt that 
 the most philosophical poet of the century 
 until we come to Browning and to Tennyson 
 contributed something to the development of 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 our English Prose, and to our national Thought 
 and Life, as well as to some of our distinctively 
 English Institutions, in a noteworthy manner; 
 while his anticipation of the solution of 
 many of our practical problems was remark- 
 able. 
 
 To_arrange the Prose Writings of Wordsworth 
 in selected artificial groups as Wordsworth 
 himself arranged his Poems, and as Matthew 
 Arnold followed him in a subsequent grotfpTngbf 
 them is a mistake. It is extremely difficult to 
 see what benefit can result from these arbitrary 
 classifications, especially when they do not 
 possess the author's sanction. There is surely 
 some presumption in the work of an editor, 
 who attempts to rearrange the writings of one 
 of the Dei majores of literature after a model 
 of his own, and in groups constructed by the 
 imagination of the compiler. From every point 
 of view, a chronological arrangement is the 
 wisest for posterity. It has been adopted in the 
 present instance, partly because it exhibits the 
 growth of the poet's mind in different directions, 
 showing his early democratic sympathy, and his 
 subsequent reaction from Republicanism, the 
 change of his intellectual and moral view-point 
 on many problems, as life advanced, and the 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 gradual evolution of his genius ; while it also 
 proves that, from the very first, 
 
 The child was father to the man. 
 
 In his Letter to the Bishop of Landaff, on the 
 Extraordinary Avowal of his Political Principles, 
 contained in the Appendix to his late Sermons, by 
 a Republican (note the prosaic title adopted) 
 we have a most thoroughgoing defence of an 
 ultra-democratic" position ; one which might 
 gratify the most advanced radical now living. 
 The young poet, twenty-three years old, is 
 seen in this letter as the ardent opponent of 
 Authority, denouncing the privileges of State 
 and Church alike, and of all that has merely the 
 justification of time. 
 
 As is now well known, Wordsworth was the 
 original of Browning's Lost Leader. I had some 
 conversation v/ith Browning on the subject in 
 1 88 1 ; and at an earlier date in 1875 he wrote 
 to Mr. Grosart, " I did, in my hasty youth, 
 presume to use the great and venerated person- 
 ality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model." 
 He did not mean it, however, to be a portrait of 
 the entire man, " the vera effigies of such a moral 
 and intellectual superiority ;" but, as he says in 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 his poem on Guerchino's Guardian Angel at 
 Fano 
 
 II took one thought his picture struck from me, 
 And spread it out, translating it to song. 
 
 It is noteworthy that while Browning deplored 
 the subsequent " change of politics in the great 
 poet," he was one of the first to recognise, in 
 Wordsworth's appreciation of what was good 
 and even necessary in the French Revolution, 
 the width of his sympathy with the many, and 
 their aspirations, in the ever memorable lines 
 
 < Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 
 
 Bums, Shelley were with us, they watch from their graves ; 
 j He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
 i He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves. 
 
 The thoughtful reader of Wordsworth will see 
 that there is perfect consistency between the 
 democratic sympathies of his young manhood 
 and the conservative reaction which followed 
 His subsequent recoil from the extravagant 
 promise of Democracy was a consistent un- 
 folding of the very tendency which originated 
 the poet's sympathy with it. His letter to 
 the Bishop of Landaff records the change 
 which passed over the spirit of the Nature- 
 
PREFACE. XV11 
 
 Poet, when Man became to him an object of 
 still deeper interest, Man in relation to Nature. 
 Its chief interest for posterity is not its avowal 
 of republicanism, but its evidence of sympathy 
 with man as man, or with" Human Nature in its 
 elements. The attack upon titles and primo- 
 geniture, the opposition to monarchy and aristo- 
 cratic privilege, is outside the main drift of this 
 remarkable letter. These constituted its negative 
 error; but its positive truth was the courageous 
 and joyous avowal of sympathy with the aspira- 
 tions of human nature as such, and with all that 
 properly belongs to man. Wordsworth saw, in 
 the promise of the Revolution, the realisation 
 of the ideals of his youth and early manhood. 
 Hence his letter to Bishop Watson. But, when he 
 afterwards saw, in the results of that Revolution, 
 and the attack of France on Switzerland (the 
 old home of Liberty) the triumph of the very 
 opposite principle, the victory of selfishness, and 
 the tyranny of the plebs a more cruel though 
 not perhaps so corrupt a tyranny as that against 
 which the Revolution was a protest he had a 
 " rude awakening" ; and recoiled from the demo- 
 cratic cause, which he had previously supported 
 with such ardour. 
 
 Wordsworth's original sympathy was with the 
 
 b 
 
XV111 PREFACE. 
 
 aspirations, and the legitimate rights, of the 
 people ; but witlijihe intellectual ideas, which 
 underlay the whole movement in European 
 society, of which the French Revolution was 
 the outcome, he had no sympathy whatsoever. 
 He had little in common with the eighteenth 
 century, and the ideals of Rousseau; and had 
 practically no appreciation of the aims of 
 Voltaire, or of Diderot. In 1821 he wrote, "I 
 should think that I had lived to little purpose 
 if my notions on the subject of Government 
 had undergone no modification ; my youth 
 must, in that case, have been without en- 
 thusiasm, and my manhood endowed with small 
 capability of profiting by reflection." 
 
 The explanation of the professed recoil of 
 Wordsworth from the democratic sympathies of 
 his youth is to be found in his very patriotism. 
 When Britain was left almost alone in its con- 
 flict with despotic power, his moral nature was 
 stirred to its deepest depths, anc! his pamphlet 
 on The Convention of Cintra is a record of this 
 moral indignation. It was the protest, not of_a 
 soldierj_but_ofaj citizen, and of one who regarded 
 every international problem in its bearing on 
 the interests of .the individual. The moral tone 
 which breathes, and almost burns, through this 
 
PREFACE. Xix 
 
 pamphlet, raises it to a high place amongst 
 modern discussions of military problems; and it 
 will probably live in Literature as one of the best 
 English examples of the ethical treatment of a 
 great international question. It was originally a 
 communication to The Courier newspaper, in the 
 months of December 1808, and January 1809, 
 but it was expanded and issued by itself, in 
 pamphlet form, in 1809; the appendix to it being 
 written not by Wordsworth, but by De Quincey. 
 It^ is to be noted that Wordsworth stood 
 aloof from although he did not despise the 
 great scientific movement, so characteristic of 
 this century, and which is the legitimate result 
 of the realism of the eighteenth. He was 
 not specially interested in the discoveries 
 of modern Science ; although he grasped, by 
 intuition, what is deepest in these discoveries, 
 and that which underlies them all. But he re- 
 coiled to the opposite side, by the force of an 
 insight, which divined the secrets that are 
 hid from the eye which takes note only of 
 phenomena, and their laws. He may be said 
 to have anchored himself very early within a 
 sphere, from which he looked down (as from 
 above) on the strife of rival sects, coteries, and 
 parties. This was the result of his supreme 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 vision, "seeing into the life of things"; and 
 it gave him a personal calm, and an indifference 
 to misunderstanding, to hostile criticism and 
 assault, which were the very safeguards of his 
 genius ; although they may have developed 
 slight egotisms, and even eccentricities. So 
 far as his political sympathies were concerned, 
 the radical element in Wordsworth was mainly 
 a recognition of the worth of man as man his 
 personal rights and aspirations, in contrast 
 with^ the artificial distinctions and differences 
 which separate Society, or break it up. 
 
 The letter which Wordsworth wrote in 1816 
 to James Gray, of Edinburgh, "a friend of 
 Robert Burns," has special importance to pos- 
 terity from its cordial recognition of the genius 
 of his great predecessor in the roll of British 
 poets, and from its diagnosis of his failings. 
 Few better things have tver been said of 
 Burns than in Wordsworth's poems regarding 
 him, and in this letter. 
 
 The political pamphlets issued in 1818, To 
 the Freeholders of Westmorland, call for no 
 special remark. They were Conservative 
 addresses, directed against the candidature 
 of Mr. Brougham, subsequently the Lord- 
 Chancellor of England, and in defence of 
 
PREFACE. XXI 
 
 the Lowther interest. Mr. Brougham was 
 defeated in three Parliamentary contests. 
 When Wordsworth put off his singing robej^ 
 and put on those of the partisan, he was ncrt 
 invariably wis_e_; but it is unquestionable that 
 these Addresses contain much political wisdom, 
 \altogether independent of party, i 
 
 In 1829 he wrote a letter to Dr. Blomfield, 
 Bishop of London, on The Catholic Relief Bill; 
 and in it we find Wordsworth a contributor to 
 the great Irish controversy. Its keynote is the 
 dictum that the chief cause of Irish misery and 
 ignorance has been "the imperfect conquest of 
 the country." 
 
 In an Appendix to his Poems, published in 
 1835, Wordsworth discussed the subject of 
 Legislation for the Poor, the Working Classes, 
 and the Clergy, Under the second head, his 
 vindication of the root-principle_ of Trades 
 Unions, and the formation of joint-stock com- 
 panies by the poor, is specially noteworthy. 
 
 In the same year he issued, in a more 
 elaborate manner than previously, his De- 
 scription of the Scenery of the Lakes in 'the 
 North of England, part of which had originally 
 appeared in 1810, as an introduction to 
 Joseph Wilkinson's Select Views in Cumber- 
 
XX11 PREFACE. 
 
 land, Westmorland, and Lancashire, It had 
 been reprinted several times, and the edition 
 of 1835 was the fifth and final one. Perhaps, 
 on the whole, the finest passages in Words- 
 worth's Prose are to be found in his descrip- 
 tion of the Scenery of the Lakes. Certainly no 
 profounder, no more delicately subtle, charac- 
 terisation of Nature as seen in that wonderful 
 land of mountain, mere, and stream, " a land of 
 fountains and depths, that spring out of vallies 
 and hills" is to be found in any previous, or 
 in any subsequent writing. Taken by itself, 
 and apart from all detailed topography, it is 
 by far the best "Guide to the Lakes" that 
 exists. Many extracts from it will be found 
 in this volume. 
 
 . In 1836 Wordsworth made his one public 
 si speech, when laying the foundation-stone of a 
 !( new school in the village of Bowness. It was 
 Ij printed in the Kendal paper of the day, but 
 calls for no special remark. 
 
 Some unpublished letters of Wordsworth have 
 quite recently come to light, from which extracts 
 might have been added in this volume; but it 
 has been thought better that these should be 
 reserved for future use. 
 
 It would be an interesting task, although it is 
 
PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 foreign to the aim of this preface, to compare 
 the great poets of Britain, and of the world, as 
 writers of Prose ; and, without going back to 
 earlier times or Literatures, to take our English 
 Milton from the seventeenth century, our 
 Scottish Burns from the eighteenth, Words- 
 worth, Shelley, Clough, and Matthew Arnold 
 in England from the nineteenth, with Emer- 
 son and Lowell from America. This cannot 
 be done at the close of a prefatory note. But 
 it may be said that, so far as Wordsworth's 
 prose-work is concerned, we find (almost 
 invariably) strength, sincerity, insight, and 
 aspiration^ a vision which transcends the 
 common formulae of the understanding, an 
 upward flight, and at times a penetrative insight, 
 to which the ordinary prose-writer does not 
 attain. There is besides a rare balance of the 
 poWers of mind and heart, of reason and passion, 
 of intellect imagination and affection, and 
 what may be described as a subtle going and 
 coming amongst these powers, their reciprocal 
 play and endless transformation. 
 
 Even as a letter-writer although in this 
 respect he was excelled by most of his contem- 
 poraries, and by many more of his predecessors 
 and successors Wordsworth sometimes broke 
 
XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 through the trammels which fettered him, when- 
 ever he took his pen in hand. It was, as 
 Matthew Arnold put it, as if Nature fook'lhe 
 pen from him, and herself wrote down the 
 words, "with bare sheer penetrating power." 
 Every one familiar with his writings knows the 
 wonderful letter which he sent to Lady Beaumont 
 on the destiny of his Poems. The following 
 passage, from a letter to Sir George Beaumont 
 on his own religious creed, is nearly as fine : 
 
 " Theologians may puzzle their heads about dogmas 
 as they will, the Religion of Gratitude cannot mislead 
 us. Of that we are sure, and Gratitude is the hand- 
 maid to Hope, and Hope the harbinger of Faith. I look 
 abroad upon Nature, I think of the best part of our 
 Species, I lean upon my Friends, and I meditate upon 
 the Scriptures especially the Gospel of St. John and 
 my creed rises up of itself, with the ease of an exhala- 
 tion, yet a fabric of adamant." 
 
 WILLIAM KNIGHT. 
 ST. ANDREWS, 1893, 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORDSWORTH'S 
 PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORDSWORTH'S 
 PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
 A. 
 
 LIST OF THOSE PUBLISHED IN THE POET'S 
 LIFETIME. 
 
 'A Letter to the Bishop of Landaff, on the extra- 
 r ordinary avowal of his Political Principles, contained 
 in the Appendix to his late sermon; by a Republican 
 (i793). 
 
 2. 
 
 '/Preface" to Lyrical Ballads. Second edition 
 
 oo). 
 
 " Appendix " to Lyrical Ballads, on " Poetic 
 Diction." Third edition (1802). 
 
 4- 
 
 Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain, 
 *and Portugal, to each other and the Common Enemy 
 at this crisis ; and specifically as affected by the Con- 
 vention of Cintra. (1809.) 
 
XXV111 LIST OF WRITINGS. 
 
 5- 
 
 a. Introduction to "Select Views in Cumberland, 
 Westmoreland, and Lancashire, by the Reverend 
 Joseph Wilkinson" (1810); expanded into, 
 
 b. A Topographical Description of the Country of 
 the Lakes Tn the North of England, appended to "The 
 River Duddon, a series of Sonnets" (1820). 
 
 c. A Description of the Scenery of the Lakes in the 
 North of England. Third edition, now first published 
 separately (1822). 
 
 d. A Guide through the District of the Lakes in 
 the North of England, with a Description of the 
 Scenery" etc. (1835). 
 
 6. 
 Essay upon Epitaphs, in The Friend (1810). 
 
 7- 
 " Preface " to The Excursion (1814)., 
 
 8. 
 
 "Preface" to Poems (1815), and "Essay Supple- 
 mentary to the Preface." " ._ 
 
 , 
 
 A Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns (1816). * 
 
 10. 
 
 Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland 
 (1818). 
 
 ii. 
 
 " Postscript " to Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems 
 (1836). ^ 
 
LIST OF WRITINGS. XXIX 
 
 12. 
 
 Kendal and Windermere Railway. Two letters, 
 reprinted from the Morning Post (1844). 
 
 13- 
 
 The various " Notes " included in, or appended to, 
 he successive editions of Poems, from 1793 to 1849. 
 
 B. 
 
 NOTES, AND LETTERS, PUBLISHED SINCE 
 HIS DEATH. 
 
 ?he "Notes," dedicated to Miss Fen wick in 1843, 
 ""and published in 1857. 
 
 2. 
 
 Letters to correspondents ; printed in the Memoirs 
 (1851); in Prose Works (1876). In the Memorials 
 of~Coleortori{i%%']\ in the Life of Sir William Rowan 
 Hamilton (1882-9), in the Life of William Words- 
 worth (1889), and in the JDe Quincey Memorials 
 (1891). 
 
PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
Wordsworth's Prose. 
 
 TITLES (I793)- 1 
 
 ARBITRARY distinctions exist amongst man- 
 kind, either from choice or usurpation. I 
 allude to 
 
 and other badges of fictitious superiority. I 
 look" upon it as my duty to try the propriety 
 of these distinctions, and think it will be no 
 difficult task to prove that these separations 
 among mankind are absurd, impolitic, and 
 immoral. Considering hereditary nobility as 
 a reward for services rendered to the State, 
 what services can a man render to the State 
 adequate to such a compensation that the 
 making of laws, upon which the happiness of 
 millions is to depend, shall be lodged in him 
 and his posterity, however depraved may be 
 their principles, however contemptible their 
 understandings? 
 
 1 From A Letter to the Bishop of Landaff. 
 
 I 
 
2 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 But here I may be accused of sophistry; I 
 ought to subtract every idea of power from 
 such distinction, though from the weakness of 
 mankind it is impossible to disconnect them. 
 What services, then, can a man render to 
 society to compensate for the outrage done 
 to the dignity of our nature when we bind 
 ourselves to address him and his posterity 
 with humiliating circumlocutions, calling him 
 most noble, most honourable, most high, most 
 august, serene, excellent, eminent, and so forth ; 
 when it is more than probable that such un- 
 natural flattery will but generate vices which 
 ought to consign him to neglect and solitude, 
 or make him the perpetual object of the finger 
 of scorn ? And does not experience justify the 
 observation, that where titles a thing very rare 
 have been conferred as the rewards of merit, 
 those to whom they have descended, far from 
 being thereby animated to imitate their ancestor, 
 have presumed upon that lustre which they sup- 
 posed thrown round them, and, prodigally rely- 
 ing on such resources, lavished what alone was 
 their own, their personal reputation ? 
 
 It would be happy if this delusion were 
 confined to themselves ; but, alas, the world 
 is weak enough to grant the indulgence which 
 they assume. Vice, which is forgiven in one 
 character, will soon cease to meet with stern- 
 ness of rebuke when found in others. Even at 
 
TITLES. 3 
 
 first she will entreat pardon with confidence, 
 assured that ere long she will be charitably 
 supposed to stand in no need of it. 
 
 But let me ask, from the mode in which 
 these distinctions are originally conferred, is 
 it not almost necessary that, far from being 
 the rewards of services rendered to the State, 
 they should usually be the recompense of an 
 industrious sacrifice of the general welfare to 
 the particular aggrandisement of that power 
 by which they are bestowed ? Let us even 
 alter their source, and consider them as proceed- 
 ing from the Nation itself, and deprived of that 
 hereditary quality ; even here I should proscribe 
 them, and for the most evident reason that a 
 man's past services are no sufficient security 
 for his future character ; he who to-day merits 
 the "civic wreath may to-morrow deserve the 
 Tarpeian rock. Besides, where respect is not 
 perverted, where the world is not taught to 
 reverence men without regarding their conduct, 
 the esteem of mankind will have a very 
 different value, and, when a proper independ- 
 ence is secured, will be regarded as a sufficient 
 recompense for services however important, 
 and will be a much surer guarantee of the 
 continuance of such virtues as may deserve it. 
 
 I have another strong objection to nobility, 
 which is that it has a necessary tendency to 
 dishonour labour, a prejudice which extends 
 
4 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE 
 
 far beyond its own circle ; that it binds down 
 whole ranks of men to idleness, while it gives 
 the enjoyment of a reward which exceeds the 
 hopes of the most active exertions of human 
 industry. The languid tedium of this noble 
 repose must be dissipated, and gaming, with 
 the tricking manoeuvres of the horse-race, afford 
 occupation to hours which it would be happy for 
 mankind had they been totally unemployed. 
 
 POLITICAL AND MORAL VIRTUES (I793). 1 
 
 The obstinacy and perversion of man is such 
 that she is too often obliged to borrow the very 
 arms of Despotism to overthrow him, and, in 
 order to reign in peace, must establish herself 
 by violence. She deplores such stern necessity, 
 but the safety of the people, her supreme law, is 
 her consolation. This apparent contradiction 
 between the principles of liberty and the march 
 of revolutions ; this spirit of jealousy, of severity, 
 of disquietude, of vexation, indispensable from 
 a state of war between the oppressors and 
 oppressed, must of necessity confuse the ideas 
 of morality, and contract the benign exertion of 
 the best affections of the human heart. Political 
 virtues are developed at the expense of moral 
 
 1 From A Letter to the Bishop of Landaff. 
 
THE HARDRANE WATERFALL. 5 
 
 ies ; and the sweet emotions of compassion, 
 evidently dangerous when traitors are to be 
 punished, are too often altogether smothered. 
 But is this a sufficient reason to reprobate a 
 convulsion from which is to spring a fairer order 
 of things? It is the province of education to 
 rectify the erroneous notions which a habit of 
 oppression, and even of resistance, may have 
 created, and to soften this ferocity of character, 
 proceeding from a necessary suspension of the 
 mild and social virtues ; it belongs to her to 
 create a race of men who, truly free, will look 
 upon their fathers as only enfranchised. 
 
 THE HARDRANE WATERFALL (I799). 1 
 
 On leaving Askrigg, we turned aside to sec 
 another waterfall. It was a beautiful morning, 
 with driving snow showers, which disappeared 
 by fits, and unveiled the east, which was all one 
 delicious pale orange colour. After walking 
 through two small fields we came to a mill, 
 which we passed ; and in a moment a sweet 
 little valley opened before us, with an area of 
 grassy ground, and a stream dashing over 
 various laminae of black rocks close under a 
 bank covered with firs ; the bank and stream on 
 
 1 From a letter to Coleridge. 
 
6 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 our left, another woody bank on our right, and 
 the flat meadow in front, from which, as at 
 Buttermere, the stream had retired, as it were, 
 to hide itself under the shade. As we walked 
 up this delightful valley we were tempted to 
 look back perpetually on the stream, which 
 reflected the orange lights of the morning among 
 the gloomy rocks, with a brightness varying 
 with the agitation of the current. The steeple 
 of Askrigg was between us and the east, at the 
 bottom of the valley ; it was not a quarter of a 
 mile distant, but oh ! how far we were from it ! 
 The two banks seemed to join before us with a 
 facing of rock common to them both. When 
 we reached this bottom the valley opened out 
 again ; two rocky banks on each side, which, 
 hung with ivy and moss, and fringed luxuriantly 
 with brushwood, ran directly parallel to each 
 other, and then approaching with a gentle curve 
 at their point of union, presented a lofty water- 
 fall, the termination of the valley. It was a 
 keen frosty morning, showers of snow threaten- 
 ing us, but the sun bright and active. We had a 
 task of twenty-one miles to perform in a short 
 winter's day. All this put our minds into such 
 a state of excitation, that we were no unworthy 
 spectators of this delightful scene. On a nearer 
 approach the waters seemed to fall down a tall 
 arch, or niche, that had shaped itself by insen- 
 sible moulderings in the wall of an old castle. 
 
THE HARDRANE WATERFALL. 7 
 
 We left this spot with reluctance, but highly 
 exhilarated. When we had walked about a 
 mile and a half, we overtook two men with a 
 string of ponies and some empty carts. I 
 recommended to Dorothy to avail herself of 
 this opportunity of husbanding her strength : 
 we rode with them more than two miles. 'Twas 
 bitter cold, the wind driving the snow behind us 
 in the best style of a mountain storm. 
 
 We soon reached an inn at a place called 
 Hardrane, and descending from our vehicles, 
 after warming ourselves by the cottage fire, we 
 walked up the brook-side to take a view of a 
 third waterfall. We had not walked above a 
 few hundred yards between two winding rocky 
 banks, before we came full upon the waterfall, 
 which seemed to throw itself in a narrow line 
 from a lofty wall of rock, the water, which shot 
 manifestly to some distance from the rock, 
 seeming to be dispersed into a thin shower 
 scarcely visible before it reached the bason. 
 We were disappointed in the cascade itself, 
 though the introductory and accompanying 
 banks were an exquisite mixture of grandeur 
 and beauty. We walked up to the fall ; and 
 what would I not give if I could convey to you 
 the feelings and images which were then com- 
 municated to me? After cautiously sounding 
 our way over stones of all colours and sizes, 
 encased in the clearest water formed by the 
 
8 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 spray of the fall, we found the rock, which 
 before had appeared like a wall, extending 
 itself over our heads, like the ceiling of a huge 
 cave, from the summit of which the waters shot 
 directly over our heads into a bason, and among 
 fragments wrinkled over with masses of ice as 
 white as snow, or rather, as Dorothy says, like 
 congealed froth. The water fell at least ten 
 yards from us, and we stood directly behind it, 
 the excavation not so deep in the rock as to 
 impress any feeling of darkness, but lofty and 
 magnificent ; but in connection with the adjoin- 
 ing banks excluding as much of the sky as 
 could well be spared from a scene so exquisitely 
 beautiful. The spot where we stood was as dry 
 as the chamber in which I am now sitting, and 
 the incumbent rock, of which the groundwork 
 was limestone, veined and dappled with colours 
 which melted into each other with every possible 
 variety of colour. On the summit of the cave 
 were three festoons, or rather wrinkles, in the 
 rock, run up parallel like the folds of a curtain 
 when it is drawn up. Each of these was hung 
 with icicles of various length, and nearly in the 
 middle of the festoon in the deepest valley of 
 the waves that ran parallel to each other, the 
 stream shot from the rows of icicles in irregular 
 fits of strength, and with a body of water that 
 varied every moment. Sometimes the stream 
 shot into the bason in one continued current ; 
 
THE HARDRANE WATERFALL. 9 
 
 sometimes it was interrupted almost in the 
 midst of its fall, and was blown towards part of 
 the waterfall at no great distance from our feet 
 like the heaviest thunder-shower. In such a 
 situation you have at every moment a feeling of 
 the presence of the sky. Large fleecy clouds 
 drove over our heads above the rush of the 
 water, and the sky appeared of a blue more than 
 usually brilliant. The rocks on each side, which, 
 joining with the side of this cave, formed the 
 vista of the brook, were chequered with three 
 diminutive waterfalls, or rather courses of water. 
 Each of these was a miniature of all that 
 summer and winter can produce of delicate 
 beauty. The rock in the centre of the falls, 
 where the water was most abundant, a deep 
 black, the adjoining parts yellow, white, purple, 
 and dove-colour, covered with water-plants of 
 the most vivid green, and hung with streaming 
 icicles, that in some places seem to conceal the 
 verdure of the plants, and the violet and yellow 
 variegation of the rocks ; and in some places 
 render the colours more brilliant. I cannot 
 express to you the enchanting effect produced 
 by this Arabian scene of colour as the wind 
 blew aside the great waterfall behind which we 
 stood, and alternately hid and revealed each of 
 these fairy cataracts in irregular succession, or 
 displayed them with various gradations of 
 distinctness as the intervening spray was 
 
io WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 thickened or dispersed. What a scene, too, in 
 summer! In the luxury of our imagination 
 we could not help feeding upon the pleasure 
 which this cave, in the heat of a July noon, 
 would spread through a frame exquisitely 
 sensible. That huge rock on the right, the 
 bank winding round on the left, with all its 
 living foliage, and the breeze stealing up the 
 valley, and bedewing the cavern with the 
 freshest imaginable spray. And then the 
 murmur of the water, the quiet, the seclusion, 
 and a long summer day. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF NATURAL OBJECTS IN 
 FORMING THE CHARACTER OF NATIONS 
 (iSoo). 1 
 
 The influence of natural objects in forming 
 the character of Nations cannot be understood 
 without first considering their influence upon 
 men in general, first, with reference to such 
 objects as are common to all countries ; and, 
 next, such as belong exclusively to any par- 
 ticular country, or in a greater degree to it than 
 to another. Now it is manifest that no human 
 being can be so besotted and debased by oppres- 
 sion, penury, or any other evil which unhuman- 
 
 1 From a letter to John Wilson (Christopher North). 
 
INFLUENCE OF NATURE. 11 
 
 ises man, as to be utterly insensible to the 
 colours, forms, or smell of flowers, the voices 
 and motions of birds and beasts, the appearances 
 of the sky and heavenly bodies, the general 
 warmth of a fine day, the terror and uncomfort- 
 ableness of a storm, etc., etc. How dead soever 
 many full-grown men may outwardly seem to 
 these things, all are more or less affected by 
 them ; and in childhood, in the first practice and 
 exercise of their senses, they must have been not 
 the nourishers merely, but often the fathers of 
 their passions. There cannot be a doubt that in 
 tracts of country where images of danger, melan- 
 choly, grandeur, or loveliness, softness, and ease 
 prevail, that they will make themselves felt 
 powerfully in forming the characters of the 
 people, so as to produce an uniformity or 
 national character, where the nation is small 
 and is not made up of men who, inhabiting 
 different soils, climates, etc., by their civil 
 usages and relations materially interfere with 
 each other. It was so formerly, no doubt, in the 
 Highlands of Scotland ; but we cannot perhaps 
 observe much of it in our own island at the 
 present day, because, even in the most seques- 
 tered places, by manufactures, traffic, religion, 
 law, interchange of inhabitants, etc., distinctions 
 are done away, which would otherwise have 
 been strong and obvious. This complex state 
 of society does not, however, prevent the char- 
 
12 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 acters of individuals from frequently receiving 
 a strong bias, not merely from the impressions 
 of general Nature, but also from local objects 
 and images. But it seems that to produce these 
 effects, in the degree in which we frequently find 
 them to be produced, there must be a peculiar 
 sensibility of original organisation combining 
 with moral accidents ; I mean, to produce this 
 in a marked degree ; not that I believe that any 
 man was ever brought up in the country without 
 loving it, especially in his better moments, or in 
 a district of particular grandeur or beauty with- 
 out feeling some stronger attachment to it on 
 that account than he would otherwise have felt. 
 I include, in these considerations, the influence 
 of climate, changes in the atmosphere and 
 elements, and the labours and occupations which 
 particular districts require. 
 
 CUMBRIAN "STATESMEN" (iSoi). 1 
 
 There are small independent proprietors of 
 land, here called statesmen, men of respectable 
 education, who daily labour on their own little 
 properties. The domestic affections will always 
 be strong amongst men who live in a country 
 not crowded with population, if these men are 
 
 1 From a letter to Charles James Fox. 
 
CUMBRIAN STATESMEN. 13 
 
 placed above poverty. But if they are pro- 
 prietors of small estates, which have descended 
 to them from their ancestors, the power, which 
 these affections will acquire amongst such men, 
 is inconceivable by those who have only had 
 an opportunity of observing hired labourers, 
 farmers, and the manufacturing poor. Their 
 little tract of land serves as a kind of permanent 
 rallying point for their domestic feelings, as a 
 tablet upon which they are written, which makes 
 them objects of memory in a thousand instances, 
 when they would otherwise be forgotten. It is 
 a fountain fitted to the nature of social man, 
 from which supplies of affection, as pure as his 
 heart was intended for, are daily drawn. This 
 class of men is rapidly disappearing. 
 
 THE DECAY OF THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS 
 (iSoi). 1 
 
 It appears to me that the most calamitous 
 effect which has followed the measures which 
 have lately been pursued in this country, is a 
 rapid decay of the domestic affections among 
 the lower orders of society. This effect the 
 present rulers of this country are not conscious 
 of, or they disregard it. For many years past, 
 
 1 From a letter to Charles James Fox. 
 
14 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 the tendency of society, amongst almost all the 
 nations of Europe, has been to produce it ; but 
 recently, by the spreading of manufactures 
 through every part of the country, by the 
 heavy taxes upon postage, by workhouses, 
 houses of industry, and the invention of soup- 
 shops, etc., superadded to the increasing dis- 
 proportion between the price of labour and that 
 of the necessaries of life, the bonds of domestic 
 feeling among the poor, as far as the influence of 
 these things has extended, have been weakened, 
 and in innumerable instances entirely destroyed. 
 The evil would be the less to be regretted, if 
 these institutions were regarded only as pallia- 
 tives to a disease ; but the vanity and pride of 
 their promoters are so subtly interwoven with 
 them, that they are deemed great discoveries 
 and blessings to humanity. In the meantime, 
 parents are separated from their children, and 
 children from their parents ; the wife no longer 
 prepares, with her own hands, a meal for her 
 husband, the produce of his labour ; there is 
 little doing in his house in which his affections 
 can be interested, and but little left in it that he 
 can love. 
 
THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 15 
 
 THE LYRICAL BALLADS 
 
 The principal object proposed in these Poems 
 was to choose incidents and situations from 
 
 common life, and to relate or describe them, 
 
 throughout, as far as was possible in a selection 
 
 of language really used by men, and, at the 
 same time, to throw over them a certain colour- 
 ing of imagination, whereby ordinary things 
 should be presented to the mind in an unusual 
 
 aspect : and, further, and above all, to make 
 . r v * . ' 
 
 these incidents and situations interesting by 
 
 tracing in thenytruly though not ostentatiously, 
 
 the primary laws of our nature : chiefly, as far 
 
 as regards the manner in which we associate 
 ideas in a state of excitement. Humble and 
 rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that 
 
 Condition, the essential passions of the heart find 
 a better soil in which they can attain their 
 maturity^are less under restraint, and speak a 
 plainer and more emphatic language ; because 
 in that condition of life our elementary feelings 
 co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and, 
 consequently, may be more accurately con- 
 templated, and more forcibly communicated ; 
 because the manners of rural life germinate 
 from those elementary feelings, and, from the 
 
 1 From the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Third Edition. 
 
16 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 necessary character of rural occupations, are 
 more easily comprehended, and are more 
 durable ; and, lastly, because in that condition 
 the passions of men are incorporated with the 
 beautiful and permanent forms of Nature. The 
 language, too, of these men has been adopted 
 (purified indeed from what appear to be its real 
 defects, from all lasting and rational causes of 
 dislike or disgust), because such men hourly 
 communicate with the best objects from which 
 the best part of language is originally derived ; 
 and because, from their rank in society and the 
 sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, 
 being less under the influence of social vanity, 
 they convey their feelings and notions in simple 
 and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, 
 such a language, arising out of repeated experi- 
 ence and regular feelings, is a more permanent, 
 and a far more philosophical language, than that 
 which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, 
 who think that they are conferring honour upon 
 themselves and their art, in proportion as they 
 separate themselves from the sympathies of 
 men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious 
 habits of expression, in order to furnish food for 
 fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own 
 creation. . . . 
 
 All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow 
 of powerful feelings : and though this be true, 
 Poems to which any value can be attached were 
 
POETRY AND PROSE. 17 
 
 never produced on any variety of subjects but 
 by a man who, being possessed of more than 
 usual organic sensibility, had also thought long 
 and deeply. For our continued influxes of feel- 
 ing are modified and directed by our thoughts, 
 wfaicli are indeed the representatives of all our 
 past feelings ; and, as by contemplating the 
 relation of these general representatives to each 
 other, we discover what is really important to 
 men, so, by the repetition and continuance of 
 this act, our feelings will be connected with 
 important subjects, till at length, if we be origin- 
 ally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of 
 mind will be produced, that, by obeying blindly 
 and mechanically the impulses of those habits, 
 we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, 
 of such a nature, and in such connection with 
 each other, that the understanding of the Reader 
 must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, 
 and his affections strengthened and purified. 
 
 POETRY AND PROSE (I802). 1 
 
 It may be safely affirmed that there neither 
 is, nor can be, any essential difference between 
 the language of prose and metrical composition. 
 We are fond of tracing the resemblance between 
 Poetry and Painting, and, accordingly, we call 
 
 1 From the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Third Edition. 
 
 - 2 
 
1 8 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 them Sisters : but where shall we find bonds of 
 connection sufficiently strict to typify the affinity 
 betwixt metrical and prose composition ? They 
 both speak by and to the same organs ; the 
 bodies in which both of them are clothed may 
 be said to be of the same substance, their 
 affections are kindred, and almost identical, 
 not necessarily differing even in degree ; Poetry 
 sheds no tears "such as Angels weep," but 
 natural and human tears ; she can boast of 
 no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital 
 juices from those of prose ; the same human 
 blood circulates through the veins of them both. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POET 
 
 What is a Poet ? To whom docs he address 
 himself? And what language is to be expected 
 from him ? He is a man speaking to men : a 
 man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensi- 
 bility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has 
 a greater knowledge of human nature, and a 
 more comprehensive soul, than are supposed 
 to be common among mankind ; a man pleased 
 with his own passions and volitions, and who 
 rejoices more than other men in the spirit of 
 
 1 From the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Third Edition, 
 
THE POET. 19 
 
 life that is in him ; delighting to contemplate 
 similar volitions and passions as manifested in 
 the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually 
 impelled to create them where he does not 
 find them. To these qualities he has added 
 a disposition to be affected more than other 
 men by absent things as if they were 
 present ; an ability of conjuring up in himself 
 passions, which are indeed far from being the 
 same as those produced by real events, yet 
 (especially in those parts of the general sym- 
 pathy which are pleasing and delightful) do 
 more nearly resemble the passions produced 
 by real events, than anything which, from the 
 motions of their own minds merely, other men 
 are accustomed to feel in themselves : whence, 
 and from practice, he has acquired a greater 
 readiness and power in expressing what he 
 thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts 
 and feelings which, by his own choice, or from 
 the structure of his own mind, arise in him with- 
 out immediate external excitement. 
 
 THE POETIC ART (I802). 1 
 
 Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that 
 Poetry is the most philosophic of all writing : 
 it is so : its object is truth, not individual and 
 
 1 From the Preface to Lyrical BallaJs, Third Edition. 
 
20 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 local, but general and operative ; not standing 
 upon external testimony, but carried alive into 
 the heart by passion ; truth which is its own 
 testimony, which gives competence and confi- 
 dence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and 
 receives them from the same tribunal. Poetry 
 is the image of man and nature. The obstacles 
 which stand in the way of the fidelity of the 
 Biographer and Historian, and of their conse- 
 quent utility, are incalculably greater than those 
 which are to be encountered by the Poet who 
 comprehends the dignity of his art. The Poet 
 writes under one restriction only, namely, the 
 necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a 
 human Being possessed of that information 
 which may be expected from him, not as a 
 lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, 
 or a natural philosopher, but as a Man. Except 
 this one restriction, there is no object standing 
 between the Poet and the image of things ; 
 between this, and the Biographer and Historian, 
 there are a thousand. 
 
 Nor let this necessity of producing immediate 
 pleasure be considered as a degradation of the 
 Poet's art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknow- 
 ledgment of the beauty of the universe, an 
 acknowledgment the more sincere, because not 
 formal, but indirect ; it is a task light and easy 
 to him who looks at the world in the spirit 
 of love : further, it is a homage paid to the 
 
POETRY AND SCIENCE. 21 
 
 native and naked dignity of man, to the grand 
 elementary principle of pleasure, by which he 
 knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. 
 
 POETRY AND SCIENCE (i8o2). x 
 
 The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man 
 of science is pleasure ; but the knowledge of the 
 one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our 
 existence, our natural and unalienable inherit- 
 ance ; the other is a personal and individual 
 acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no 
 habitual and direct sympathy connecting us 
 with our fellow-beings. The Man of science 
 seeks truth as a remote and unknown bene- 
 factor ; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude : 
 the Poet, singing a song in which all human 
 beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of 
 truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. 
 Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all know- 
 ledge ; it is the impassioned expression which 
 is in the countenance of all Science. Emphati- 
 cally may it be said of the Poet, as Shakspeare 
 hath said of man, "that he looks before and 
 after." He is the rock of defence for human 
 nature ; an upholder and preserver, carrying 
 everywhere with him relationship and love. In 
 spite of difference of soil and climate, of 
 
 1 From the Preface to Lyrical Ballads^ Third Edition. 
 
22 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 language and manners, of laws and customs ; 
 in spite of things silently gone out of mind, 
 and things violently destroyed ; the Poet binds 
 together by passion and knowledge the vast 
 empire of human society, as it is spread over 
 the whole earth, and over all time. The objects 
 of the Poet's thoughts are everywhere ; though 
 the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his 
 favourite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever 
 he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which 
 to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last 
 of all knowledge it is as immortal as the heart 
 of man. . . , If the time should ever come when 
 what is now called science, thus familiarised to 
 men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form 
 of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine 
 spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome 
 the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine 
 inmate of the household of man. . . . 
 
 The Poet thinks and feels in the spirit of 
 human passions. How, then, can his language 
 differ in any material degree from that of all 
 other men who feel vividly and see clearly? It 
 might be proved that it is impossible. . . . Poets 
 do not write for Poets alone, but for men. 
 Unless therefore we are advocates for that 
 admiration which subsists upon ignorance, and 
 that pleasure which arises from hearing what 
 we do not understand, the Poet must descend 
 from this supposed height ; and, in order to 
 
THE POET. 23 
 
 excite rational sympathy, he must express him- 
 self as other men express themselves. To this 
 it may be added, that while he is only selecting 
 from the real language of men, or, which 
 amounts to the same thing, composing accu- 
 rately in the spirit of such selection, he is 
 treading upon safe ground, and we know what 
 we are to expect from him. 
 
 THE VOCATION OF THE POET (I802). 1 
 
 If I had undertaken a systematic defence of 
 the theory here maintained, it would have been 
 my duty to develop the various causes upon 
 which the pleasure received from metrical 
 language depends. Among the chief of these 
 causes is to be reckoned a principle which must 
 be well known to those who have made any 
 of the Arts the object of accurate reflection ; 
 namely, the pleasure which the mind derives 
 from the perception of similitude in dissimilitude. 
 This principle is the great spring of the activity 
 of our minds, and their chief feeder. From this 
 principle the direction of the sexual appetite, 
 and all the passions connected with it, take their 
 origin : it is the life of our ordinary conversation; 
 and upon the accuracy with which similitude in 
 dissimilitude, and dissimilitude in similitude are 
 
 1 I 1 ' ro in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Third Edition. 
 
24 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 perceived, depend our taste and our moral feel- 
 ings. It would not be a useless employment to 
 apply this principle to the consideration of metre, 
 and to show that metre is hence enabled to 
 afford much pleasure, and to point out in what 
 manner that pleasure is produced. But my 
 limits will not permit me to enter upon this 
 subject, and I must content myself with a 
 general summary. 
 
 I have said that poetry is the spontaneous 
 overflow of powerful feelings : it takes its origin 
 from emotion recollected in tranquillity : the 
 emotion is contemplated till, by a species of 
 re-action, the tranquillity gradually disappears, 
 and an emotion, kindred to that which was 
 before the subject of contemplation, is gradually 
 produced, and does itself actually exist in the 
 mind. In this mood successful composition 
 generally begins, and in a mood similar to this 
 it is carried on ; but the emotion, of whatever 
 kind, and in whatever degree, from various 
 causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that 
 in describing any passions whatsoever, which 
 are voluntarily described, the mind will, upon 
 the whole, be in a state of enjoyment. If Nature 
 be thus cautious to preserve in a state of enjoy- 
 ment a being so employed, the Poet ought to 
 profit by the lesson held forth to him, and ought 
 especially to take care that, whatever passions 
 he communicates to his Reader, those passions, 
 
REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. 25 
 
 if his Reader's mind be sound and vigorous, 
 should always be accompanied with an over- 
 balance of pleasure. Now the music of har- 
 monious metrical language, the sense of difficulty 
 overcome, and the blind association of pleasure 
 which has been previously received from works 
 of rhyme or metre of the same or similar con- 
 struction, an indistinct perception perpetually 
 renewed of language closely resembling that of 
 real life, and yet, in the circumstance of metre, 
 differing from it so widely all these impercep- 
 tibly make up a complex feeling .of delight, 
 which is of the most important use in tempering 
 the painful feeling always found intermingled 
 with powerful descriptions of the deeper passions. 
 This effect is always produced in pathetic and im- 
 passioned poetry; while, in lighter compositions, 
 the ease and gracefulness with which the Poet 
 manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a 
 principal source of the gratification of the Reader. 
 
 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 
 (I804). 1 
 
 The sound judgment universally displayed in 
 these Discourses is truly admirable, I mean the 
 deep conviction of the necessity of unwearied 
 labour and diligence, the reverence for the great 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
26 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 men of his art, and the comprehensive and 
 unexclusive character of his taste. Is it not 
 a pity that a man with such a high sense of the 
 dignity of his art, and with such industry, should 
 not have given more of his time to the nobler 
 departments of painting? I do not say this so 
 much on account of what the world would have 
 gained by the superior excellence and interest 
 of his pictures, though doubtless that would 
 have been very considerable, but for the sake of 
 example. It is such an animating sight to see 
 a man of genius, regardless of temporary gains, 
 whether of money or praise, fixing his attention 
 solely upon what is intrinsically interesting and 
 permanent, and finding his happiness in an 
 entire devotion of himself to such pursuits as 
 shall most ennoble human nature. We have 
 not yet seen enough of this in modern times ; 
 and never was there a period in society when 
 such examples were likely to do more good 
 than at present The industry and love of truth 
 which distinguish Sir Joshua's mind are most 
 admirable ; but he appears to me to have lived 
 too much for the age in which he lived, and the 
 people among whom he lived, though this in an 
 infinitely less degree than his friend Burke, of 
 whom Goldsmith said, with such truth, long 
 ago, that, 
 
 Born for the universe, he narrowed his mind, 
 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 
 
THE MOSS-HUT. 27 
 
 . . . The weather has been most glorious, and 
 the country, of course, most delightful. Our own 
 valley in particular was last night, by the light 
 of the full moon, and in the perfect stillness of 
 the lake, a scene of loveliness and repose as 
 affecting as was ever beheld by the eye of man. 
 
 THE MOSS-HUT, DOVE COTTAGE 
 
 We have lately built in our little rocky 
 orchard a circular hut, lined with moss, like a 
 wren's nest, and coated on the outside with 
 heath, that stands most charmingly, with several 
 views from the different sides of it, of the Lake, 
 the Valley, and the Church sadly spoiled, how- 
 ever, lately by being white-washed. The little 
 retreat is most delightful, and I am sure you and 
 Lady Beaumont would be highly pleased with 
 it. Coleridge has never seen it. What a hap- 
 piness would it be to us to see him there, 
 and entertain you all next summer in our 
 homely way under its shady thatch ! I will 
 copy a dwarf inscription which I wrote for it 
 the other day, before the building was entirely 
 finished, which indeed it is not yet. 
 
 No whimsey of the purse is here, 
 No pleasure-house forlorn ; 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
28 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 Use, comfort, do this roof endear ; 
 A tributary shed to cheer 
 The little cottage that is near, 
 To help it and adorn. 
 
 THE PRELUDE 
 
 I have wished to write to you every day this 
 long time, but I have also had another wish, 
 which has interfered to prevent me ; I mean 
 the wish to resume my poetical labours : time 
 was stealing away fast from me and nothing 
 done, and my mind still seeming unfit to do 
 anything. At first I had a strong impulse to 
 write a poem that should record my brother's 
 virtues, and be worthy of his mpmory. I began 
 to give vent to my feelings, with this view, but 
 I was overpowered by my subject, and could 
 not proceed. I composed much, but it is all 
 lost except a few lines, as it came from me 
 in such a torrent that I was unable to remember 
 it. I could not hold the pen myself, and the 
 subject was such that I could not employ Mrs. 
 Wordsworth or my sister as my amanuensis. 
 This work must therefore rest a while till I am 
 something calmer ; I shall, however, never be 
 at peace till, as far as in me lies, I have done 
 justice to my departed brother's memory. His 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
THE PRELUDE. 29 
 
 heroic death (the particulars of which I have 
 now accurately collected from several of the 
 survivors), exacts this from me, and still more 
 his singularly interesting character, and virtuous 
 and innocent life. 
 
 Unable to proceed with this work, I turned 
 my thoughts again to the Poem on my own 
 Life, and you will be glad to hear that I have 
 added 300 lines to it in the course of last week. 
 Two books more will conclude it. It will be 
 not much less than 9000 lines, not hundred 
 but thousand lines long, an alarming length ! 
 and a thing unprecedented in literary history 
 that a man should talk so much about himself. 
 It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that 
 has induced me to do this, but real humility. 
 I began the work because I was unprepared to 
 treat any more arduous subject, and diffident of 
 my own powers. Here, at least, I hoped that 
 to a certain degree I should be sure of succeed- 
 ing, as I had nothing to do but describe what I 
 had felt and thought ; therefore could not easily 
 be bewildered. This might certainly have been 
 done in narrower compass by a man of more 
 address ; but I have done my best. If, when 
 the work shall be finished, it appears to the 
 judicious to have redundancies, they shall be 
 lopped off, if possible ; but this is very difficult 
 to do, when a man has written with thought ; 
 and this defect, whenever I have suspected it, 
 
30 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 or found it to exist in any writings of mine, I 
 have always found incurable. The fault lies 
 too deep, and is in the first conception. If 
 you see Coleridge before I do, do not speak 
 of this to him, as I should like to have his judg- 
 ment unpreoccupicd by such an apprehension. 
 
 THE MOSS-HUT, AND THE COMPLETION OF 
 THE PRELUDE (iSos). 1 
 
 I write to you from the moss-hut at the 
 top of my orchard, the sun just sinking behind 
 the hills, in front of the entrance, and his light 
 falling upon the green moss of the side opposite 
 me. A linnet is singing in the tree above, and 
 the children of some of our neighbours, who 
 have been to-day little John's visitors, are play- 
 ing below equally noisy and happy. The green 
 fields in the level area of the vale, and part of 
 the lake, lie before me in quietness. I have just 
 been reading two newspapers, full of factious 
 brawls about Lord Melville and his delin- 
 quencies, ravage of the French in the West 
 Indies, victories of the English in the East, 
 fleets of ours roaming the sea in search of 
 enemies whom they cannot find, etc., etc., etc. ; 
 and I have asked myself more than once lately, 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
THE Moss-HuT. 31 
 
 if my affections can be in the right place, caring 
 as I do so little about what the world seems to 
 care so much for. All this seems to me, " a tale 
 told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signify- 
 ing nothing." It is pleasant in such a mood to 
 turn one's thoughts to a good man and a dear 
 friend. I have, therefore, taken up the pen to 
 write to you. 
 
 I have the pleasure to say that I finished my 
 poem about a fortnight ago. I had looked for- 
 ward to the day as a most happy one ; and I 
 was indeed grateful to God for giving me life to 
 complete the work, such as it is. But it was 
 not a happy day for me ; I was dejected on 
 many accounts : when I looked back upon the 
 performance, it seemed to have a dead weight 
 about it, the reality so far short of the expecta- 
 tion. It was the first long labour that I had 
 finished ; and the doubt whether I should ever 
 live to write " The Recluse," and the sense which 
 I had of this poem being so faT~b"eTow" what 
 I seemed capable of executing, depressed me 
 much ; above all, many heavy thoughts of my 
 poor departed brother hung upon me, the joy 
 which I should have had in showing him the 
 manuscript, and a thousand other vain fancies 
 and dreams. I have spoken of this, because 
 it was a state of feeling new to me, the occasion 
 being new. This work may be considered as a 
 sort of portico to " The Recluse," part of the same 
 
32 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 j building, which I hope to be able, ere long, to 
 .begin with in earnest; and if I am permitted 
 -' to bring it to a conclusion, and to write, further, 
 a narrative poem of the epic kind, I shall con- 
 sider the task of my life as over. I ought to 
 add, that I have the satisfaction of finding the 
 present poem not quite of so alarming a length 
 as I apprehended. 
 
 ENGLISH LANDSCAPE GARDENING (iSos). 1 
 
 Painters and poets have had the credit of 
 being reckoned the fathers of English gardening; 
 they will also have, hereafter, the better praise 
 of being fathers of a better taste. Error is in 
 general nothing more than getting hold of good 
 things, as every thing has two handles, by the 
 wrong one. It was a misconception of the 
 meaning and principles of poets and painters 
 which gave countenance to the modern system 
 of gardening, which is now, I hope, on the 
 decline ; in other words, we are submitting to 
 the rule which you at present are guided by, 
 that of having our houses belong to the country, 
 which will of course lead us back to the sim- 
 plicity of Nature. And leaving your own 
 individual sentiments and present work out of 
 the question, what good can come of any other 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 33 
 
 guide, under any circumstances? We have, 
 indeed, distinctions of rank, hereditary legis- 
 lators, and large landed proprietors ; but from 
 numberless causes the state of society is so 
 much altered, that nothing of that lofty or 
 imposing interest, formerly attached to large 
 property in land, can now exist ; none of the 
 poetic pride, and pomp, and circumstance ; nor 
 anything that can be considered as making 
 amends for violation done to the holiness of 
 Nature. Let us take an extreme case, such as 
 a residence of a Duke of Norfolk, or Northumber- 
 land : of course you would expect a mansion, in 
 some degree answerable to their consequence, 
 with all conveniences. The names of Howard 
 and Percy will always stand high in the regards 
 of Englishmen ; but it is degrading, not only 
 to such families as these, but to every really 
 interesting one, to suppose that their importance 
 will be most felt where most displayed, par- 
 ticularly in the way I am now alluding to. 
 This is contracting a general feeling into a local 
 one. Besides, were it not so, as to what con- 
 cerns the Past, a man would be sadly astray, 
 who should go, for example, to modernise 
 Alnwick and its dependencies, with his head full 
 of the ancient Percies : he would find nothing 
 there which would remind him of them, except 
 by contrast ; and of that kind of admonition he 
 would, indeed, have enough. But this by-the- 
 
 3 
 
34 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 bye, for it is against the principle itself I am 
 contending, and not the misapplication of it. 
 After what was said above, I may ask, if 
 anything connected with the families of Howard 
 and Percy, and their rank and influence, and thus 
 with the state of government and society, could, 
 in the present age, be deemed a recompense for 
 their thrusting themselves in between us and 
 Nature. Surely it is a substitution of little 
 things for great when we would put a whole 
 country into a nobleman's livery. I know 
 nothing which to me would be so pleasing or 
 affecting, as to be able to say when I am in the 
 midst of a large estate This man is not the 
 victim of his condition ; he is not the spoiled 
 child of worldly grandeur ; the thought of him- 
 self does not take the lead in his enjoyments ; 
 he is, where he ought to be, lowly-minded, 
 and has human feelings ; he has a true relish of 
 simplicity, and therefore stands the best chance 
 of being happy ; at least, without it there is no 
 happiness, because there can be no true sense of 
 the bounty and beauty of the creation, or insight 
 into the constitution of the human mind. Let 
 a man of wealth and influence show, by the 
 appearance of the country in his neighbourhood, 
 that he treads in the steps of the good sense 
 of the age, and occasionally goes foremost ; let 
 him give countenance to improvements in agri- 
 culture, steering clear of the pedantry of it, and 
 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 35 
 
 showing that its grossest utilities will connect 
 themselves harmoniously with the more intel- 
 lectual arts, and even thrive the best under 
 such connection ; let him do his utmost to be 
 surrounded with tenants living comfortably, 
 which will always bring with it the best of all 
 graces which a country can have flourishing 
 fields and happy-looking houses ; and, in that 
 part of his estate devoted to park and pleasure- 
 ground, let him keep himself as much out of 
 sight as possible ; let Nature be all in all, taking 
 care that everything done by man shall be in 
 the way of being adopted by her. If people 
 choose that a great mansion should be the chief 
 figure in a country, let this kind of keeping 
 prevail through the picture, and true taste will 
 find no fault. . . . 
 
 The manufactured walk, which was absolutely 
 necessary in many places, will in one place pass 
 through a few hundred yards of forest ground, 
 and will there efface the most beautiful specimen 
 of a forest pathway ever seen by human eyes, 
 and which I have paced many an hour, when I 
 was a youth, with some of those I best love. 
 This path winds on under the trees with the 
 wantonness of a river or a living creature ; and 
 even if I may say so with the subtlety of a 
 spirit, contracting or enlarging itself, visible or 
 invisible as it likes. There is a continued 
 opening between the trees, a narrow slip of 
 
36 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 green turf besprinkled with flowers, chiefly 
 daisies, and here it is, if I may use the same 
 kind of language, that this pretty path plays its 
 pranks, wearing away the turf and flowers at its 
 pleasure. When I took the walk I was speaking 
 of, last summer, it was Sunday. I met several 
 of the people of the country posting to and from 
 church, in different parts ; and in a retired spot 
 by the river-side were two musicians (belonging 
 probably to some corps of volunteers) playing 
 upon the hautboy and clarionet You may 
 guess I was not a little delighted ; I may say, 
 brought back to my subject, which is this,^-that 
 all just and solid pleasure in natural objects 
 rests upon two pillars, God and Man. Laying 
 out grounds, as it is called, may be considered 
 as a liberal art, in some sort like poetry and 
 painting ; and its object, like that of all the 
 liberal arts, is, or ought to be, to move the 
 affections under the control of good sense ; that 
 is, of the best and wisest. Speaking with more 
 precision, it is to assist Nature in moving the 
 affections, and surely, as I have said, the affec- 
 tions of those who have the deepest perception 
 of the beauty of Nature, who have the most 
 valuable feelings that is, the most permanent, 
 the most independent, the most ennobling, con- 
 nected with Nature and human life. No liberal 
 art aims merely at the gratification of an indi- 
 vidual or a class : the painter or poet is degraded 
 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 37 
 
 in proportion as he does so ; the true servants 
 of the Arts pay homage to the human kind 
 as impersonated in unvvarped and enlightened 
 minds. If this be so when we are merely 
 putting together words or colours, how much 
 more ought the feeling to prevail when we are 
 in the midst of the realities of things ; of the 
 beauty and harmony, of the joy and happiness, 
 of living creatures ; of men and children, of 
 birds and beasts, of hills and streams, and trees 
 and flowers ; with the changes of night and day, 
 evening and morning, summer and winter ; and 
 all their unwearied actions and energies, as 
 benign in the spirit that animates them as they 
 are beautiful and grand in that form and clothing 
 which is given to them for the delight of our 
 senses ! But I must stop, for you feel these 
 things as deeply as I; more deeply, if it were 
 only for this, that you have lived longer. What 
 then shall we say of many great mansions with 
 their unqualified expulsion of human creatures 
 from their neighbourhood, happy or not, houses 
 which do what is fabled of the upas-tree? 
 that they breathe out death and desolation ! I 
 know you will feel with me here, both as a man, 
 and a lover and professor of the Arts. I was 
 glad to hear from Lady Beaumont that you did 
 not think of removing your village. Of course 
 much here will depend upon circumstances; 
 above all, with what kind of inhabitants, from 
 
38 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 the nature of the employments in that district, 
 the village is likely to be stocked. But for my 
 part, strip my neighbourhood of human beings, 
 and I should think it one of the greatest priva- 
 tions I could undergo. You have all the poverty 
 of solitude, nothing of its elevation. In a word, 
 if I were disposed to write a sermon (and this is 
 something like one) upon the subject of taste in 
 natural beauty, I should take for my text the 
 little pathway in Lowther Woods, and all which 
 I had to say would begin and end in the human 
 heart, as under the direction of the Divine 
 Nature, conferring value on the objects of the 
 senses, and pointing out what is valuable in 
 them. 
 
 LORD NELSON (I806). 1 
 
 The state of Lord Nelson's health, I suppose, 
 was such that he could not have lived long ; and 
 the first burst of exultation upon landing in his 
 native country, and his reception here, would 
 have been dearly bought, perhaps, by pain and 
 bodily weakness, and distress among his friends, 
 which he could neither remove nor alleviate. 
 Few men have ever died under circumstances so 
 likely to make their death of benefit to their 
 country: it is not easy to see what his life could 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
THE WINTER GARDEN. 39 
 
 have done comparable to it The loss of such 
 men as Lord Nelson is, indeed, great and real ; 
 but surely not for the reason which makes most 
 people grieve a supposition that no other such 
 man is in the country. The old ballad has 
 taught us how to feel on these occasions : 
 
 I trust I have within my realm 
 Five hundred good as he. 
 
 But this is the evil, that nowhere is merit so 
 much under the power of what (to avoid a more 
 serious expression) one may call that of fortune, 
 as in military and naval service ; and it is five 
 hundred to one that such men will not have 
 attained situations where they can show them- 
 selves, so that the country may know in whom 
 to trust. Lord Nelson had attained that situa- 
 tion ; and, therefore, I think (and not for the 
 other reason), ought we chiefly to lament that 
 he is taken from us. 
 
 THE WINTER GARDEN AT COLEORTON 
 (I806). 1 
 
 Before I explain my ideas I must entreat 
 your patience. I promise you I will be as brief 
 as may be, but, meaning to be minute, I fear I 
 shall be tiresome. First, then, to begin with the 
 
 1 From a letter to Lady Beaumont. 
 
40 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 boundary line. Suppose ourselves standing upon 
 the terrace above the new-built wall : that, of 
 course, would be open, and we should look down 
 from it upon the garden, and, winding round 
 upon the left bank, I would plant upon the top 
 of it, in the field, a line of evergreen shrubs 
 intermingled with cypress, to take place of the 
 present hedges ; and, behind these, a row of firs, 
 such as were likely to grow to the most majestic 
 height. This kind of fence, leaving visible such 
 parts of the cottages as would have the best 
 effect (I mean the beautiful one with ivy, and 
 the other, which is of a very picturesque form, 
 but very shabby surface), I would continue all 
 round the garden, so as to give it the greatest 
 appearance of depth, shelter, and seclusion pos- 
 sible. This is essential to the feeling of the 
 place, with which, indeed, I ought to have 
 begun : and that is of a spot which the winter 
 cannot touch, which should present no image of 
 chilliness, decay, or desolation, when the face of 
 Nature everywhere else is cold, decayed, and 
 desolate. On this account, keeping strictly to the 
 example of the winter garden in the Spectator, 
 I should certainly exclude all deciduous trees, 
 whatever variety and brilliancy of colour their 
 foliage might give at certain seasons inter- 
 mingled with the evergreens, because I think a 
 sufficiency of the same effect may be produced 
 by other means, which would jar less with what 
 
THE WINTER GARDEN. 41 
 
 should never be out of mind, the sentiment of 
 the place. We will, then, suppose the garden 
 to be shut up within this double and tall fence 
 of evergreen shrubs and trees. Do you remem- 
 ber the lines with which Thomson concludes his 
 Ode on Solitude ? 
 
 Oh ! let me pierce thy secret cell, 
 And in thy deep recesses dwell ; 
 Perhaps from Norwood's oak-clad hill, 
 When Meditation has her fill, 
 I just may cast my careless eyes 
 Where London's spiry turrets rise, 
 Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain, 
 Then shield me in the woods again. 
 
 In conformity to the spirit of these beautiful 
 lines, I would make one opening, but scarcely 
 more, in this boundary fence, which should pre- 
 sent the best view of the most interesting distant 
 object. 
 
 Having now done with the double evergreen 
 fence, we will begin again with the wall ; and, 
 first, let me say that this wall with its recesses, 
 buttresses, and towers, I very much admire. It 
 should be covered here and there with ivy and 
 pyracanthus (which probably you know), or any 
 other winter plants that bear scarlet berries, or 
 are rich and luxuriant in their leaves and 
 manner of growing. From the wall, going 
 round by the left, the first thing we meet is a 
 mound of rubbish which should be planted. 
 
42 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 Then, before we reach the ivied cottage, we 
 come to a perpendicular bank or scar ; this 
 should be planted along the top, in addition to 
 the double evergreen fence mentioned before, 
 with ivy, periwinkle, and other beautiful or bril- 
 liant evergreen trailing plants, which should hang 
 down and leave the earth visible in different 
 places. From the sides of the bank also might 
 start juniper and yew, and it might be sprinkled 
 over with primroses. Coming to the second 
 cottage, this if not entirely taken away should 
 be repaired, so as to have nothing of a patchy 
 and worn-out appearance, as it has at present, 
 and planted with ivy ; this, and the shrubs and 
 trees, hereafter to conceal so much of the naked 
 wall, as almost to leave it doubtful whether it be 
 a cottage or not. I do not think that these two 
 cottages would in an unwelcome manner break 
 in upon the feeling of seclusion, if no window 
 looking directly upon the garden be allowed. 
 This second cottage is certainly not necessary, 
 and if it were not here nobody would wish for 
 it ; but its irregular and picturesque form, its 
 tall chimney in particular, plead strongly with 
 me for its being retained. I scarcely ever saw a 
 building of its size which would show off ivy to 
 greater advantage. If retained which with a 
 view to what it is to become I should certainly 
 advise, it ought to be repaired, and made as 
 little unsightly in its surface as possible, till the 
 
THE WINTER GARDEN. 43 
 
 trailing plants shall have overspread it. At 
 first I was for taking this cottage away, as it is 
 in such ruinous plight, but now I cannot recon- 
 cile myself to the thought ; I have such a 
 beautiful image in my mind of what it would 
 be as a supporter to a grove of ivy, anywhere 
 beautiful, but particularly so in a winter garden; 
 therefore let it stand. 
 
 Following the fence round, we come to the 
 remains of the little quarry (for such I suppose 
 the excavation to be, nearly under the wych-elm 
 cottage) ; I would scratch the bank here, so as 
 to lay bare more of the sand rock, and that in as 
 bold a way as could be done. This rock, or scar, 
 like the one before mentioned, I would adorn 
 with trailing plants, and juniper, box, and yew- 
 tree, where a very scanty growth would soon 
 show itself. The next part of the fence we come 
 to in its present state is an unsightly corner, 
 where is an old ugly wall (made still uglier with 
 nettles and rubbish) which has been built to 
 prevent the bank from falling in. Here I would 
 plant, to cover this wall, a hedge of hollies, or 
 some other evergreen, which should not be 
 suffered to grow wildly, but be cropped, making 
 a wall of verdure to ascend up to the roots of 
 the fir-trees that are to be planted upon the top 
 of the bank. This form of boundary would here 
 revive the artificial character of the place in a 
 pleasing way, preparing for a return to the new 
 
44 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 stone wall; the parts of the whole boundary thus, 
 as you will perceive, either melting into each 
 other quietly, or forming spirited contrasts. I 
 must however not forget here that there is a 
 space of boundary between this unsightly corner 
 (where I would have the holly hedge) and the 
 new stone wall ; and this space would be diver- 
 sified, first by the steps which now descend into 
 the garden, and next, and most beautifully, by a 
 conception which I have of bringing the water 
 which I am told may be done without much 
 expense and letting it trickle down the bank 
 about the roots of the wych elm, so as to make, 
 if not a waterfall (there might not be enough for 
 that), at least a dripping of water, round which 
 might gather and flourish some of those vivid 
 masses of water-plants, a refreshing and beau- 
 tiful sight in the dead time of the year, and 
 which, when cased in ice, form one of the most 
 enchanting appearances that are peculiar to 
 winter. 
 
 In order to be clear I wish to be methodical, 
 at the risk, as I forewarned you, of being 
 tedious. We will therefore begin with the wall 
 once more. This, as the most artificial, ought 
 to be the most splendid and ornamental part of 
 the garden ; and here I would have, betwixt the 
 path and the wall, a border edged with box- 
 wood, to receive the earliest and latest flowers. 
 Within and close to the edging of boxwood, I 
 
THE WINTER GARDEN. 45 
 
 would first plant a row of snowdrops, and 
 behind that a row of crocus ; these would suc- 
 ceed each other. Close under the wall I would 
 have a row, or fringe, of white lilies, and in front 
 of this another of daffodils ; these also would 
 succeed each other, the daffodils coming first ; 
 the middle part of the border, which must be of 
 good width, to be richly tufted, or bedded over 
 with hepatica, jonquils, hyacinths, polyanthuses, 
 auriculas, mezereon, and other spring flowers, 
 and shrubs that blossom early ; and, for the 
 autumn, Michaelmas-daisy, winter-cherry, china- 
 asters, Michaelmas and Christmas rose, and many 
 other shrubs and flowers. I mentioned before 
 what I would wish to have done with the wall 
 itself. The path of which I have been speaking 
 should wind round the garden mostly near the 
 boundary line, which would in general be seen 
 or felt as has been described ; but not always, 
 for in some places, particularly near the high- 
 road, it would be kept out of sight, so that the 
 imagination might have room to play. It might 
 perhaps with propriety lead along a second 
 border under the clipped holly hedge ; every- 
 where else it should only be accompanied by 
 wild-flowers. 
 
 We have done with the circumference; now 
 for the interior, which I would diversify in the 
 following manner. And to begin, as before, 
 with the wall : this fronts nearly south, and a 
 
46 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 considerable space before it ought to be open 
 to the sun, forming a glade, enclosed on the 
 north side by the wall ; on the east, by a ridge 
 of rubbish to be planted with shrubs, trees, and 
 flowers; on the west by another little long hillock, 
 or ridge of the same kind ; and on the south by 
 a line of evergreen shrubs, to run from the 
 southern extremities of the ridges, and to be 
 broken by one or two trees of the cypress kind, 
 which would spire up without excluding the sun 
 from the glade. This I should call the first 
 compartment of the garden, to be characterised 
 by ornament of architecture as in the wall, by 
 showiness and splendour of colours in the flowers 
 (which would be chiefly garden flowers), and in 
 the choice of the shrubs. In this glade, if the 
 plan of bringing the water should not be found 
 impracticable, or too expensive, I would have 
 a stone fountain of simple structure to throw 
 out its stream or even thread of water ; the 
 stone-work would accord with the wall, and the 
 sparkling water would be in harmony with the 
 bright hues of the flowers and blossoms, and 
 would form a lively contrast to the sober colours 
 of the evergreens, while the murmur in a district 
 where the sound of water (if we except the 
 little trickling that is to be under the wych 
 elm) is nowhere else heard, could not but be 
 soothing and delightful. Shall I venture to say 
 here, by-the-bye, that I am old-fashioned enough 
 
THE WINTER GARDEN. 47 
 
 to like in certain places even jets d'eau; I do 
 not mean merely in towns, and among buildings, 
 where I think they always are pleasing, but 
 also among rural scenes where water is scarce. 
 They certainly make a great show out of a little 
 substance, and the diamond drops of light which 
 they scatter round them, and the halos and 
 rainbows which the misty vapour shows in sun- 
 shine, and the dewy freshness which it seems to 
 spread through the air, are all great recom- 
 mendations of them to me ; so much so, that, 
 for myself, I should not be ashamed of seeing 
 one here, if a fountain, which is a thing of more 
 simplicity and dignity, would not answer every 
 important purpose, and be quite unobjection- 
 able. If we had a living stream bustling 
 through rocks, as at Grace Dieu, and could 
 decoy it among our evergreens, I should not 
 think either of fountain or jets d'eau; but, alas! 
 Coleorton is in no favour with the Naiads. 
 
 The next compartment (if you look at the 
 accompanying plan you will clearly understand 
 me) is to be a glade unelaborate and simple, 
 surrounded with evergreens, and a few scattered 
 in the middle. N.B. The former glade to be 
 entirely open with the fountain ; and of this 
 second glade so much of the ancient cottage 
 as could be shown with effect would be the 
 presiding image. No border or garden flowers 
 here, but wild-flowers to be scattered every- 
 
48 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 where. Then (still look at the plan) we come 
 to a dark thicket or grove, the path winding 
 through it, under the other cottage ; then the 
 path crosses the outlet where the door leads into 
 the high-road, which door ought to be entirely 
 concealed, and led to under a thick arch of 
 evergreen. 
 
 Proceeding with the paths, we cross the end 
 of a long alley, of which I shall speak after- 
 wards. We then are brought to a small glade 
 or open space, belted round with evergreens, 
 quite unvaried and secluded. In this little glade 
 should be a basin of water inhabited by two 
 gold or silver fish, if they will live in this climate 
 all the year in the open air ; if not, any others 
 of the most radiant colours that are more 
 hardy: these little creatures to be the "genii" 
 of the pool and of the place. This spot should 
 be as monotonous in the colour of the trees as 
 possible. The enclosure of evergreen, the sky 
 above, the green grass floor, and the two mute 
 inhabitants, the only images it should present, 
 unless here and there a solitary wild-flower. 
 From this glade the path leads on through a 
 few yards of dark thicket, and we come to the 
 little quarry, and this (adopting an idea of 
 yours, which I had from Mr. Craig, and which 
 pleases me much) I should fill with a pool of 
 water that would reflect beautifully the rocks 
 with their hanging plants, the evergreens upon 
 
THE WINTER GARDEN, 49 
 
 the top, and, shooting deeper than all, the naked 
 spire of the church. The path would wind 
 along on one side of the pool under the ridge 
 of rubbish, the slope of which should be bare 
 and grassy (if it will not in its present state 
 grow smooth grass it should be seeded for that 
 purpose). It should be planted only on the top, 
 and with trees that would grow to the greatest 
 height, in order to give the recess as much depth 
 as possible. 
 
 You would appear to be shut up within this 
 bottom, till, turning with the path round a 
 rocky projection of the mound of rubbish, you 
 are fronted by a flight of steps, not before 
 visible, which will be made to bring you out 
 of the quarry close under the dipt holly hedge 
 spoken of before. Here you open into a large 
 glade, one side formed by the trees on the 
 mound of rubbish, the other by the holly hedge, 
 and still further by those other steps near the 
 wych-elm cottage, which now lead down into 
 the garden ; these steps, not visible till you 
 come at them, and still further on by the 
 principal object in the glade, the waterfall, 
 for so I will call it, from the root of the wych 
 elm. 
 
 Having passed through this glade, you go on 
 a few steps through a thicket, and before you 
 come to the new-built wall you cross the other 
 end of the alley spoken of before, this alley 
 
 4 
 
50 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 to run down from the boundary path the whole 
 length of the garden in this part, as you will see 
 in the plan. The alley to be quite straight, the 
 ground perfectly level, shaded with evergreens ; 
 laurels I think the best, as they grow tall and so 
 much faster than any other evergreen I know ; 
 the floor not gravelled, but green, which, when 
 the trees overshadow the walk, would become 
 mossy, so that the whole would be still, un- 
 varied, and cloistral, soothing and not stirring 
 the mind, or tempting it out of itself. The 
 upper end of this alley should appear to be 
 closed in by trees, the lower to be terminated 
 by a rising bank of green turf which would 
 catch the light, and present a cheerful image of 
 sunshine ; as it would always appear to do, 
 whether the sun shone or not, to a person 
 walking in the alley when the vista shall have 
 become a complete shade. 
 
 Out of this alley, towards the middle of it, 
 on the left side, should be a small blind path 
 leading to a bower, such as you will find 
 described in the beginning of Chaucer's poem of 
 The Flower and the Leaf, and also in the 
 beginning of the Assembly of Ladies. This 
 little parlour of verdure should be paved with 
 different-coloured pebbles, chiefly white, which 
 are to be found in great plenty sprinkling the 
 sandy roads of this country; these wrought into 
 a careless mosaic would contrast livelily, if the 
 
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 51 
 
 white were predominant, with the evergreen 
 walls and ceiling of this apartment. All around 
 should be a mossed seat, and a small stone table 
 in the midst. I am at a loss what trees to 
 choose for this bower. Hollies (which would be 
 clipped in the inside, so that the prickles would be 
 no annoyance) I should like best, but they grow 
 so slowly. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN (I806). 1 
 
 Formerly, indeed till within these few years, 
 children were very carelessly brought up ; at 
 present they too early and too habitually feel 
 their own importance, from the solicitude and 
 unremitting attendance which is bestowed upon 
 them. A child like yours, I believe, unless under 
 the wisest guidance, would prosper most where 
 she was the least noticed and the least made of; 
 I mean more than this where she received the 
 least cultivation. She does not stand in need of 
 the stimulus of praise (as much as can benefit 
 her, i.e. as much as her nature requires, it will be 
 impossible to withhold from her) ; nor of being 
 provoked to exertion, or, even if she be not 
 injudiciously thwarted, to industry. Nor can 
 there be any need to be sedulous in calling out 
 
 1 From a letter to a friend. 
 
52 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 her affections ; her own lively enjoyments will 
 do all this for her, and also point out what is to 
 be done to her. But take all the pains you can, 
 she will be too much noticed. Other evils will 
 also beset her, arising more from herself; and 
 how are these to be obviated ? . . . 
 
 Assuredly, not by mortifying her, which is the 
 course commonly pursued with such tempers; 
 nor by preaching to her about her own defects ; 
 nor by overrunning her infancy with books 
 about good boys and girls, and bad boys and 
 girls, and all that trumpery; but (and this is the 
 only important thing I have to say upon the 
 subject) by putting her in the way of acquiring 
 without measure or limit such knowledge as will 
 lead her out of herself, such knowledge as is 
 interesting for its own sake; things known 
 because they are interesting, not interesting 
 because they are known ; in a word, by leaving 
 her at liberty to luxuriate in such feelings and 
 images as will feed her mind in silent pleasure. 
 This nourishment is contained in fairy tales, 
 romances, the best biographies and histories, 
 and such parts of natural history relating to the 
 powers and appearances of the earth and ele- 
 ments, and the habits and structure of animals, 
 as belong to it, not as an art or science, but as 
 a magazine of form and feeling. This kind of 
 knowledge is purely good, a direct antidote to 
 every evil to be apprehended, and food abso- 
 
DESTINY OF HIS POEMS. 53 
 
 lutely necessary to preserve the mind of a child 
 like yours from morbid appetites. Next to these 
 objects comes such knowledge as, while it is 
 chiefly interesting for its own sake, admits the 
 fellowship of another sort of pleasure, that of 
 complacence from the conscious exertion of the 
 faculties and love of praise. The accomplish- 
 ments of dancing, music, and drawing, rank 
 under this head; grammar, learning of languages, 
 botany probably, and out-of-the-way knowledge 
 of arts and manufactures, etc. The second class 
 of objects, as -far as they tend to feed vanity and 
 self-conceit, are evil ; but let them have their 
 just proportion in the plan of education, and 
 they will afterwards contribute to destroy these, 
 by furnishing the mind with power and inde- 
 pendent gratification : the vanity will disappear, 
 and the good will remain. 
 
 THE DESTINY OF HIS POEMS (iSo;). 1 
 
 It is impossible that any expectations can be 
 lower than mine concerning the immediate effect 
 of this little work upon what is called the 
 public. The things which I have taken, whether 
 from within or without, what have they to do 
 with routs, dinners, morning calls, hurry from 
 
 1 From a letter to Lady Beaumont. 
 
54 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 door to door, from street to street, on foot or in 
 carriage; with Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, Mr. Paul or 
 Sir Francis Burdett, the Westminster election 
 or the borough of Honiton ? In a word for I 
 cannot stop to make my way through the hurry 
 of images that present themselves to me what 
 have they to do with endless talking about 
 things nobody cares anything for except as far 
 as their own vanity is concerned, and this with 
 persons they care nothing for but as their vanity 
 or selfishness is concerned ? what have they to 
 do (to say all at once) with a life without love ? 
 In such a life there can be no thought ; for we 
 have no thought (save thoughts of pain) but as 
 far as we have love and admiration. 
 
 It is an awful truth, that there neither is, nor 
 can Be, any genuine enjoyment of poetry among 
 nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live, 
 or wish to live, in the broad light of the world 
 among those who either are, or are striving to 
 make themselves, people of consideration in 
 society. This is a truth, and an awful one, 
 because to be incapable of a feeling of poetry, 
 in 'my sense of the word, is to be with- 
 out love of human nature and reverence for 
 God. 
 
 Trouble not yourself upon their present re- 
 ception ; of what moment is that compared 
 with what I trust is their destiny? to console 
 the afflicted ; to add sunshine to daylight, by 
 
DESTINY OF HIS POEMS. 55 
 
 making the happy happier ; to teach the young 
 and the gracious of every age to see, to think, 
 and feel, and, therefore, to become more actively 
 and securely virtuous ; this is their office, which 
 I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we 
 (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in 
 our graves. . . . 
 
 Again, turn to the " Moods of my own Mind." 
 There is scarcely a poem here of above thirty 
 lines, and very trifling these poems will appear 
 to many; but, omitting to speak of them in- 
 dividually, do they not, taken collectively, fix 
 the attention upon a subject eminently poetical, 
 viz., the interest which objects in Nature derive 
 from the predominance of certain affections, 
 more or less permanent, more or less capable of 
 salutary renewal in the mind of the being con- 
 templating these objects? This is poetic, and 
 essentially poetic. And why? Because it is 
 creative. . . . 
 
 There is scarcely one of my poems which does 
 not aim to direct the attention to some moral 
 sentiment, or to some general principle, or law 
 of thought, or of our intellectual constitution. 
 For instance, in the present case, who is there 
 that has not felt that the mind can have no rest 
 among a multitude of objects, of which it either 
 cannot make one whole, or from which it cannot 
 single out one individual, whereupon may be 
 concentrated the attention, divided among or dis- 
 
$6 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 tracted by a multitude ? After a certain time, 
 we must either select one image or object, which 
 must put out of view the rest wholly, or must 
 subordinate them to itself while it stands forth 
 as a head : 
 
 How glowed the firmament 
 With living sapphires ! Hesperus, that led 
 The starry host, rode brightest ; till the moon, 
 Rising in clouded majesty, at length, 
 Apparent Queen, unveiled her peerless light, 
 And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. 
 
 Having laid this down as a general principle, 
 take the case before us. I am represented in 
 the sonnet as casting my eyes over the sea, 
 sprinkled with a multitude of ships, like the 
 heavens with stars. My mind may be supposed 
 to float up and down among them, in a kind of 
 dreamy indifference with respect either to this 
 or that one, only in a pleasurable state of feeling 
 with respect to the whole prospect " Joyously 
 it showed." This continued till that feeling 
 may be supposed to have passed away, and a 
 kind of comparative listlessness or apathy to 
 have succeeded, as at this line, 
 
 Some veering up and down, one knew not why. 
 
 All at once, while I am in this state, comes 
 forth an object, an individual ; and my mind, 
 
DESTINY OF HIS POEMS. 57 
 
 sleepy and unfixed, is awakened and fastened in 
 a moment. 
 
 Hesperus, that led 
 The starry host, 
 
 is a poetical object, because the glory of his own 
 nature gives him the pre-eminence the moment 
 he appears. He calls forth the poetic faculty, 
 receiving its exertions as a tribute. But this 
 ship in the sonnet may, in a manner still more 
 appropriate, be said to come upon a mission of 
 the poetic spirit, because, in its own appearance 
 and attributes, it is barely sufficiently distin- 
 guished to rouse the creative faculty of the 
 human mind, to exertions at all times welcome, 
 but doubly so when they come upon us when in 
 a state of remissness. The mind being once 
 fixed and roused, all the rest comes from itself; 
 it is merely a lordly ship, nothing more : 
 
 This ship was nought to me, nor I to her, 
 Yet I pursued her with a lover's look. 
 
 My mind wantons with grateful joy in the ex- 
 ercise of its own powers, and, loving its own 
 creation, 
 
 This ship to all the rest I did prefer, 
 
 making her a sovereign or a regent, and thus 
 giving body and life to all the rest ; mingling 
 up this idea with fondness and praise 
 
58 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 where she comes the winds must stir ; 
 and concluding the whole with 
 
 On went she, and due north her journey took ; 
 
 thus taking up again the reader with whom I 
 began, letting him know how long I must have 
 watched this favourite vessel, and inviting him 
 to rest his mind as mine is resting. 
 
 Having said so much upon mere fourteen lines, 
 which Mrs. Fermor did not approve, I cannot 
 but add a word or two upon my satisfaction in 
 rinding that my mind has so much in common 
 with hers, and that we participate so many of 
 each other's pleasures. I collect this from her 
 having singled out the two little poems, " The 
 Daffodils," and " The Rock crowned with Snow- 
 drops." I am sure that whoever is much pleased 
 with either of these quiet and tender delineations 
 must be fitted to walk through the recesses of 
 my poetry with delight, and will there recognise, 
 at every turn, something or other in which, and 
 over which, it has that property and right which 
 knowledge and love confer. The line, 
 
 Come, blessed barrier, etc., 
 
 in the Sonnet upon "Sleep," which Mrs. F. 
 points out, had before been mentioned to me by 
 Coleridge, and, indeed, by almost everybody 
 
DESTINY OF HIS POEMS. 59 
 
 who had heard it, as eminently beautiful. My 
 letter (as this second sheet, which I am obliged 
 to take, admonishes me) is growing to an 
 enormous length ; and yet, saving that I have 
 expressed my calm confidence that these poems 
 will live, I have said nothing which has a parti- 
 cular application to the object of it, which was 
 to remove all disquiet from your mind on account 
 of the condemnation they may at present incur 
 from that portion of my contemporaries who are 
 called the public. I am sure, my dear Lady 
 Beaumont, if you attach any importance to it, it 
 can only be from an apprehension that it may 
 affect me, upon which I have already set you at 
 ease ; or from a fear that this present blame is 
 ominous of their future or final destiny. If this 
 be the case, your tenderness for me betrays you. 
 Be assured that the decision of these persons 
 has nothing to do with the question ; they are 
 altogether incompetent judges. These people, 
 in the senseless hurry of their idle lives, do not 
 read books, they merely snatch a glance at them, 
 that they may talk about them. And even if 
 this were not so, never forget what, I believe, 
 was observed to you by Coleridge, that every 
 great and original writer, in proportion as he is 
 great or original, must himself create the taste 
 by which he is to be relished ; he must teach 
 the art by which he is to be seen ; this, in a 
 certain degree, even to all persons, however wise 
 
60 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 and pure may be their lives, and however un- 
 vitiated their taste. But for those who dip into 
 books in order to give an opinion of them, or 
 talk about them to take up an opinion for this 
 multitude of unhappy, and misguided, and mis- 
 guiding beings, an entire regeneration must be 
 produced ; and if this be possible, it must be a 
 work of time. To conclude, my ears are stone- 
 dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible 
 as iron to these petty stings ; and, after what I 
 have said, I am sure yours will be the same. 
 I doubt not that you will share with me an 
 invincible confidence that my writings (and 
 among them these little poems) will co-operate 
 with the benign tendencies in human nature 
 and society, wherever found ; and that they will, 
 in their degree, be efficacious in making men 
 wiser, better, and happier. 
 
 THE POET AND POSTERITY 
 
 Let the poet first consult his own heart, as I 
 have done, and leave the rest to posterity, to, I 
 hope, an improving posterity. The fact is, the 
 English public are at this moment in the same 
 state of mind with respect to my poems, if small 
 things may be compared with great, as the 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
FLEET STREET AND ST. PAUL'S. 61 
 
 French are in respect to Shakspeare, and 
 not the French alone, but almost the whole 
 Continent. Every great poet is a teacher : I 
 wish either to be considered as a teacher, or as 
 nothing. 
 
 FLEET STREET AND ST. PAUL'S IN WINTER 
 (iSoS). 1 
 
 My heart has been so occupied since my 
 return with my own family that I have scarcely 
 greeted or noticed the beautiful- vale in which 
 we live, and our sheltering mountains ; but this 
 is a pleasure to come. You will deem it strange, 
 but really some of the imagery of London has, 
 since my return hither, been more present to my 
 mind than that of this noble vale. I left Cole- 
 ridge at seven o'clock on Sunday morning, and 
 walked towards the City in a very thoughtful 
 and melancholy state of mind. I had passed 
 through Temple Bar and by St. Dunstan's, 
 noticing nothing, and entirely occupied with my 
 own thoughts, when, looking up, I saw before me 
 the avenue of Fleet Street, silent, empty, and 
 pure white, with a sprinkling of new-fallen snow, 
 not a cart or carriage to obstruct the view, no 
 noise, only a few soundless and dusky foot- 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
62 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 passengers here and there. You remember the 
 elegant line of the curve of Ludgate Hill in 
 which this avenue would terminate, and beyond, 
 and towering above it, was the huge and majestic 
 form of St. Paul's, solemnised by a thin veil of 
 falling snow. I cannot say how much I was 
 affected at this unthought-of sight in such a 
 place, and what a blessing I felt there is in 
 habits of exalted imagination. My sorrow was 
 controlled, and my uneasiness of mind not 
 quieted and relieved altogether seemed at once 
 to receive the gift of an anchor of security. 
 
 PROGRESS OF HUMAN NATURE, ETC. 1 
 
 There are two errors into which we easily slip 
 when thinking of past times. One lies in for- 
 getting in the excellence of what remains the 
 large overbalance of worthlessness that has 
 been swept away. Ranging over the wide tracts 
 of antiquity, the situation of the mind may be 
 likened to that of a traveller in some unpeopled 
 part of America, who is attracted to the burial- 
 place of one of the primitive inhabitants. It is 
 conspicuous upon an eminence, " a mount upon 
 a mount ! " He digs into it, and finds that it 
 contains the bones of a man of mighty stature ; 
 
 1 From an answer to the letter of Mathetes in The Friend 
 (1809;. 
 
PROGRESS OF HUMAN NATURE. 63 
 
 and he is tempted to give way to a belief, that 
 as there were giants in those days, so all men 
 were giants. But a second and wiser thought 
 may suggest to him that this tomb would never 
 have forced itself upon his notice, if it had not 
 contained a body that was distinguished from 
 others, that of a man who had been selected 
 as a chieftain or ruler for the very reason that 
 he surpassed the rest of his tribe in stature, and 
 who now lies thus conspicuously inhumed upon 
 the mountain-top, while the bones of his fol- 
 lowers are laid unobtrusively together in their 
 burrows upon the plain below. The second 
 habitual error is, that in this comparison of ages 
 we divide time merely into past and present, 
 and place these in the balance to be weighed 
 against each other ; not considering that the pre- 
 sent is in our estimation not more than a period 
 of thirty years, or half a century at most, and 
 that the past is a mighty accumulation of many 
 such periods, perhaps the whole of recorded 
 time, or at least the whole of that portion of it in 
 which our own country has been distinguished. 
 We may illustrate this by the familiar use of 
 the words ancient and modern, when applied to 
 poetry. What can be more inconsiderate or 
 unjust than to compare a few existing writers 
 with the whole succession of their progenitors ? 
 The delusion, from the moment that our 
 thoughts are directed to it, seems too gross to 
 
64 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 deserve mention ; yet men will talk for hours 
 upon poetry, balancing against each other the 
 words ancient and modern, and be unconscious 
 that they have fallen into it. 
 
 These observations are not made as implying 
 a dissent from the belief of my correspondent, 
 that the moral spirit and intellectual powers of 
 this country are declining ; but to guard against 
 unqualified admiration, even in cases where 
 admiration has been rightly fixed, and to pre- 
 vent that depression which must necessarily 
 follow, where the notion of the peculiar unfavour- 
 ableness of the present times to dignity of mind 
 has been carried too far. For in proportion as 
 we imagine obstacles to exist out of ourselves 
 to retard our progress, will, in fact, our progress 
 be retarded. Deeming, then, that in all ages 
 an ardent mind will be baffled and led astray 
 in the manner under contemplation, though in 
 various degrees, I shall at present content my- 
 self with a few practical and desultory comments 
 upon some of those general causes, to which my 
 correspondent justly attributes the errors in 
 opinion, and the lowering or deadening of senti- 
 ment, to which ingenuous and aspiring youth 
 is exposed. And first, for the heart-cheering 
 belief in the perpetual progress of the species 
 towards a point of unattainable perfection. If 
 the present age do indeed transcend the past in 
 what is most beneficial and honourable, he that 
 
PROGRESS OF HUMAN NATURE. 65 
 
 perceives this, being in no error, has no cause 
 for complaint ; but if it be not so, a youth of 
 genius might, it should seem, be preserved from 
 any wrong influence of this faith by an insight 
 into a simple truth, namely, that it is not neces- 
 sary, in order to satisfy the desires of our nature, 
 or to reconcile us to the economy of providence, 
 that there should be at all times a continuous 
 advance in what is of highest worth. In fact it 
 is not, as a writer of the present day has admir- 
 ably observed, in the power of fiction to portray 
 in words, or of the imagination to conceive 
 in spirit, actions or characters of more exalted 
 virtue, than those which thousands of years 
 ago have existed upon earth, as we know from 
 the records of authentic history. Such is the 
 inherent dignity of human nature, that there 
 belong to it sublimities of virtues which all men 
 may attain, and which no man can transcend : 
 and though this be not true in an equal degree 
 of intellectual power, yet in the persons of 
 Plato, Demosthenes, and Homer, and in those 
 of Shakspeare, Milton, and Lord Bacon, were 
 enshrined as much of the divinity of intellect as 
 the inhabitants of this planet can hope will ever 
 take up its abode among them. But the ques- 
 tion is not of the power or worth of individual 
 minds, but of the general moral or intellectual 
 merits of an age, or a people, or of the human 
 race. Be it so. Let us allow and believe that 
 
 5 
 
66 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 there is a progress in the species towards unat- 
 tainable perfection, or whether this be so or not, 
 that it is a necessity of a good and greatly-gifted 
 nature to believe it ; surely it does not follow 
 that this progress should be constant in those 
 virtues and intellectual qualities, and in those 
 departments of knowledge, which in themselves 
 absolutely considered are of most value, things 
 independent and in their degree indispensable. 
 The progress of the species neither is nor can 
 be like that of a Roman road in a right line. 
 It may be more justly compared to that of a 
 river, which, both in its smaller reaches and 
 larger turnings, is frequently forced back towards 
 its fountains by objects which cannot otherwise 
 be eluded or overcome ; yet with an accompany- 
 ing impulse that will insure its advancement 
 hereafter, it is either gaining strength every 
 hour, or conquering in secret some difficulty, 
 by a labour that contributes as effectually to 
 further it in its course, ar, when it moves forward 
 uninterrupted in a line, direct as that of the 
 Roman road with which I began the compari- 
 son. 
 
 It suffices to content the mind, though there 
 may be an apparent stagnation, or a retrograde 
 movement in the species, that something is 
 doing which is necessary to be done, and the 
 effects of which will in due time appear ; that 
 something is unremittingly gaining, either in 
 
secret preparation or in open and triumphant 
 progress. But in fact here, as everywhere, we 
 are deceived by creations which the mind is 
 compelled to make for itself; we speak of the 
 species not as an aggregate, but as endued with 
 the form and separate life of an individual. But 
 human kind, what is it else than myriads of 
 rational beings in various degrees obedient to 
 their reason ; some torpid, some aspiring ; some 
 in eager chase to the right hand, some to the 
 left ; these wasting down their moral nature, 
 and those feeding it for immortality ? A whole 
 generation may appear even to sleep, or may be 
 exasperated with rage, they that compose it, 
 tearing each other to pieces with more than 
 brutal fury. It is enough for complacency and 
 hope, that scattered and solitary minds are 
 always labouring somewhere in the service of 
 truth and virtue ; and that by the sleep of the 
 multitude the energy of the multitude may be 
 prepared ; and that by the fury of the people 
 the chains of the people may be broken. Happy 
 moment was it for England when her Chaucer, 
 who has rightly been called the morning star 
 of her literature, appeared above the horizon ; 
 when her Wicliffe, like the sun, shot orient 
 beams through the night of Romish supersti- 
 tion ! Yet may the darkness and the desolating 
 hurricane which immediately followed in the 
 wars of York and Lancaster, be deemed in 
 
68 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 their turn a blessing, with which the Land has 
 been visited. 
 
 May I return to the thought of progress, of 
 accumulation, of increasing light, or of any 
 other image by which it may please us to re- 
 present the improvement of the species ? The 
 hundred years that followed the usurpation of 
 Henry IV., were a hurling-back of the mind of 
 the country, a dilapidation, an extinction; yet 
 institutions, laws, customs, and habits, were then 
 broken down, which would not have been so 
 readily, nor perhaps so thoroughly destroyed by 
 the gradual influence of increasing knowledge ; 
 and under the oppression of which, if they had 
 continued to exist, the virtue and intellectual 
 prowess of the succeeding century could not 
 have appeared at all, much less could they have 
 displayed themselves with that eager haste, and 
 with those beneficent triumphs, which will to 
 the end of time be looked back upon with 
 admiration and gratitude. 
 
 If the foregoing obvious distinctions be once 
 clearly perceived, and steadily kept in view, I 
 do not see why a belief in the progress of 
 human nature towards perfection should dispose 
 a youthful mind, however enthusiastic, to an 
 undue admiration of his own age, and thus tend 
 to degrade that mind. 
 
 But let me strike at once at the root of the 
 evil complained of in my correspondent's letter. 
 
PROGRESS OF HUMAN NATURE. 69 
 
 Protection from any fatal effect of seductions 
 and hindrances which opinion may throw in 
 the way of pure and high-minded youth, can 
 only be obtained with certainty at the same 
 price by which every thing great and good is 
 obtained, namely, steady dependence upon vol- 
 untary and self-originating effort, and upon the 
 practice of self-examination, sincerely aimed at 
 and rigorously enforced. But how is this to be 
 expected from youth ? Is it not to demand 
 the fruit when the blossom is barely put forth, 
 and is hourly at the mercy of frosts and winds ? 
 To expect from youth these virtues and habits, 
 in that degree of excellence to which in mature 
 years they may be carried, would indeed be 
 preposterous. Yet has youth many helps and 
 aptitudes for the discharge of these difficult 
 duties, which are withdrawn for the most part 
 from the more advanced stages of life. For 
 youth has its own wealth and independence; 
 it is rich in health of body and animal spirits, 
 in its sensibility to the impressions of the natural 
 universe, in the conscious growth of knowledge, 
 in lively sympathy and familiar communion with 
 the generous actions recorded in history, and 
 with the high passions of poetry ; and, above 
 all, youth is rich in the possession of time, and 
 the accompanying consciousness of freedom and 
 power. The young man feels that he stands at 
 a distance from the season when his harvest is 
 
7o WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 to be reaped ; that he has leisure and may look 
 around, and may defer both the choice and the 
 execution of his purposes. If he makes an 
 attempt and shall fail, new hopes immediately 
 rush in and new promises. Hence, in the happy 
 confidence of his feelings, and in the elasticity 
 of his spirit, neither worldly ambition, nor the 
 love of praise, nor dread of censure, nor the 
 necessity of worldly maintenance, nor any of 
 those causes which tempt or compel the mind 
 habitually to look out of itself for support ; 
 neither these, nor the passions of envy, fear, 
 hatred, despondency, and the rankling of dis- 
 appointed hopes (all which in after-life give 
 birth to, and regulate, the efforts of men and 
 determine their opinions), have power to preside 
 over the choice of the young, if the disposition 
 be not naturally bad, or the circumstances have 
 not been in an uncommon degree unfavourable. 
 In contemplation, then, of this disinterested 
 and free condition of the youthful mind, I deem 
 it in many points peculiarly capable of searching 
 into itself, and of profiting by a few simple 
 questions, such as these that follow. Am I 
 chiefly gratified by the exertion of my power 
 ' from the pure pleasure of intelleatual activity, 
 and from the knowledge thereby acquired ? In 
 other words, to what degree do I value my 
 faculties and my attainments for their own 
 sakes? or are they chiefly prized by me on 
 
PROGRESS OP HUMAN NATURE. 71 
 
 account of the distinction which they confer, or 
 the superiority which they give me over others ? 
 Am I aware that immediate influence and a 
 general acknowledgment of merit are no neces- 
 sary adjuncts of a successful adherence to study 
 and meditation in those departments of know- 
 ledge which are of most value to mankind ; 
 that a recompense of honours and emoluments 
 is far less to be expected ; in fact, that there is 
 little natural connection between them ? Have 
 I perceived this truth ; and, perceiving it, does 
 the countenance of philosophy continue to 
 appear as bright and beautiful in my eyes ? 
 Has no haze bedimmed it ? Has no cloud 
 passed over and hidden from me that look 
 which was before so encouraging? Knowing 
 that it is my duty, and feeling that it is my 
 inclination, to mingle as a social being with my 
 fellow-men ; prepared also to submit cheerfully 
 to the necessity that will probably exist of 
 relinquishing, for the purpose of gaining a live- 
 lihood, the greatest portion of my time to 
 employments where I shall have little or no 
 choice how or when I am to act ; have I, at this 
 moment, when I stand as it were upon the 
 threshold of the busy world, a clear intuition of 
 that pre-eminence in which virtue and truth 
 (involving in this latter word the sanctities of 
 religion) sit enthroned above all denominations 
 and dignities in various degrees of exalta- 
 
72 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 tion, over the desires of men ? Do I feel that, 
 if their solemn mandates shall be forgotten, 
 or disregarded, or denied the obedience due to 
 them when opposed to others, I shall not only 
 have lived for no good purpose, but that I shall 
 have sacrificed my birth-right as a rational 
 being ; and that every other acquisition will be a 
 bane and a disgrace to me ? This is not spoken 
 with reference to such sacrifices as present them- 
 selves to the youthful imagination in the shape 
 of crimes, acts by which- the conscience is 
 violated ; such a thought, I know, would be 
 recoiled from at once, not without indignation ; 
 but I write in the spirit of the ancient fable of 
 Prodicus, representing the choice of Hercules. 
 Here is the World, a female figure approaching 
 at the head of a train of willing or giddy fol- 
 lowers : her air and deportment are at once 
 careless, remiss, self-satisfied, and haughty : and 
 there is Intellectual Prowess, with a pale cheek 
 and serene brow, leading in chains Truth, her 
 beautiful and modest captive. The one makes 
 her salutation with a discourse of ease, pleasure, 
 freedom, and domestic tranquillity ; or, if she 
 invite to labour, it is labour in the busy and 
 beaten track, with assurance of the complacent 
 regards of parents, friends, and of those with 
 whom we associate. The promise also may be 
 upon her lip of the huzzas of the multitude, of 
 the smile of kings, and the munificent rewards 
 
PROGRESS OF HUMAN NATURE. 73 
 
 of senates. The other does not venture to hold 
 forth any of these allurements ; she does not 
 conceal from him whom she addresses the im- 
 pediments, the disappointments, the ignorance 
 and prejudice which her follower will have to 
 encounter, if devoted, when duty calls, to active 
 life ; and if to contemplative, she lays nakedly 
 before him a scheme of solitary and unremitting 
 labour, a life of entire neglect perhaps, or 
 assuredly a life exposed to scorn, insult, per- 
 secution, and hatred ; but cheered by encour- 
 agement from a grateful few, by applauding con- 
 science, and by a prophetic anticipation, perhaps, 
 of fame a late, though lasting, consequence. Of 
 these two, each in this manner soliciting you 
 to become her adherent, you doubt not which 
 to prefer ; but oh ! the thought of moment is 
 not preference, but the degree of preference; the 
 passionate and pure choice, the inward sense of 
 absolute and unchangeable devotion. 
 
 I spoke of a few simple questions. The ques- 
 tion involved in this deliberation is simple, but 
 at the same time it is high and awful ; and I 
 would gladly know whether an answer can be 
 returned satisfactory to the mind. We will for 
 a moment suppose that it can not ; that there is 
 a startling and a hesitation. Are we then to 
 despond, to retire from all contest, and to 
 reconcile ourselves at once to cares without a 
 generous hope, and to efforts in which there is no 
 
74 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 more moral life than that which is found in the 
 business and labours of the unfavoured and un- 
 aspiring many ? No. But if the inquiry have 
 not been on just grounds satisfactorily answered, 
 we may refer confidently our youth to that 
 nature of which he deems himself an enthusiastic 
 follower, and one who wishes to continue no less 
 faithful and enthusiastic. We would tell him 
 that there are paths which he has not trodden ; 
 recesses which he has not penetrated ; that 
 there is a beauty which he has not seen, a pathos 
 which he has not felt, a sublimity to which 
 he hath not been raised. If he have trembled 
 because there has occasionally taken place in 
 him a lapse of which he is conscious ; if he 
 foresee open or secret attacks, which he has had 
 intimations that he will neither be strong enough 
 to resist, nor watchful enough to elude, let him 
 not hastily ascribe this weakness, this deficiency, 
 and the painful apprehensions accompanying 
 them, in any degree to the virtues or noble 
 qualities with which youth by nature is furnished ; 
 but let him first be assured, before he looks 
 about for the means of attaining the insight, 
 the discriminating powers, and the confirmed 
 wisdom of manhood, that his soul has more to 
 demand of the appropriate excellencies of youth, 
 than youth has yet supplied to it ; that the evil 
 under which he labours is not a superabundance 
 of the instincts and the animating spirit of that 
 
ANGLO-SPANISH ALLIANCE. 75 
 
 age, but a falling short, or a failure. But what 
 can he gain from this admonition ? He cannot 
 recall past time ; he cannot begin his journey 
 afresh ; he cannot untwist the links by which, in 
 no undelightful harmony, images and sentiments 
 are wedded in his mind. Granted that the 
 sacred light of childhood is and must be for 
 him no more than a remembrance. He may, 
 notwithstanding, be remanded to nature, and 
 with trustworthy hopes, founded less upon his 
 sentient than upon his intellectual being ; to 
 nature, as leading on insensibly to the society of 
 reason, but to reason and will, as leading back to 
 the wisdom of nature. A re-union, in this order 
 accomplished, will bring reformation and timely 
 support ; and the two powers of reason and 
 nature, thus reciprocally teacher and taught, may 
 advance together in a track to which there is no 
 limit. 
 
 THE ANGLO-SPANISH ALLIANCE (IS09). 1 
 
 Never, indeed, was the fellowship of our sen- 
 tient nature more intimately felt never was 
 the irresistible power of justice more gloriously 
 displayed than when the British and Spanish 
 Nations, with an impulse like that of two ancient 
 
 1 From The Convention of Cintra. 
 
76 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 heroes throwing down their weapons and recon- 
 ciled in the field, cast off at once their aversions 
 and enmities, and mutually embraced each 
 other to solemnise this conversion of love, not 
 by the festivities of peace, but by combating 
 side by side through danger and under affliction 
 in the devotedness of perfect brotherhood. This 
 was a conjunction which excited hope as fervent 
 as it was rational. On the one side was a nation 
 which brought with it sanction and authority, 
 inasmuch as it had tried and approved the 
 blessings for which the other had risen to con- 
 tend : the one was a people which, by the help 
 of the surrounding ocean and its own virtues, 
 had preserved to itself through ages its liberty, 
 pure and inviolated by a foreign invader ; the 
 other a high-minded nation, which a tyrant, 
 presuming on its decrepitude, had, through the 
 real decrepitude of its Government, perfidiously 
 enslaved. What could be more delightful than 
 to think of an intercourse beginning in this 
 manner? On the part of the Spaniards their 
 love towards us was enthusiasm and adoration ; 
 the faults of our national character were hidden 
 from them by a veil of splendour ; they saw 
 nothing around us but glory and light ; and, on 
 our side, we estimated their character with partial 
 and indulgent fondness ; thinking on their past 
 greatness, not as the undermined foundation of 
 a magnificent building, but as the root of a 
 
ANGLO-SPANISH ALLIANCE. 77 
 
 majestic tree recovered from a long disease, and 
 beginning again to flourish with promise of 
 wider branches and a deeper shade than it had 
 boasted in the fulness of its strength. If in the 
 sensations with which the Spaniards prostrated 
 themselves before the religion of their country 
 we did not keep pace with them if even their 
 loyalty was such as, from our mixed constitution 
 of government and from other causes, we could 
 not thoroughly sympathise with, and if, lastly, 
 their devotion to the person of their Sovereign 
 appeared to us to have too much of the alloy of 
 delusion, in all these things we judged them 
 gently : and, taught by the reverses of the 
 French revolution, we looked upon these dis- 
 positions as more human, more social, and 
 therefore as wiser, and of better omen, than 
 if they had stood forth the zealots of abstract 
 principles, drawn out of the laboratory of unfeel- 
 ing philosophists. Finally, in this reverence for 
 the past and present, we found an earnest that 
 they were prepared to contend to the death for 
 as much liberty as their habits and their know- 
 ledge enabled them to receive. To assist them 
 and their neighbours the Portuguese in the 
 attainment of this end, we sent to them in love 
 and in friendship a powerful army to aid to 
 invigorate and to chastise : they landed ; and 
 the first proof they afforded of their being 
 worthy to be sent oh such a service the first 
 
78 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 pledge of amity given by them was the victory 
 of Vimiera; the second pledge (and this was 
 from the hand of their Generals) was the Con- 
 vention of Cintra. 
 
 THE INTRODUCTION TO WILKINSON'S DRAW- 
 INGS OF THE LAKE DISTRICT (iSio). 1 
 
 I am very happy that you have read the 
 Introduction with so much pleasure, and must 
 thank you for your kindness in telling me of it. 
 I thought the part about the cottages well done ; 
 and' also liked a sentence where I transport the 
 reader to the top of one of the mountains, or 
 rather, to the cloud chosen for his station, and 
 give a sketch of the impressions which the 
 country might be supposed to make on a feeling 
 mind contemplating its appearance before it was 
 inhabited. But what I wished to accomplish 
 was to give a model of the manner in which 
 topographical descriptions ought to be executed, 
 in order to their being either usefuJ or intelligible, 
 by evolving truly and distinctly one appearance 
 from another. In this I think I have not wholly 
 failed. . . . 
 
 The drawings, or etchings, or whatever they 
 
 1 From a letter to Lady Beaumont. 
 
DEATH AND LIFE. 79 
 
 may be called, are, I know, such as to you and 
 Sir George must be intolerable. You will 
 receive from them that sort of disgust which I 
 do from bad poetry, a disgust which can never 
 be felt in its full strength but by those who are 
 practised in an art, as well as amateurs of it. I 
 took Sir George's subscription as a kindness 
 done to myself; and Wilkinson, though not 
 superabundant in good sense, told me that he 
 saw it in that light I do however sincerely 
 hope that the author and his wife (who cer- 
 tainly, notwithstanding her faults and foibles, is 
 no ordinary woman) may be spared any morti- 
 fication from hearing them condemned severely 
 by acknowledged judges. They will please many 
 who in all the arts are most taken with what is 
 most worthless. I do not mean that there is 
 not in simple and unadulterated minds a sense 
 of the beautiful and sublime in art ; but into the 
 hands of few such do prints or pictures fall. . . . 
 
 DEATH AND LIFE (iSio). 1 
 
 Simonides, it is related, upon landing in a 
 
 strange country, found the corse of an unknown 
 
 person lying by the sea-side ; he buried it, and 
 
 was honoured throughout Greece for the piety 
 
 1 From an Essay upon Epitaphs in The Friend. 
 
80 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 of that act Another ancient Philosopher, 
 chancing to fix his eyes upon a dead body, 
 regarded the same with slight, if not with con- 
 tempt, saying, " See the shell of the flown bird ! " 
 But it is not to be supposed that the moral and 
 tender-hearted Simonides was incapable of the 
 lofty movements of thought, to which that other 
 Sage gave way at the moment while his soul 
 was intent only upon the indestructible being ; 
 nor, on the other hand, that he, in whose sight a 
 lifeless human body was of no more value than 
 the worthless shell from which the living fowl 
 had departed, would not, in a different mood of 
 mind, have been affected by those earthly con- 
 siderations which had incited the philosophic 
 Poet to the performance of that pious duty. 
 And with regard to this latter we may be 
 assured that, if he had been destitute of the 
 capability of communing with the more exalted 
 thoughts that appertain to human nature, he 
 would have cared no more for the corse of the 
 stranger than for the dead body of a seal or 
 porpoise which might have been cast up by 
 the waves. We respect the corporeal frame of 
 Man, not merely because it is the habitation of 
 a rational, but of an immortal Soul. Each of 
 these Sages was in sympathy with the best 
 feelings of our nature ; feelings which, though 
 they seem opposite to each other, have another 
 and a finer connection than that of contrast. It 
 
THE CUMBRIAN COAST. 81 
 
 is a connection formed through the subtle pro- 
 cess by which, both in the natural and the moral 
 world, qualities pass insensibly into their con- 
 traries, and things revolve upon each other. As, 
 in sailing upon the orb of this planet, a voyage 
 towards the regions where the sun sets, conducts 
 gradually to the quarter where we have been 
 accustomed to behold it come forth at its rising; 
 and, in like manner, a voyage towards the east, 
 the birthplace in our imagination of the morn- 
 ing, leads finally to the quarter where the sun is 
 last seen when he departs from our eyes ; so the 
 contemplative Soul, travelling in the direction of 
 mortality, advances to the country of everlasting 
 life ; and, in like manner, may she continue to 
 explore those cheerful tracts, till she is brought 
 back, for her advantage and benefit, to the land 
 of transitory things of sorrow and of tears. 
 
 THE CUMBRIAN COAST AT BOOTLE 
 (iSii). 1 
 
 The Isle of Man is right opposite our window; 
 and though in this unsettled weather often 
 invisible, its appearance has afforded us great 
 amusement. One afternoon above the whole 
 length of it was stretched a body of clouds, 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
82 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 shaped and coloured like a magnificent grove in 
 winter, whitened with snow, and illuminated by 
 the morning sun, which having melted the 
 snow in part intermingled black masses among 
 the brightness. The whole sky was scattered 
 over with fleecy dark clouds, such as any sun- 
 shiny day produces, and which were changing 
 their shapes and position every moment. But 
 this line of clouds immovably attached them- 
 selves to the island, and manifestly took their 
 shape from the influence of its mountains. 
 There appeared to be just span enough of sky 
 to allow the hand to slide between the top of 
 Snafell, the highest peak in the island, and the 
 base of this glorious forest, in which little change 
 was noticeable for more than the space of half- 
 an-hour. We had another fine sight one evening, 
 walking along a rising ground about two miles 
 distant from the shore. It was about the hour 
 of sunset, and the sea was perfectly calm ; and 
 in a quarter where its surface was indistinguish- 
 able from the western sky, hazy and luminous 
 with the setting sun, appeared a tall sloop-rigged 
 vessel, magnified by the atmosphere through 
 which it was viewed, and seeming rather to 
 hang in the air than to float upon the waters. 
 Milton compares the appearance of Satan to a 
 fleet descried far off at sea. The visionary 
 grandeur and beautiful form of this single vessel, 
 could words have conveyed to the mind the 
 
INSCRIPTIONS. 83 
 
 picture which Nature presented to the eye 
 would have suited his purpose as well as the 
 largest company of vessels that ever associated 
 together, with the help of a trade wind, in the 
 wide ocean. Yet not exactly so, and for this 
 reason, that his image is a permanent one, not 
 dependent upon accident. 
 
 INSCRIPTIONS (iSii). 1 
 
 It did always appear to me, that inscriptions, 
 particularly those in verse, or in a dead language, 
 were never supposed necessarily to be the com- 
 position of those in whose name they appeared. 
 If a more striking, or more dramatic effect could 
 be produced, I have always thought, that in an 
 epitaph or memorial of any kind, a father, or 
 husband, etc., might be introduced, speaking, 
 without any absolute deception being intended : 
 that is, the reader is understood to be at liberty 
 to say to himself, these verses, or this Latin, 
 may be the composition of some unknown 
 person, and not that of the father, widow, or 
 friend, from whose hand or voice they profess to 
 proceed. If the composition be natural, affect- 
 ing, or beautiful, it is all that is required. This, 
 at least, was my view of the subject, or I should 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont 
 
84 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 not have adopted that mode. However, in 
 respect to your scruples, which I feel are both 
 delicate and reasonable, I have altered the 
 verses ; and I have only to regret that the 
 alteration is not more happily done. But I 
 never found anything more difficult. I wished 
 to preserve the expression patrimonial grounds, 
 but I found this impossible, on account of the 
 awkwardness of the pronouns, he and fa's, as 
 applied to Reynolds, and to yourself. This, 
 even where it does not produce confusion, is 
 always inelegant I was therefore obliged to 
 drop it ; so that we must be content, I fear, with 
 the inscription as it stands below. As you 
 mention that the first copy was mislaid, I will 
 transcribe the first part from that ; but you can 
 either choose the Dome or the Abbey as you 
 like. 
 
 Ye lime trees, ranged before this hallowed urn, 
 
 Shoot forth with lively power at Spring's return ; 
 
 And be not slow a stately growth to rear 
 
 Of pillars, branching off from year to year, 
 
 Till ye have framed, at length, a darksome aisle, 
 
 Like a recess within that sacred pile 
 
 Where Reynolds, 'mid our country's noblest dead, 
 
 In the last sanctity of fame is laid, etc. 
 
 I hope this will do : I tried a hundred differ- 
 ent ways, but cannot hit upon anything better. 
 I am sorry to learn from Lady Beaumont, that 
 there is reason to believe that our cedar is 
 
INSCRIPTIONS. 85 
 
 already perished. I am sorry for it. The verses 
 upon that subject you and Lady B. praise 
 highly ; and certainly, if they have merit, as I 
 cannot but think they have, your discriminating 
 praises have pointed it out. The alteration in 
 the beginning, I think with you, is a great 
 improvement, and the first line is, to my ear, 
 very rich and grateful. As to the " Female and 
 Male," I know not how to get rid of it ; for that 
 circumstance gives the recess an appropriate 
 interest I remember Mr. Bowles the poet ob- 
 jected to the word "ravishment" at the end of 
 the sonnet to the winter garden ; yet it has the 
 authority of all the first-rate poets, for instance, 
 Milton : 
 
 In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment, 
 Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze. 
 
 Objections upon these grounds merit more 
 attention in regard to inscriptions than any 
 other sort of composition ; and on this account, 
 the lines (I mean those upon the niche) had 
 better be suppressed, for it is not improbable 
 that the altering of them might cost me more 
 trouble than writing a hundred fresh ones. 
 
86 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 POETRY AS A STUDY (iSis). 1 
 
 With the young of both sexes, Poetry is, like 
 love, a passion ; but, for much the greater part 
 of those who have been proud of its power over 
 their minds, a necessity soon arises of breaking 
 the pleasing bondage ; or it relaxes of itself; 
 the thoughts being occupied in domestic cares, 
 or the time engrossed by business. Poetry then 
 becomes only an occasional recreation ; while 
 to those whose existence passes away in a 
 course of fashionable pleasure, it is a species 
 of luxurious amusement. In middle and declin- 
 ing a S e > a scattered number of serious persons 
 resort to poetry, as to religion, for a protec- 
 tion against the pressure of trivial employ- 
 ments, and as a consolation for the afflictions 
 of life. And, lastly, there are many, who, 
 having been enamoured of this art in their 
 youth, have found leisure, after youth was 
 spent, to cultivate general literature ; in which 
 poetry has continued to be comprehended as 
 a study. 
 
 RELIGION AND POETRY 
 
 Faith was given to man that his affections, 
 detached from the treasures of time, might be 
 
 1 From the Preface to Poems, published in 1815. 
 
RELIGION AND POETRY. 87 
 
 inclined to settle upon those of eternity : the 
 elevation of his nature, which this habit pro- 
 duces on earth, being to him a presumptive 
 evidence of a future state of existence ; and 
 giving him a title to partake of its holiness. 
 The religious man values what he sees chiefly 
 as an " imperfect shadowing forth " of what he 
 is incapable of seeing. The concerns of religion 
 refer to indefinite objects, and are too weighty 
 for the mind to support them without relieving 
 itself by resting a great part of the burthen upon 
 words and symbols. The commerce between 
 Man and his Maker cannot be carried on but 
 by a process where much is represented in little, 
 and the Infinite Being accommodates himself to 
 a finite capacity. In all this may be perceived 
 the affinity between religion and poetry; between 
 religion making up the deficiencies of reason 
 by faith ; and poetry passionate for the instruc- 
 tion of reason ; between religion whose element 
 is infinitude, and whose ultimate trust is the 
 supreme of things, submitting herself to circum- . 
 scription, and reconciled to substitutions ; and 
 poetry ethereal and transcendent, yet incap- 
 able to sustain her existence without sensuous 
 incarnation. In this community of nature may 
 be perceived also the lurking incitements of 
 kindred error; so that we shall find that no 
 poetry has been more subject to distortion, 
 than that species, the argument and scope of 
 
88 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 which is religious ; and no lovers of the art 
 have gone farther astray than the pious and 
 the devout 
 
 POETIC ORIGINALITY 
 
 If there be one conclusion more forcibly 
 pressed upon us than another by the review 
 which has been given of the fortunes and fate of 
 poetical Works, it is this, that every author, as 
 far as he is great and at the same time original, 
 has had the task of creating the taste by which 
 he is to be enjoyed ; so has it been, so will it 
 continue to be. This remark was long since 
 made to me by the philosophical Friend for the 
 separation of whose poems from my own I have 
 previously expressed my regret. The prede- 
 cessors of an original Genius of a high order 
 will have smoothed the way for all that he has 
 in common with them ; and much he will have 
 in common ; but, for what is peculiarly his own, 
 he will be called upon to clear and often to 
 shape his own road ; he will be in the condition 
 of Hannibal among the Alps. . . . 
 
 If every great poet with whose writings men 
 are familiar, in the highest exercise of his genius, 
 before he can be thoroughly enjoyed, has to call 
 
 1 From the Preface to Poems, 1815. 
 
THE POPULAR IN POETRY. 89 
 
 forth and to communicate power t this service, 
 in a still greater degree, falls upon an original 
 writer, at his first appearance in the world. Of 
 genius the only proof is, the act of doing well 
 what is worthy to be done, and what was never 
 done before : Of genius, in the fine arts, the 
 only infallible sign is the widening the sphere of 
 human sensibility, for the delight, honour, and 
 benefit of human nature. Genius is the intro- 
 duction of a new element into the intellectual 
 universe : or, if that be not allowed, it is the 
 application of powers to objects on which they 
 had not before been exercised, or the employ- 
 ment of them in such a manner as to produce 
 effects hitherto unknown. What is all this but 
 an advance, or a conquest, made by the soul of 
 the poet ? 
 
 THE POPULAR IN POETRY 
 
 The qualities of writing best fitted for eager 
 reception are either such as startle the world 
 into attention by their audacity and extrava- 
 gance ; or they are chiefly of a superficial kind 
 lying upon the surfaces of manners ; or arising 
 out of a selection and arrangement of incidents, 
 by which the mind is kept upon the stretch of 
 curiosity and the fancy amused without the 
 
 1 From the Preface to Poems, 1815. 
 
90 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 trouble of thought But in every thing which is 
 to send the soul into herself, to be admonished 
 of her weakness, or to be made conscious of her 
 power : wherever life and Nature are described 
 as operated upon by the creative or abstracting 
 virtue of the imagination ; wherever the instinc- 
 tive wisdom of antiquity and her heroic passions 
 uniting, in the heart of the poet, with the 
 meditative wisdom of later ages, have produced 
 that accord of sublimated humanity, which is 
 at once a history of the remote past and a 
 prophetic enunciation of the remotest future, 
 there, the poet must reconcile himself for a 
 season to few and scattered hearers. Grand 
 thoughts (and Shakspeare must often have 
 sighed over this truth), as they are most 
 naturally and most fitly conceived in solitude, 
 so can they not be brought forth in the midst of 
 plaudits, without some violation of their sanctity. 
 Go to a silent exhibition of the productions 
 of the Sister Art, and be convinced that the 
 qualities which dazzle at first sight, and kindle 
 the admiration of the multitude, are essentially 
 different from those by which permanent in- 
 fluence is secured. Let us not shrink from 
 following up these principles as far as they will 
 carry us, and conclude with observing that 
 there never has been a period, and perhaps 
 never will be, in which vicious poetry, of some 
 kind or other, has not excited more zealous 
 
PRODUCTION OF POETRY. 91 
 
 admiration, and been far more generally read, 
 than good ; but this advantage attends the 
 good, that the individual, as well as the species, 
 survives from age to age ; whereas, of the 
 depraved, though the species be immortal, the 
 individual quickly perishes ; the object of 
 present admiration vanishes, being supplanted 
 by some other as easily produced ; which, 
 though no better, brings with it at least the 
 irritation of novelty, with adaptation, more or 
 less skilful, to the changing humours of the 
 majority of those who are most at leisure to 
 regard poetical works when they first solicit 
 their attention. 
 
 THE POWERS REQUISITE FOR THE 
 PRODUCTION OF POETRY (iSis). 1 
 
 The powers requisite for the production of 
 poetry are : first, those of Observation and 
 Description i.e., the ability to observe with 
 accuracy things as they are in themselves, and 
 with fidelity to describe them, unmodified by 
 any passion or feeling existing in the mind of 
 the describer : whether the things depicted be 
 actually present to the senses, or have a place 
 only in the memory. This power, though indis- 
 pensable to a Poet, is one which he employs 
 
 1 From the Preface to Poems, 1815. 
 
92 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 only in submission to necessity, and never for a 
 continuance of time : as its exercise supposes all 
 the higher qualities of the mind to be passive, 
 and in a state of subjection to external objects, 
 much in the same way as a translator or 
 engraver ought to be to his original. 2ndly, 
 Sensibility, which, the more exquisite it is, the 
 wider will be the range of a poet's perceptions ; 
 and the more will he be incited to observe 
 objects, both as they exist in themselves, and 
 as re-acted upon by his own mind. (The dis- 
 tinction between poetic and human sensibility 
 has been marked in the character of the Poet 
 delineated in the original preface.) Srdly, 
 Reflection, which makes the Poet acquainted 
 with the value of actions, images, thoughts, and 
 feelings ; and assists the sensibility in perceiving 
 their connection with each other. 4thly, Im- 
 agination and Fancy, to modify, to create, 
 and to associate. Sthly, Invention, by which 
 characters are composed out of materials sup- 
 plied by observation ; whether of the Poet's 
 own heart and mind, or of external life and 
 nature ; and such incidents and situations pro- 
 duced as are most impressive to the imagination, 
 and most fitted to do justice to the characters, 
 sentiments, and passions, which the Poet under- 
 takes to illustrate. And, lastly, Judgment, to 
 decide how and where, and in what degree, 
 each of these faculties ought to be exerted ; so 
 
IMAGINATION AND FANCY. 93 
 
 that the less shall not be sacrificed to the 
 greater; nor the greater, slighting the less, 
 arrogate, to its own injury, more than its due. 
 By judgment, also, is determined what are the 
 laws and appropriate graces of every species of 
 composition. 
 
 IMAGINATION AND FANCY 
 
 The grand store-houses of enthusiastic and 
 meditative Imagination, of poetical, as contra- 
 distinguished from human and dramatic Imagi- 
 nation, are the prophetic and lyrical parts of the 
 Holy Scriptures, and the works of Milton ; to 
 which I cannot forbear to add those of Spenser. 
 I select these writers in preference to those of 
 ancient Greece and Rome, because the anthropo- 
 morphism of the Pagan religion subjected the 
 minds of the greatest poets in those countries 
 too much to the bondage of definite form ; from 
 which the Hebrews were preserved by their 
 abhorrence of idolatry. This abhorrence was 
 almost as strong in our great epic Poet, both 
 from circumstances of his life, and from the 
 constitution of his mind. However imbued the 
 surface might be with classical literature, he 
 was a Hebrew in soul ; and all things tended 
 in him towards the sublime. Spenser, of a 
 
 1 From the Preface to Poems, 1815. 
 
94 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 gentler nature, maintained his freedom by aid 
 of his allegorical spirit, at one time inciting him 
 to create persons out of abstractions ; and, at 
 another, by a superior effort of genius, to give 
 the universality and permanence of abstractions 
 to his human beings, by means of attributes and 
 emblems that belong to the highest moral truths 
 and the purest sensations, of which his char- 
 acter of Una is a glorious example. Of the 
 human and dramatic Imagination the works of 
 Shakspeare are an inexhaustible source. 
 
 I tax not you, ye Elements, with unkindness, 
 
 I never gave you kingdoms, call'd you Daughters ! 
 
 . . . But the Imagination is conscious of an 
 indestructible dominion ; the Soul may fall 
 away from it, not being able to sustain its 
 grandeur; but, if once felt and acknowledged, 
 by no act of any other faculty of the mind 
 can it be relaxed, impaired, or diminished. 
 Fancy is given to quicken and to beguile the 
 temporal part of our nature, Imagination to 
 incite and to support the eternal. Yet is it 
 not the less true that Fancy, as she is an active, 
 is also, under her own laws and in her own 
 spirit, a creative faculty. In what manner 
 Fancy ambitiously aims at a rivalship with 
 Imagination, and Imagination stoops to work 
 with materials of Fancy, might be illustrated 
 from the compositions of all eloquent writers, 
 
IMAGINATION AND FANCY. 95 
 
 whether in prose or verse ; and chiefly from 
 those of our own Country. Scarcely a page 
 of the impassioned parts of Bishop Taylor's 
 Works can be opened that shall not afford 
 examples. Referring the Reader to those in- 
 estimable volumes, I will content myself with 
 placing a conceit (ascribed to Lord Chesterfield) 
 in contrast with a passage from the Paradise 
 Lost : 
 
 The dews of the evening most carefully shun, 
 They are the tears of the sky for the loss of the sun. 
 
 After the transgression of Adam, Milton, with 
 other appearances of sympathising Nature, thus 
 marks the immediate consequence 
 
 Sky lowered, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops 
 Wept at completion of the mortal sin. 
 
 The associating link is the same in each instance : 
 Dew and rain, not distinguishable from the liquid 
 substance of tears, are employed as indications 
 of sorrow. A flash of surprise is the effect in the 
 former case; a flash of surprise, and nothing 
 more ; for the nature of things does not sustain 
 the combination. In the latter, the effects from 
 the act, of which there is this immediate con- 
 sequence and visible sign, are so momentous, 
 that the mind acknowledges the justice and 
 reasonableness of the sympathy in nature so 
 
96 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 manifested; and the sky weeps drops of water 
 as if with human eyes, as "Earth had before 
 trembled from her entrails, and Nature given a 
 second groan." 
 
 IDIOTS 
 
 I have often applied to idiots, in my own 
 mind, that sublime expression of Scripture that 
 " their life is hidden ^vith God" They are wor- 
 shipped, probably from a feeling of this sort, in 
 several parts of the East. Among the Alps, 
 where they are numerous, they are considered, 
 I believe, as a blessing to the family to which 
 they belong. I have, indeed, often looked upon 
 the conduct of fathers and mothers of the lower 
 classes of society towards idiots as the great 
 triumph of the human heart. It is there that 
 we see the strength, disinterestedness, and 
 grandeur of love ; nor have I ever been able 
 to contemplate an object that calls out so many 
 excellent and virtuous sentiments without rind- 
 ing it hallowed thereby, and having something 
 in me which bears down before it, like a deluge, 
 every feeble sensation of disgust and aversion. 
 
 1 From a letter to John Wilson (Christopher North). 
 
LITERARY BIOGRAPHY. 97 
 
 LITERARY BIOGRAPHY (I8I6). 1 
 
 Biography, though differing in some essentials 
 from works of fiction, is nevertheless, like them, 
 an art an art, the laws of which are determined 
 by the imperfections of our nature, and the con- 
 stitution of society. Truth is not here, as in 
 the sciences, and in natural philosophy, to be 
 sought without scruple, and promulgated for its 
 own sake, upon the mere chance of its being 
 serviceable; but only for obviously justifying 
 purposes, moral or intellectual. 
 
 Silence is a privilege of the grave, a right 
 of the departed : let him, therefore, who infringes 
 that right, by speaking publicly of, for, or 
 against, those who cannot speak for themselves, 
 take heed that he opens not his mouth without 
 a sufficient sanction. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, 
 is a rule in which thee sentiments have been 
 pushed to an extreme that proves how deeply 
 humanity is interested in maintaining them. 
 And it was wise to announce the precept thus 
 absolutely ; both because there exist in that 
 same nature, by which it has been dictated, so 
 many temptations to disregard it ; and because 
 there are powers and influences, within and 
 without us, that will prevent its being literally 
 
 1 From a letter to James Gray. 
 
98 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 fulfilled, to the suppression of profitable truth. 
 Penalties of law, conventions of manners, and 
 personal fear, protect the reputation of the 
 living ; and something of this protection is ex- 
 tended to the recently dead, who survive, to a 
 certain degree, in their kindred and friends. 
 Few are so insensible as not to feel this, and 
 not to be actuated by the feeling. But only to 
 philosophy enlightened by the affections does it 
 belong justly to estimate the claims of the 
 deceased on the one hand, and of the present 
 age and future generations, on the other ; and 
 to strike a balance between them. Such philo- 
 sophy runs a risk of becoming extinct among 
 us, if the coarse intrusions into the recesses, the 
 gross breaches upon the sanctities, of domestic 
 life, to which we have lately been more and 
 more accustomed, are to be regarded as indica- 
 tions of a vigorous state of public feeling. . . . 
 
 The general obligation upon which I have 
 insisted, is especially binding upon those who 
 undertake the biography of authors. Assuredly, 
 there is no cause why the lives of that class of 
 men should be pried into with the same diligent 
 curiosity, and laid open with the same disregard 
 of reserve, which may sometimes be expedient in 
 composing the history of men who have borne 
 an active part in the world. Such thorough 
 knowledge of the good and bad qualities of 
 these latter, as can only be obtained by a 
 
BURNS. 99 
 
 scrutiny of their private lives, conduces to ex- 
 plain not only their own public conduct, but 
 that of those with whom they have acted. 
 Nothing of this applies to authors, considered 
 merely as authors. Our business is with their 
 books, to understand and to enjoy them. And, 
 of poets more especially, it is true that, if their 
 works be good, they contain within themselves 
 all that is necessary to their being comprehended 
 and relished. It should seem that the ancients 
 thought in this manner ; for of the eminent 
 Greek and Roman poets, few and scanty me- 
 morials were, I believe, ever prepared ; and 
 fewer still are preserved. It is delightful to 
 read what, in the happy exercise of his own 
 genius, Horace chooses to communicate of him- 
 self and his friends ; but I confess I am not so 
 much a lover of knowledge, independent of its 
 quality, as to make it likely that it would much 
 rejoice me, were I to hear that records of the 
 Sabine poet and his contemporaries, composed 
 upon the Boswellian plan, had been unearthed 
 among the ruins of Herculaneum. 
 
 BURNS (I8I6). 1 
 
 On the basis of his own character Burns has 
 reared a poetic one, which with more or less 
 
 1 From a letter to James Gray. 
 
ioo WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 distinctness presents itself to view in almost 
 every part of his earlier, and, in my estimation, 
 his most valuable verses. This poetic fabric, dug 
 out of the quarry of genuine humanity, is airy 
 and spiritual : and though the materials, in some 
 parts, are coarse, and the disposition is often 
 fantastic and irregular, yet the whole is agree- 
 able and strikingly attractive. Plague, then, 
 upon your remorseless hunters after matter of 
 fact (who, after all, rank among the blindest of 
 human beings) when they would convince you 
 that the foundations of this admirable edifice are 
 hollow ; and that its frame is unsound ! Grant- 
 ing that all which has been raked up to the 
 prejudice of Burns were literally true ; and that 
 it added, which it does not, to our better under- 
 standing of human nature and human life (for 
 that genius is not incompatible with vice, and 
 that vice leads to misery the more acute from 
 the sensibilities which are the elements of genius 
 we needed not those communications to in- 
 form us), how poor would have been the com- 
 pensation for the deduction made, by this 
 extrinsic knowledge, from the intrinsic efficacy 
 of his poetry to please, and to instruct ! 
 
 It is the privilege of poetic genius to catch, 
 under certain restrictions, of which perhaps at 
 the time of its being exerted it is but dimly 
 conscious, a spirit of pleasure wherever it can 
 be found, in the walks of nature, and in the 
 
BURNS. 101 
 
 business of men. The poet, trusting to primary 
 instincts, luxuriates among the felicities of love 
 and wine, and is enraptured while he describes 
 the fairer aspects of war : nor does he shrink 
 from the company of the passion of love though 
 immoderate from convivial pleasure though 
 intemperate nor from the presence of war 
 though savage, and recognised as the handmaid 
 of desolation. Frequently and admirably has 
 Burns given way to these impulses of nature ; 
 both with reference to himself and in describing 
 the condition of others. Who, but some im- 
 penetrable dunce or narrow-minded puritan in 
 works of art, ever read without delight the 
 picture which he has drawn of the convivial ex- 
 altation of the rustic adventurer, Tarn o'Shanter ? 
 The poet fears not to tell the reader in the 
 outset that his hero was a desperate and sottish 
 drunkard, whose excesses were frequent as his 
 opportunities. This reprobate sits down to his 
 cups, while the storm is roaring, and heaven and 
 earth are in confusion ; the night is driven on 
 by song and tumultuous noise laughter and 
 jest thicken as the beverage improves upon the 
 palate conjugal fidelity archly bends to the 
 service of general benevolence selfishness is 
 not absent, but wearing the mask of social cor- 
 diality and, while these various elements of 
 humanity are blended into one proud and happy 
 composition of elated spirits, the anger of the 
 
iO2 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 tempest without doors only heightens and sets 
 off the enjoyment within. I pity him who 
 cannot perceive that, in all this, though there 
 was no moral purpose, there is a moral effect. 
 
 Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious, 
 O'er a' the ills o' life victorious. 
 
 What a lesson do these words convey of 
 charitable indulgence for the vicious habits of 
 the principal actor in this scene, and of those 
 who resemble him! Men who to the rigidly 
 virtuous are objects almost of loathing, and 
 whom therefore they cannot serve ! The poet, 
 penetrating the unsightly and disgusting sur- 
 faces of things, has unveiled with exquisite skill 
 the finer ties of imagination and feeling, that 
 often bind these beings to practices productive 
 of so much unhappiness to themselves, and to 
 those whom it is their duty to cherish ; and, as 
 far as he puts the reader into possession of 
 this intelligent sympathy, he qualifies him for 
 exercising a salutary influence over the minds of 
 those who are thus deplorably enslaved. . . . 
 
 It is probable that he would have proved a 
 still greater poet if, by strength of reason, he 
 could have controlled the propensities which his 
 sensibility engendered ; but he would have been 
 a poet of a different class : and certain it is, had 
 that desirable restraint been early established, 
 many peculiar beauties which enrich his verses 
 
VANITY AND SELF-CONCEIT. 103 
 
 could never have existed, and many accessary 
 influences, which contribute greatly to their 
 effect, would have been wanting. For instance, 
 the momentous truth of the passage already 
 quoted, " One point must still be greatly dark," 
 etc., could not possibly have been conveyed with 
 such pathetic force by any poet that ever lived, 
 speaking in his own voice; unless it were felt 
 that, like Burns, he was a man who preached 
 from the text of his own errors ; and whose 
 wisdom, beautiful as a flower that might have 
 risen from seed sown from above, was in fact a 
 scion from the root of personal suffering. Whom 
 did the poet intend should be thought of as 
 occupying that grave over which, after modestly 
 setting forth the moral discernment and warm 
 affections of its " poor inhabitant," it is supposed 
 to be inscribed that 
 
 Thoughtless follies laid him low, 
 
 And stained his name. 
 
 Who but himself, himself anticipating the too 
 probable termination of his own course? 
 
 VANITY AND SELF-CONCEIT (I8I6). 1 
 
 Malignity selects its diet ; but where is to 
 be found the nourishment from which vanity 
 
 1 From a letter to James Gray. 
 
104 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 will revolt? Malignity may be appeased by 
 triumphs real or supposed, and will then sleep, 
 or yield its place to a repentance producing 
 dispositions of good will, and desires to make 
 amends for past injury ; but vanity is restless, 
 reckless, intractable, unappeasable, insatiable. 
 Fortunate is it for the world when this spirit 
 incites only to actions that meet with an 
 adequate punishment in derision ; such, as in 
 a scheme of poetical justice, would be aptly 
 requited by assigning to the agents, when they 
 quit this lower world, a station in that not 
 uncomfortable limbo the Paradise of Fools ! 
 But, assuredly, we shall have here another proof 
 that ridicule is not the test of truth, if it prevent 
 us from perceiving, that depravity has no ally 
 more active, more inveterate, nor, from the 
 difficulty of divining to what kind and degree of 
 extravagance it may prompt, more pernicious 
 than self-conceit. ... It is not recorded, that 
 the ancient, who set fire to the temple of Diana, 
 had a particular dislike to the goddess of 
 chastity, or held idolatry in abhorrence. He 
 was a fool, an egregious fool, but not the less, 
 on that account, a most odious monster. The 
 tyrant who is described as having rattled his 
 chariot along a bridge of brass over the heads of 
 his subjects, was, no doubt, inwardly laughed 
 at ; but what if this mock Jupiter, not satisfied 
 with an empty noise of his own making, had 
 
VANITY AND SELF-CONCEIT. 105 
 
 amused himself with throwing fire-brands upon 
 the house-tops, as a substitute for lightning ; 
 and, from his elevation, had hurled stones upon 
 the heads of his people, to show that he was a 
 master of the destructive bolt, as well as of the 
 harmless voice of the thunder ! The lovers of 
 all that is honourable to humanity have recently 
 had occasion to rejoice over the downfall of an 
 intoxicated despot, whose vagaries furnish more 
 solid materials by which the philosopher will 
 exemplify how strict is the connection between 
 the ludicrously, and the terribly fantastic. We 
 know, also, that Robespierre was one of the 
 vainest men that the most vain country upon 
 earth has produced ; and from this passion, 
 and from that cowardice which naturally con- 
 nects itself with it, flowed the horrors of his 
 administration. It is a descent, which I fear 
 you will scarcely pardon, to compare these 
 redoubtable enemies of mankind with the 
 anonymous conductor of a perishable publica- 
 tion. But the moving spirit is the same in 
 them all ; and, as far as difference of circum- 
 stances, and disparity of powers, will allow, 
 manifests itself in the same way; by profes- 
 sions of reverence for truth, and concern for 
 duty carried to the giddiest heights of osten- 
 tation, while practice seems to have no other 
 reliance than on the omnipotence of false- 
 hood. 
 
io6 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 A TOUR IN THE LAKES (I8I6). 1 
 
 Upon a supposition that you propose to take 
 some pains in seeing the Country, I will proceed 
 to give you directions for doing it to the best 
 advantage. London, Manchester, Lancaster (the 
 Castle is extremely well worth your notice) ; at 
 this Town, instead of proceeding by the Coach 
 to Kendal, inquire about the best mode of 
 crossing the sands to Ulverstone ; a coach used 
 to go, but whether it runs now or not I cannot 
 say. At Ulverstone you will be within seven 
 or eight miles of the celebrated Abbey of 
 St. Mary's, commonly called Furness Abbey. 
 These Ruins are very striking, and in an appro- 
 priate situation ; if you should think it worth 
 while to go and see Furness, the best way would 
 be for you and your Friend to hire a chaise, as 
 by so doing you would preserve your strength, 
 and only need consume three hours in the 
 Expedition. Should you not deem this right 
 (for you would have to go and come back by 
 the same way), you will proceed straight from 
 Ulverstone to Coniston Water by Penny bridge; 
 there is a decent Inn, and at the head of 
 Coniston Lake a very good one delightfully 
 situated. If so inclined, you might pass a 
 
 1 From a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson. 
 
A TOUR IN THE LAKES. 107 
 
 whole day very pleasantly there ; the morning 
 rowing upon the water, the afternoon walking 
 up and through Yew-dale into Tilberthwaite by 
 a house called the Yew-tree, and up a road 
 which will land you near another Farm-house 
 called Tarn Hows ; at a point in this road you 
 will suddenly come upon a fine prospect of 
 Coniston Lake, looking down it. From Coniston 
 to Hawkeshead ; at Hawkeshead walk up into 
 the churchyard and notice below you the School- 
 house, which has sent forth many northern 
 lights. From Hawkeshead proceed to the Ferry 
 House upon Windermere, and less than a quarter 
 of a mile before you reach it stop, and put 
 yourself under the guidance of an old Woman, 
 who will come out to meet you if you sing or 
 call for her at a fantastic sort of gateway, an 
 appurtenance to a Pleasure House of that cele- 
 brated Patriot Mr. Curwen, called the Station. 
 The Ferry Inn is very respectable, that at 
 Bowness excellent. Cross at the Ferry, and 
 proceed by Bowness up the lake towards Amble- 
 side ; you will pass Low-wood, an excellent Inn 
 also, but here you would be within four miles of 
 Rydale Mount, where I shall be most happy to 
 see you, and furnish you with a bed as long as 
 you like. The Road I have chalked out is 
 much the best for commencing the tour, but 
 few take it. The usual way is to come on 
 directly to Kendal, but I can assure you that 
 
loS WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 this deviation from the common course will 
 amply repay you. 
 
 FURNESS ABBEY, ETC. (iSi/). 1 
 
 How came you to quarrel with Furness 
 Abbey? Your old enemy, bad weather, must 
 have persecuted you into bad humour, which, 
 powerful as your foe was, I think he would find 
 some difficulty in effecting. Furness Abbey 
 presents some grand points of view, which you 
 must have missed. The Architecture never 
 seems to have been as highly embellished as 
 might have been expected from the princely 
 power and revenues of the community who 
 erected it. But after all, why not be thankful 
 for what has been done, and yet remains? 
 How unlucky you were ! We have had less 
 rain during the last eleven or twelve weeks than 
 the average of as many hours taken for the 
 time you were among us. It has been a cold 
 spring, but bright and beautiful, and we are now 
 in a circle of the old golden glorious summer 
 days ; the little corn that we have in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and the grass, growing as fast as in 
 Russia or Finland. Yesterday Mrs. Words- 
 worth and myself were on the top of Helvellyn, 
 my second visit within these last three weeks. 
 
 1 From a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson. 
 
MONUMENTS TO LITERARY MEN. 109 
 
 The former was with my Sister ; we returned 
 over its summit from Patterdale, where we had 
 been staying a few days. I describe nothing of 
 their appearances in Prose, you will hear of 
 them at some future time in Verse. 
 
 MONUMENTS TO LITERARY MEN (1819).* 
 
 Eminent poets appear to me to be a class of 
 men, who less than any others stand in need of 
 such marks of distinction ; and hence I infer, 
 that this mode of acknowledging their merits is 
 one for which they would not, in general, be 
 themselves solicitous. Burns did, indeed, erect 
 a monument to Fergusson ; but I apprehend 
 his gratitude took this course because he felt 
 that Fergusson had been prematurely cut off, 
 and that his fame bore no proportion to his 
 deserts. In neither of these particulars can the 
 fate of Burns justly be said to resemble that of 
 his predecessor : his years were indeed few, but 
 numerous enough to allow him to spread his 
 name far and wide, and to take permanent root 
 in the affections of his countrymen ; in short, he 
 has raised for himself a monument so con- 
 spicuous, and of such imperishable materials, as 
 to render a local fabric of stone superfluous, and, 
 therefore, comparatively insignificant. 
 
 1 From a letter to a friend. 
 
no WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 But why, if this be granted, should not his 
 fond admirers be permitted to indulge their 
 feelings, and at the same time to embellish the 
 metropolis of Scotland ? If this may be justly 
 objected to, and in my opinion it may, it is 
 because the showy tributes to genius are apt to 
 draw off attention from those efforts by which 
 the interests of literature might be substantially 
 promoted ; and to exhaust public spirit in 
 comparatively unprofitable exertions, when the 
 wrongs of literary men are crying out for redress 
 on all sides. It appears to me, that towards no 
 class of his Majesty's subjects are the laws so 
 unjust and oppressive. The attention of Parlia- 
 ment has lately been directed, by petition, to 
 the exaction of copies of newly-published works 
 for certain libraries ; but this is a trifling evil 
 compared with the restrictions imposed upon 
 the duration of copyright, which, in respect to 
 works profound in philosophy, or elevated, and 
 refined in imagination, is tantamount almost to 
 an exclusion of the author from all pecuniary 
 recompense ; and, even where works of imagina- 
 tion are so constituted as to be adapted to 
 immediate demand, as is the case of those of 
 Burns, justly may it be asked, what reason can 
 be assigned that an author who dies young 
 should have the prospect before him of his 
 children being left to languish in poverty and 
 dependence, while booksellers are revelling in 
 
MONUMENTS TO LITERARY MEN. in 
 
 luxury upon gains derived from works which 
 are the delight of many nations. 
 
 This subject might be carried much further, 
 and we might ask, if the course of things insured 
 immediate wealth, and accompanying rank and 
 honours honours and wealth often entailed on 
 their families to men distinguished in the other 
 learned professions, why the laws should inter- 
 fere to take away those pecuniary emoluments 
 which are the natural inheritance of the posterity 
 of authors, whose pursuits, if directed by genius 
 and sustained by industry, yield in importance 
 to none in which the members of a community 
 can be engaged ? 
 
 I would readily assist, according to my means, 
 in erecting a mpnument to the memory of the 
 Poet Chatterton, who, with transcendent genius, 
 was cut off while he was yet a boy in years ; 
 this, could he have anticipated the tribute, might 
 have soothed his troubled spirit, as an expres- 
 sion of general belief in the existence of those 
 powers which he was too impatient and too 
 proud to develop. At all events, it might 
 prove an awful and a profitable warning. I 
 should also be glad to see a monument erected 
 on the banks of Loch Leven to the memory of 
 the innocent and tender-hearted Michael Bruce, 
 who, after a short life, spent in poverty and 
 obscurity, was called away too early to have 
 left behind him more than a few trustworthy 
 
ri2 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 promises of pure affections and unvitiated 
 imagination. 
 
 Let the gallant defenders of our country be 
 liberally rewarded with monuments ; their noble 
 actions cannot speak for themselves, as the 
 writings of men of genius are able to do. 
 Gratitude in respect to them stands in need of 
 admonition ; and the very multitude of heroic 
 competitors which increases the demand for 
 this sentiment towards our naval and military 
 defenders, considered as a body, is injurious to 
 the claims of individuals. Let our great states- 
 men and eminent lawyers, our learned and 
 eloquent divines, and they who have successfully 
 devoted themselves to the abstruser sciences, be 
 rewarded in like manner ; but towards departed 
 genius, exerted in the fine arts, and more 
 especially in poetry, I humbly think, in the 
 present state of things, the sense of our obliga- 
 tion to it may more satisfactorily be expressed 
 by means pointing directly to the general 
 benefit of literature. 
 
 TOUR ON THE CONTINENT (I820). 1 
 
 From the Valley of Lauterbrunnen we crossed 
 the Wengern Alp to Grindelwald, and then over 
 the grand Sheideck to Meyringen. This journey 
 
 1 From a letter to Lord Lonsdale. 
 
TOUR ON THE CONTINENT. 113 
 
 led us over high ground, and for fifteen leagues 
 along the base of the loftiest Alps, which reared 
 their bare or snow-clad ridges and pikes, in a 
 clear atmosphere, with fleecy clouds now and 
 then settling upon and gathering round them. 
 We heard and saw several avalanches ; they 
 are announced by a sound like thunder, but 
 more metallic and musical. This warning 
 naturally makes one look about, and we had the 
 gratification of seeing one falling, in the shape 
 and appearance of a torrent or cascade of 
 foaming water, down the deep-worn crevices of 
 the steep or perpendicular granite mountains. 
 Nothing can be more awful than the sound of 
 these cataracts of ice and snow thus descending, 
 unless it be the silence which succeeds. The 
 elevations from which we beheld these opera- 
 tions of Nature, and saw such an immense 
 range of primitive mountains stretching to the 
 east and west, were covered with rich pasturage 
 and beautiful flowers, among which was abund- 
 ance of the monkshood, a flower which I had 
 never seen but in the trim borders of our 
 gardens, and which here grew not so much in 
 patches as in little woods or forests, towering 
 above the other plants. At this season the 
 herdsmen are with their cattle in still higher 
 regions than those which we have trod, the 
 herbage where we travelled being reserved 
 till they descend in the autumn. We have 
 
ii4 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 visited the Abbey of Engelberg, not many 
 leagues from the borders of the Lake of 
 Lucerne. The tradition is, that the site of the 
 abbey was appointed by angels, singing from 
 a lofty mountain that rises from the plain of 
 the valley, and which, from having been thus 
 honoured, is called Engelberg, or the Hill of the 
 Angels. It is a glorious position for such beings, 
 and I should have thought myself repaid for the 
 trouble of so long a journey by the impression 
 made upon my mind, when I first came in view 
 of the vale in which the convent is placed, and 
 of the mountains that enclose it. The light of 
 the sun had left the valley, and the deep shadows 
 spread over it heightened the splendour of the 
 evening light, and spread upon the surrounding 
 mountains, some of which had their summits 
 covered with pure snow; others were half hidden 
 by vapours rolling round them ; and the Rock 
 of Engelberg could not have been seen under 
 more fortunate circumstances, for masses of 
 cloud glowing with the reflection of the rays 
 of the setting sun were hovering round it, like 
 choirs of spirits preparing to settle upon its 
 venerable head. 
 
LONG MEG AND HER DAUGHTERS. 115 
 
 LONG MEG AND HER DAUGHTERS (I82I). 1 
 
 I was obliged to make a circuit which showed 
 me for the time several miles of the course of that 
 beautiful stream the Eden, from the bridge near 
 Temple Sowerby down to Kirkoswald. Part of 
 this tract of country I had indeed seen before, 
 but not from the same points of view. It is a 
 charming region, particularly at the spot where 
 the Eden and Emont join. The rivers appeared 
 exquisitely brilliant, gliding under rocks and 
 through green meadows, with woods and sloping 
 cultivated grounds, and pensive russet moors 
 interspersed, and along the circuit of the horizon, 
 lofty hills and mountains clothed, rather than 
 concealed, in fleecy clouds and resplendent 
 vapours. 
 
 My road brought me suddenly and unex 
 pectedly upon that ancient monument, called by 
 the country people Long Meg and her Daugh- 
 ters. Everybody has heard of it, and so had I 
 from very early childhood, but had never seen 
 it before. Next to Stonehenge, it is beyond 
 dispute the most noble relic of the kin'd that 
 this or probably any other country contains. 
 Long Meg is a single block of unhewn stone, 
 eighteen feet high, at a small distance from a 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
ii6 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 vast circle of other stones, some of them of huge 
 size, though curtailed of their stature by their 
 own incessant pressure upon it 
 
 MODERN TRAGEDY, ETC. (I82:). 1 
 
 I have read Cornwall's Tragedy, and think 
 of it pretty much as you seem to do. The 
 feelings are cleverly touched in it, but the 
 situations for exhibiting them are produced, 
 not only by sacrifice of the respectability of 
 the persons concerned, but with great, and I 
 should have thought unnecessary, violation of 
 probability and common sense. But it appears 
 to me in the present late age of the world a 
 most difficult task to construct a good tragedy, 
 free from stale and mean contrivances, and 
 animated by new and suitable characters. So 
 that I am inclined to judge Cornwall gently, 
 and sincerely rejoice in his success. As to 
 Poetry, I am sick of it ; it overruns the 
 country in all the shapes of the plagues of 
 Egypt, frog-poets (the Croakers), mice-poets 
 (the Nibblers), a class rhyming to mice (which 
 shall be nameless), and fly-poets (Gray in his 
 dignified way calls flies the "Insect Youth," a 
 term wonderfully applicable upon this occasion). 
 But let us desist 
 
 1 From a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson. 
 
RAMBLE IN NORTH WALES. 117 
 
 RAMBLE IN NORTH WALES (I824). 1 
 
 At half-past four we departed for Llanberris, 
 having fine views, as we looked back, of Carnar- 
 von Castle, the sea, and Anglesey. A little 
 before sunset we came in sight of Llanberris 
 Lake, Snowdon, and all the craggy hills and 
 mountains surrounding it; the foreground a 
 beautiful contrast to this grandeur and deso- 
 lation a green sloping hollow, furnishing a 
 shelter for one of the most beautiful collections 
 of lowly Welsh cottages, with thatched roofs, 
 overgrown with plants, anywhere to be met 
 with : the hamlet is called Cum-y-glo. And 
 here we took boat, while the solemn lights of 
 evening were receding towards the tops of the 
 mountains. As we advanced, Dolbardin Castle 
 came in view, and Snowdon opened upon our 
 admiration. It was almost dark when we 
 reached the quiet and comfortable inn at 
 Llanberris. 
 
 There being no carriage-road, we undertook 
 to walk by the Pass of Llanberris, eight miles, 
 to Capel Cerig ; this proved fatiguing, but it was 
 the only oppressive exertion we made during the 
 course of our tour. We arrived at Capel Cerig 
 in time for a glance at the Snowdonian range, 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
n8 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 from the garden of the inn in connection with 
 the lake (or rather pool), reflecting the crimson 
 clouds of evening. The outline of Snowdon is 
 perhaps seen nowhere to more advantage than 
 from this place. Next morning, five miles down 
 a beautiful valley to the banks of the Con way, 
 which stream we followed to Llanrwst ; but the 
 day was so hot that we could only make use of 
 the morning and evening. . . . 
 
 We dined at Conway, walked to Bennarth, the 
 view from which is a good deal choked up with 
 wood. A small part of the castle has been 
 demolished, for the sake of the new road to 
 communicate with the suspension bridge, which 
 they are about to make to the small island 
 opposite the castle, to be connected by a long 
 embankment with the opposite shore. The 
 bridge will, I think, prove rather ornamental 
 when time has taken off the newness of its 
 supporting masonry; but the mound deplorably 
 impairs the majesty of the water at high-tide ; 
 in fact it destroys its lake-like appearance. Our 
 drive to Aber in the evening was charming ; 
 sun setting in glory. We had also a delightful 
 walk next morning up the vale of Aber, termin- 
 ated by a lofty waterfall ; not much in itself, but 
 most striking as a closing accompaniment to the 
 secluded valley. Here, in the early morning, I 
 saw an odd sight fifteen milkmaids together, 
 laden with their brimming pails. How cheerful 
 
WORDSWORTH'S CREED. 119 
 
 and happy they appeared ! and not a little in- 
 clined to joke after the manner of the pastoral 
 persons in Theocritus. 
 
 RYDAL MOUNT (I825). 1 
 
 Never, I think, have we had so beautiful a 
 spring ; sunshine and showers coming just as 
 if they had been called for by the spirits of 
 Hope, Love, and Beauty. This spot is at 
 present a paradise, if you will admit the term 
 when I acknowledge that yesterday afternoon 
 the mountains were whitened with a fall of 
 snow. But this only served to give the land- 
 scape, with all its verdure, blossoms, and leafy 
 trees, a striking Swiss air, which reminded us of 
 Unterselen and Interlacken. . . . 
 
 I never had a higher relish for the beauties 
 of Nature than during this spring, nor enjoyed 
 myself more. What manifold reason, my dear 
 Sir George, have you and I to be thankful to 
 Providence ! Theologians may puzzle their heads 
 about dogmas as they will, the religion of grati- 
 tude cannot mislead us. Of that we are sure, 
 and gratitude is the handmaid to hope, and hope 
 the harbinger of faith. I look abroad upon 
 Nature, I think of the best part of our Species, 
 
 1 From a letter to Sir George Beaumont. 
 
120 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 I lean upon my Friends, and I meditate upon 
 the Scriptures, especially the Gospel of St. John, 
 and my creed rises up of itself with the ease of 
 an exhalation, yet a fabric of adamant. 
 
 DIRECTIONS FOR TRAVEL IN WALES AND 
 IRELAND (I826). 1 
 
 From Llanberris mount Snowdon, and de- 
 scend to Dolbarden Inn in the Vale of 
 Llanberris, and by the Lake to the romantic 
 village of Cwm y Gloed, whence to Carnarvon, 
 Bangor, and Holy Head for Ireland ; this will 
 have shown you most of the finest things in 
 N. and S. Wales ; but, observe, with the excep- 
 tion of Conway Castle, a most magnificent 
 thing, and the whole line of the great road to 
 Ireland from Llangollen, including Capel Cerig 
 to Bangor, which would leave your knowledge 
 of N. W. very imperfect. But this might readily 
 be taken at some future time, when you come 
 into the north of Ireland, by coaching through 
 Llangollen to Bangor, thence walking to Con- 
 way, and so on by Abergelly to Rhyl, from 
 within two miles of which place is a daily 
 steamboat to Liverpool, as there is one also 
 from Bangor to Liverpool, a most delightful 
 
 1 From a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson. 
 
MODES OF CONQUEST. 121 
 
 voyage of eight or nine hours. Of Ireland I 
 can say nothing but that everybody sees Kil- 
 larney; there are some fine ruins of Monasteries, 
 etc., not far from Limerick. The Vale of the 
 Dargle and the Wicklow Mountains would be 
 in your way from Killarney to Dublin ; sup- 
 posing you to start from Dublin, you would 
 go by Limerick and return by the Wicklow 
 country, but to one who should leave Wales 
 out, the best way of seeing Ireland from London 
 would be to go from London to Bristol, and 
 thence to Cork, Killarney, and Dublin, and the 
 Giant's Causeway ; from Belfast there will no 
 doubt be a Steam Boat to Glasgow, and so 
 on by steam to lona and Staffa, and as much 
 of the West of Scotland as you could con- 
 veniently see, returning by West. 
 
 MODES OF CONQUEST (I829). 1 
 
 The countries subjected by the ancient 
 Romans, and those that in the middle ages 
 were subdued by the Northern tribes, afford 
 striking instances of the several ways in which 
 nations may be improved by foreign conquest. 
 The Romans by their superiority in arts and 
 arms, and, in the earlier period of their history, 
 
 1 From a letter to Bishop Blomfield. 
 
122 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 in virtues also, may seem to have established a 
 moral right to force their institutions upon other 
 nations, whether under a process of decline or 
 emerging from barbarism ; and this they effected, 
 we all know, not by overrunning countries as 
 Eastern conquerors have done, and Bonaparte 
 in our own days, but by completing a regular 
 subjugation, with military roads and garrisons, 
 which became centres of civilisation for the 
 surrounding district. Nor am I afraid to add, 
 though the fact might be caught at as bearing 
 against the general scope of my argument, that 
 both conquerors and conquered owed much 
 to the participation of civil rights which the 
 Romans liberally communicated. The other 
 mode of conquest, that pursued by the Northern 
 nations, brought about its beneficial effects by 
 the settlement of a hardy and vigorous people 
 among the distracted and effeminate nations 
 against whom their incursions were made. The 
 conquerors transplanted with them their inde- 
 pendent and ferocious spirit to reanimate 
 exhausted communities, and in their turn 
 received a salutary mitigation, till in process 
 of time the conqueror and conquered, having 
 a common interest, were lost in each other. 
 To neither of these modes was unfortunate 
 Ireland subject, and her insular territory, by 
 physical obstacles, and still more by moral 
 influences arising out of them, has aggravated 
 
EDUCATION IN DUTY. 123 
 
 the evil consequent upon independence lost as 
 hers was. The writers of the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth have pointed out how unwise it was 
 to transplant among a barbarous people, not 
 half subjugated, the institutions that time had 
 matured among those who too readily con- 
 sidered themselves masters of that people. 
 
 EDUCATION IN DUTY 
 
 The more I reflect upon the subject, the more 
 I am convinced that positive instruction, even of 
 a religious character, is much overrated. The 
 education of man, and above all of a Christian, 
 is the education of duty, which is most forcibly 
 taught by the business and concerns of life, of 
 which, even for children, especially the children 
 of the poor, book-learning is but a small part. 
 There is an officious disposition on the part of 
 the upper and middle classes to precipitate the 
 tendency of the people towards intellectual 
 culture in a manner subversive of their own 
 happiness, and dangerous to the peace of 
 society. It is mournful to observe of how 
 little avail are lessons of piety taught at school, 
 if household attentions and obligations be 
 neglected in consequence of the time taken up 
 
 1 From a letter to his brother, the Master of Trinity. 
 
124 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 In school tuition, and if the head be stuffed with 
 vanity from the gentlemanliness of the employ- 
 ment of reading. 
 
 THE SONNET (I833). 1 
 
 The sonnet, like every other legitimate com- 
 position, ought to have a beginning, a middle, 
 and an end ; in other words, to consist of three 
 parts, like the three propositions of a syllogism, 
 if such an illustration may be used. But the 
 frame of metre adopted by the Italians does 
 not accord with this view ; and, as adhered to 
 by them, it seems to be, if not arbitrary, best 
 fitted to a division of the sense into two parts, 
 of eight and six lines each. Milton, however, 
 has not submitted to this; in the "Better" half of 
 his sonnets the sense does not close with the 
 rhyme at the eighth line, but overflows into the 
 second portion of the metre. Now it has struck 
 me that this is not done merely to gratify the 
 ear by variety and freedom of sound, but also to 
 aid in giving that pervading sense of intense 
 unity in which the excellence of the sonnet has 
 always seemed to me mainly to consist. Instead 
 of looking at this composition as a piece of 
 architecture, making a whole out of three parts, 
 
 1 From a letter to the Rev. Alexander Dyce. 
 
DEMOCRACY. 125 
 
 I have been much in the habit of preferring the 
 image of an orbicular body, a sphere, or a 
 dew-drop. 
 
 DEMOCRACY (I833). 1 
 
 It is a fixed judgment of my mind that an 
 unbridled Democracy is the worst of all Tyran- 
 nies. Our Constitution had provided a check 
 for the Democracy in the Regal Prerogative, 
 influence, and power, and in the House of 
 Lords, acting directly through its own body, 
 and indirectly by the influence of individual 
 Peers, over a certain portion of the House of 
 Commons. The old system provided in practice 
 a check both without and within. The extinc- 
 tion of the nomination -borough has nearly 
 destroyed internal check. The House of Lords, 
 as a body, have been trampled upon by the way 
 in which the Bill has been carried, and they are 
 brought to that point that the Peers will prove 
 useless as an external check, while the regal 
 power and influence has become, or soon will, 
 mere shadows. 
 
 She opened but to shut 
 Excelled her power, 
 
 1 From a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson. 
 
126 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 as your friends the Bill-men of all denominations 
 have found, or soon will find. 
 
 THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH" 
 
 My opinion is that the People are bent upon 
 the destruction of their ancient Institutions, and 
 that nothing since I will not say the passing 
 but since the broaching of the Reform Bill 
 could or can prevent it I would bend my 
 endeavours to strengthen to the utmost the 
 rational portion of the Tory Party, but from 
 no other hope than this, that the march towards 
 destruction may be less rapid by their inter- 
 posing something of a check and the destruc- 
 tion of the Monarchy thereby attended with 
 less injury to social order. They are more 
 blind than bats or moles who cannot see that 
 it is a change, or rather an overthrow, of social 
 order as dependent upon the present distribution 
 of property which is the object of the Radicals. 
 They care nothing what may be the form of 
 Government but as the changes may lead to 
 that As to France and your juste milieu, it is 
 not worth talking about. 
 
 1 From a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson. 
 
CRIME AND POVERTY. 127 
 
 In our criminal jurisprudence there is a 
 maxim, deservedly eulogised, that it is better 
 that ten guilty persons should escape, than 
 that one innocent man should suffer ; so, also, 
 might it be maintained, with regard to the 
 Poor Laws, that it is better for the interests 
 of humanity among the people at large, that 
 ten undeserving should partake of the funds 
 provided, than that one morally good man, 
 through want of relief, should either have his 
 principles corrupted, or his energies destroyed; 
 than that such a one should either be driven 
 to do wrong, or be cast to the earth in utter 
 hopelessness. In France, the English maxim 
 of criminal jurisprudence is reversed ; there, it 
 is deemed better that ten innocent men should 
 suffer, than one guilty escape : in France, there 
 is no universal provision for the poor ; and we 
 may judge of the small value set upon human 
 life in the metropolis of that country, by merely 
 noticing the disrespect with which, after death, 
 the body is treated, not by the thoughtless 
 vulgar, but in schools of anatomy, presided over 
 by men allowed to be, in their own art and 
 in physical science, among the most enlightened 
 in the world. In the East, where countries are 
 
 1 From the "Postscript" to Yarrow Revisited. 
 
128 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 overrun with population as with a weed, infinitely 
 more respect is shown to the remains of the 
 deceased : and what a bitter mockery is it, that 
 this -insensibility should be found where civil 
 polity is so busy in minor regulations, and 
 ostentatiously careful to gratify the luxurious 
 propensities, whether social or intellectual, of 
 the multitude ! Irreligion is, no doubt, much 
 concerned with this offensive disrespect shown 
 to the bodies of the dead in France ; but it is 
 mainly attributable to the state in which so 
 many of the living are left by the absence 
 of compulsory provision for the indigent so 
 humanely established by the law of England. 
 
 Sights of abject misery, perpetually recurring, 
 harden the heart of the community. In the 
 perusal of history and of works of fiction, we 
 are not, indeed, unwilling to have our com- 
 miseration excited by such objects of distress 
 as they present to us ; but, in the concerns of 
 real life, men know that such emotions are not 
 given to be indulged for their own sakes : there, 
 the conscience declares to them that sympathy 
 must be followed by action ; and if there exist 
 a previous conviction that the power to relieve 
 is utterly inadequate to the demand, the eye 
 shrinks from communication with wretchedness, 
 and pity and compassion languish, like any 
 other qualities that are deprived of their 
 natural aliment. Let these considerations be 
 
REFORM, NOT RECONSTRUCTION. 129 
 
 duly weighed by those who trust to the hope 
 that an increase of private charity, with all its 
 advantages of superior discrimination, would 
 more than compensate for the abandonment 
 of those principles, the wisdom of which has 
 been here insisted upon. How discouraging, 
 also, would be the sense of injustice, which 
 could not fail to arise in the minds of the 
 well-disposed, if the burden of supporting the 
 poor, a burden of which the selfish have 
 hitherto 'by compulsion borne a share, should 
 now, or hereafter, be thrown exclusively upon 
 the benevolent. 
 
 REFORM, NOT RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 The great religious Reformation, in the 
 sixteenth century, did not profess to be a new 
 construction, but a restoration of something 
 fallen into decay, or put out of sight. That 
 familiar and justifiable use of the word seems 
 to have paved the way for fallacies with 
 respect to the term reform, which it is difficult 
 to escape from. Were we to speak of improve- 
 ment and the correction of abuses, we should 
 run less risk of being deceived ourselves, or 
 of misleading others. We should be less likely 
 
 1 From the " Postscript " to Yarrow Revisited. 
 
 9 
 
130 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 to fall blindly into the belief, that the change 
 demanded is a renewal of something that has 
 existed before, and that, therefore, we have 
 experience on our side ; nor should we be 
 equally tempted to beg the question, that 
 the change for which we are eager must be 
 advantageous. From generation to generation, 
 men are the dupes of words ; and it is painful 
 to observe, that so many of our species are 
 most tenacious of those opinions which they 
 have formed with the least consideration. They 
 who are the readiest to meddle with public 
 affairs, whether in Church or State, fly to 
 generalities, that they may be eased from the 
 trouble of thinking about particulars ; and 
 thus is deputed to mechanical instrumentality 
 the work which vital knowledge only can do 
 well. 
 
 THE ORDER OF CURATES (I835). 1 
 
 The order of curates is so beneficial, that some 
 particular notice of it seems to be required in 
 this place. For a Church poor as, relatively to 
 the numbers of people, that of England is, and 
 probably will continue to be, it is no small 
 advantage to have youthful servants, who will 
 
 1 From the " Postscript " to Yarrow Revisited. 
 
THE ORDER OF CURATES. 131 
 
 work upon the wages of hope and expectation. 
 Still more advantageous is it to have, by means of 
 this order, young men scattered over the country, 
 who being more detached from the temporal 
 concerns of the benefice, have more leisure for 
 improvement and study, and are less subject 
 to be brought into secular collision with those 
 who are under their spiritual guardianship. The 
 curate, if he reside at a distance from the incum- 
 bent, undertakes the requisite responsibilities 
 of a temporal kind, in that modified way which 
 prevents him, as a new-comer, from being 
 charged with selfishness : while it prepares him 
 for entering upon a benefice of his own, with 
 something of a suitable experience. If he 
 should act under and in co-operation with a 
 resident incumbent, the gain is mutual. His 
 studies will probably be assisted ; and his train- 
 ing, managed by a superior, will not be liable 
 to relapse in matters of prudence, seemliness, or 
 in any of the highest cares of his functions ; and 
 by way of return for these benefits to the pupil, 
 it will often happen that the zeal of a middle- 
 aged or declining incumbent will be revived, by 
 being in near communion with the ardour of 
 youth, when his own efforts may have languished 
 through a melancholy consciousness that they 
 have not produced as much good among his 
 flock as, when he first entered upon the charge, 
 he fondly hoped. 
 
132 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE CLERGY 
 (I835V 
 
 How agreeable to picture to one's self, as has 
 been done by poets and romance-writers, from 
 Chaucer down to Goldsmith, a man devoted to 
 his ministerial office, with not a wish or a 
 thought ranging beyond the circuit of its cares ! 
 Nor is it in poetry and fiction only that such 
 characters are found ; they are scattered, it is 
 hoped not sparingly, over real life, especially in 
 sequestered and rural districts, where there is 
 but small influx of new inhabitants, and little 
 change of occupation. The spirit of the Gospel, 
 unaided by acquisitions of profane learning 
 and experience in the world, that spirit and 
 the obligations of the sacred office may, in such 
 situations, suffice to effect most of what is need- 
 ful. But for the complex state of society that 
 prevails in England, much more is required, 
 both in large towns, and in many extensive 
 districts of the country. A minister should not 
 only be irreproachable in manners and morals, 
 but accomplished in learning, as far as is possible 
 without sacrifice of the least of his pastoral 
 duties. As necessary, perhaps more so, is it 
 that he should be a citizen as well as a scholar ; 
 
 1 From the "Postscript" to Yarrow Revisited. 
 
THE SCENERY OF THE LAKES. 133 
 
 thoroughly acquainted with the structure of 
 society and the constitution of civil government, 
 and able to reason upon both with the most 
 expert ; all ultimately in order to support the 
 truths of Christianity, and to diffuse its blessings. 
 
 THE SCENERY OF THE LAKES 
 
 I know not how to give the reader a distinct 
 image of the outlines of the country more 
 readily, than by requesting him to place himself 
 with me, in imagination, upon some given point; 
 let it be the top of either of the mountains, 
 Great Gavel, or Scawfell ; or, rather, let us 
 suppose our station to be a cloud hanging mid- 
 way between those two mountains, at not more 
 than half a mile's distance from the summit of 
 each, and not many yards above their highest 
 elevation ; we shall then see stretched at our 
 feet a number of valleys, not fewer than eight, 
 diverging from the point, on which we are 
 supposed to stand, like spokes from the nave of 
 a wheel. First, we note, lying to the south-east, 
 the vale of Langdale, which will conduct the 
 eye to the long lake of Winandermere, stretched 
 nearly to the sea; or rather to the sands of the 
 vast bay of Morcamb, serving here for the rim of 
 
 1 From A Guide through (he District of the Lakes, 
 
134 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 this imaginary wheel ; let us trace it in a direc- 
 tion from the south-east towards the south, and 
 we shall next fix our eyes upon the vale of 
 Coniston, running up likewise from the sea, but 
 not (as all the other valleys do) to the nave of 
 the wheel, and therefore it may be not inaptly 
 represented as a broken spoke sticking in the 
 rim. Looking forth again, with an inclination 
 towards the west, we see immediately at our 
 feet the vale of Duddon, in which is no lake, but 
 a copious stream, winding among fields, rocks, 
 and mountains, and terminating its course in the 
 sands of Duddon. The fourth vale, next to be 
 observed, viz. that of the Esk, is of the same 
 general character as the last, yet beautifully 
 discriminated from it by peculiar features. Its 
 stream passes under the woody steep upon which 
 stands Muncaster Castle, the ancient seat of the 
 Penningtons, and after forming a short and 
 narrow sestuary enters the sea below the small 
 town of Ravenglass. Next, almost due west, 
 look down into, and along the deep valley of 
 Wastdale, with its little chapel and half-a-dozen 
 neat dwellings scattered upon a plain of meadow 
 and corn-ground intersected with stone walls 
 apparently innumerable, like a large piece of 
 lawless patchwork, or an array of mathe- 
 matical figures, such as in the ancient schools 
 of geometry might have been sportively and 
 fantastically traced out upon sand. Beyond 
 
THE SCENERY OF THE LAKES. 135 
 
 this little fertile plain lies, within a bed of steep 
 mountains, the long, narrow, stern, and desolate 
 lake of Wastdale ; and, beyond this, a dusky 
 tract of level ground conducts the eye to the 
 Irish Sea. The stream that issues from Wast- 
 water is named the Irt, and falls into the sestuary 
 of the river Esk. Next comes in view Enner- 
 dale, with its lake of bold and somewhat savage 
 shores. Its stream, the Ehen or Enna, flowing 
 through a soft and fertile country, passes the 
 town of Egremont, and the ruins of the castle, 
 then, seeming, like the other rivers, to break 
 through the barrier of sand thrown up by the 
 winds on this tempestuous coast, enters the Irish 
 Sea. The vale of Buttermere, with the lake and 
 village of that name, and Crummock-water, 
 beyond, next present themselves. We will 
 follow the main stream, the Coker, through the 
 fertile and beautiful vale of Lorton, till it is lost 
 in the Derwent, below the noble ruins of Cocker- 
 mouth Castle. Lastly, Borrowdale, of which the 
 vale of Keswick is only a continuation, stretch- 
 ing due north, brings us to a point nearly 
 opposite to the vale of Winandermere with 
 which we began. From this it will appear, that 
 the image of a wheel, thus far exact, is little 
 more than one half complete ; but the deficiency 
 on the eastern side may be supplied by the 
 vales of Wytheburn, Ulswater, Hawswater, and 
 the vale of Grasmere and Rydal : none of these, 
 
136 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 however, run up to the central point between 
 Great Gavel and Scawfell. From this, hitherto 
 our central point, take a flight of not more than 
 four or five miles eastward to the ridge of Hel- 
 vellyn, and you will look down upon Wytheburn 
 and St John's Vale, which are a branch of the 
 vale of Keswick ; upon Ulswater, stretching due 
 east: and not far beyond to the south-east 
 (though from this point not visible) lie the vale 
 and lake of Hawswater; and lastly, the vale of 
 Grasmere, Rydal, and Ambleside, brings you 
 back to Winandermere, thus completing, though 
 on the eastern side in a somewhat irregular 
 manner, the representative figure of the wheel. 
 
 Such, concisely given, is the general topo- 
 graphical view of the country of the Lakes in 
 the north of England ; and it may be observed 
 that, from the circumference to the centre, that 
 is, from the sea or plain country to the mountain 
 stations specified, there is in the several ridges 
 that enclose these vales, and divide them from 
 each other, I mean in the forms and surfaces, 
 first of the swelling grounds, next of the hills 
 and rocks, and lastly of the mountains an 
 ascent of almost regular gradation, from ele- 
 gance and richness, to their highest point of 
 grandeur and sublimity. It follows therefore 
 from this, first, that these rocks, hills, and moun- 
 tains must present themselves to view in stages 
 rising above each other, the mountains clustering 
 
THE SCENERY OF THE LAKES. 137 
 
 together towards the central point ; and next, 
 that an observer familiar with the several vales, 
 must, from their various position in relation to 
 the sun, have had before his eyes every possible 
 embellishment of beauty, dignity, and splendour, 
 which light and shadow can bestow upon objects 
 so diversified. For example, in the vale of 
 Winandermere, if the spectator looks for gentle 
 and lovely scenes, his eye is turned towards the 
 south ; if for the grand, towards the north : in the 
 vale of Keswick, which (as hath been said) lies 
 almost due north of this, it is directly the 
 reverse. Hence, when the sun is setting in 
 summer far to the north-west, it is seen by the 
 spectator from the shores or breast of Winander- 
 mere, resting among the summits of the loftiest 
 mountains, some of which will perhaps be half 
 or wholly hidden by clouds, or by the blaze of 
 light which the orb diffuses around it; and the 
 surface of the lake will reflect before the eye 
 correspondent colours through every variety of 
 beauty, and through all degrees of splendour. 
 In the vale of Keswick, at the same period, the 
 sun sets over the humbler regions of the land- 
 scape, and showers down upon them the radiance 
 which at once veils and glorifies, sending forth, 
 meanwhile, broad streams of rosy, crimson, 
 purple, or golden light, towards the grand 
 mountains in the south and south-east, which, 
 thus illuminated, with all their projections and 
 
138 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 cavities, and with an intermixture of solemn 
 shadows, are seen distinctly through a cool and 
 clear atmosphere. Of course, there is as marked 
 a difference between the noontide appearance of 
 these two opposite vales. The bedimming haze 
 that overspreads the south, and the clear atmo- 
 sphere and determined shadows of the clouds in 
 the north, at the same time of the day, are each 
 seen in these several vales, with a contrast as 
 striking. The reader will easily conceive in 
 what degree the intermediate vales partake of 
 a kindred variety. 
 
 I do not indeed know any tract of country in 
 which, within so narrow a compass, may be found 
 an equal variety in the influences of light and 
 shadow upon the sublime or beautiful features 
 of landscape; and it is owing to the combined 
 circumstances to which the reader's attention has 
 been directed. From a point between Great 
 Gavel and Scawfell, a shepherd would not re- 
 quire more than an hour to descend into any 
 one of eight of the principal vales by which he 
 would be surrounded; and all the others lie 
 (with the exception of Hawswater) at but a 
 small distance. Yet, though clustered together, 
 every valley has its distinct and separate char- 
 acter: in some instances, as if they had been 
 formed in studied contrast to each other, and in 
 others with the united pleasing differences and 
 resemblances of a sisterly rivalship. This con- 
 
THE MERES. 139 
 
 ccntration of interest gives to the country a 
 decided superiority over the most attractive dis- 
 tricts of Scotland and Wales, especially for the 
 pedestrian traveller. In Scotland and Wales are 
 found, undoubtedly, individual scenes, which, in 
 their several kinds, cannot be excelled. But, in 
 Scotland, particularly, what long tracts of deso- 
 late country intervene ! so that the traveller, when 
 he reaches a spot deservedly of great celebrity 
 would find it difficult to determine how much of 
 his pleasure is owing to excellence inherent in 
 the landscape itself; and how much to an in- 
 stantaneous recovery from an oppression left 
 upon his spirits by the barrenness and desola- 
 tion through which he has passed. 
 
 THE MERES 
 
 In lakes of great width, the shores cannot be 
 distinctly seen at the same time, and therefore 
 contribute little to mutual illustration and orna- 
 ment ; and, if the opposite shores are out of 
 sight of each other, like those of the American 
 and Asiatic lakes, then unfortunately the 
 traveller is reminded of a nobler object ; he 
 has the blankness of a sea-prospect without 
 the grandeur and accompanying sense of power. 
 
 As the comparatively small size of the lakes 
 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
140 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 in the North of England is favourable to 
 the production of variegated landscape, their 
 boundary-line also is for the most part grace- 
 fully or boldly indented. That uniformity 
 which prevails in the primitive frame of the 
 lower grounds among all chains or clusters of 
 mountains where large bodies of still water 
 are bedded, is broken by the secondary agents 
 of Nature, ever at work to supply the deficiencies 
 of the mould in which things were originally 
 cast Using the word deficiencies, I do not 
 speak with reference to those stronger emotions 
 which a region of mountains is peculiarly fitted 
 to excite. The bases of those huge barriers 
 may run for a long space in straight lines, and 
 these parallel to each other ; the opposite sides 
 of a profound vale may ascend as exact counter- 
 parts, or in mutual reflection, like the billows 
 of a troubled sea ; and the impression be, from 
 its very simplicity, more awful and sublime. 
 Sublimity is the result of Nature's first great 
 dealings with the superficies of the Earth; but 
 the general tendency of her subsequent opera- 
 tions is towards the production of beauty; by 
 a multiplicity of symmetrical parts uniting in a 
 consistent whole. This is everywhere exem- 
 plified along the margins of these lakes. Masses 
 of rock, that have been precipitated from the 
 heights into the area of waters, lie in some 
 places like stranded ships ; or have acquired 
 
THE MERES. 141 
 
 the compact structure of jutting piers ; or pro- 
 ject in little peninsulas crested with native wood. 
 The smallest rivulet one whose silent influx is 
 scarcely noticeable in a season of dry weather 
 so faint is the dimple made- by it on the surface 
 of the smooth lake will be found to have been 
 not useless in shaping, by its deposits of gravel 
 and soil in time of flood, a curve that would not 
 otherwise have existed. But the more powerful 
 brooks, encroaching upon the level of the lake, 
 have, in course of time, given birth to ample 
 promontories of sweeping outline that contrast 
 boldly with the longitudinal base of the steeps 
 on the opposite shore ; while their flat or gently- 
 sloping surfaces never fail to introduce, into the 
 midst of desolation and barrenness, the elements 
 of fertility, even where the habitations of men 
 may not have been raised. These alluvial 
 promontories, however, threaten in some places 
 to bisect the waters which they have long 
 adorned ; and, in course of ages, they will cause 
 some of the lakes to dwindle into numerous 
 and insignificant pools ; which, in their turn, 
 will finally be filled up. But, checking these 
 intrusive calculations, let us rather be content 
 with appearances as they are, and pursue in 
 imagination the meandering shores, whether 
 rugged steeps, admitting of no cultivation, 
 descend into the water ; or gently-sloping lawns 
 and woods, or flat and fertile meadows, stretch 
 
142 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 between the margin of the lake and the moun- 
 tains. Among minuter recommendations will be 
 noticed, especially along bays exposed to the 
 setting-in of strong winds, the curved rim of 
 fine blue gravel, thrown up in course of time 
 by the waves, half of it perhaps gleaming from 
 under the water, and the corresponding half of a 
 lighter hue ; and in other parts bordering the 
 lake, groves, if I may so call them, of reeds and 
 bulrushes ; or plots of water-lilies lifting up their 
 large target-shaped leaves to the breeze, while 
 the white flower is heaving upon the wave. 
 
 To these may naturally be added the birds 
 that enliven the waters. Wild-ducks in spring- 
 time hatch their young in the islands, and upon 
 reedy shores ; the sand-piper, flitting along the 
 stony margins, by its restless note attracts the 
 eye to motions as restless : upon some jutting 
 rock, or at the edge of a smooth meadow, the 
 stately heron may be descried with folded wings, 
 that might seem to have caught their delicate 
 hue from the blue waters, by the side of which 
 she watches for her sustenance. In winter, the 
 lakes are sometimes resorted to by wild swans ; 
 and in that season habitually by widgeons, gold- 
 ings, and other aquatic fowl of the smaller 
 species. 
 
MOUNTAIN TARNS. 143 
 
 MOUNTAIN TARNS (I835). 1 
 
 The Mountain Tarns can only be recom- 
 mended to the notice of the inquisitive traveller 
 who has time to spare. They are difficult of 
 access, and naked ; yet some of them are, in 
 their permanent forms, very grand ; and there 
 are accidents of things which would make the 
 meanest of them interesting. At all events, one 
 of these pools is an acceptable sight to the 
 mountain wanderer ; not merely as an incident 
 that diversifies the prospect, but as forming in 
 his mind a centre or conspicuous point to which 
 objects, otherwise disconnected or insubordi- 
 nated, may be referred. Some few have a varied 
 outline, with bold heath-clad promontories; and, 
 as they mostly lie at the foot of a steep precipice, 
 the water, where the sun is not shining upon it, 
 appears black and sullen ; and, round the 
 margin, huge stones and masses of rock are 
 scattered ; some defying conjecture as to the 
 means by which they came thither ; and others 
 obviously fallen from on high the contribution 
 of ages ! A not unpleasing sadness is induced 
 by this perplexity, and these images of decay; 
 while the prospect of a body of pure water 
 unattended with groves and other cheerful rural 
 images, by which fresh water is usually accom- 
 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
144 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 panied, and unable to give furtherance to the 
 meagre vegetation around it excites a sense of 
 s'ome repulsive power strongly put forth, and 
 thus deepens the melancholy natural to such 
 scenes. Nor is the feeling of solitude often 
 more forcibly or more solemnly impressed than 
 by the side of one of these mountain pools: 
 though desolate and forbidding, it seems a dis- 
 tinct place to repair to ; yet where the visitants 
 must be rare, and there can be no disturbance. 
 Water-fowl flock hither ; and the lonely angler 
 may here be seen ; but the imagination, not 
 content with this scanty allowance of society, is 
 tempted to attribute a voluntary power to every 
 change which takes place in such a spot, whether 
 it be the breeze that wanders over the surface 
 of the water, or the splendid lights of evening 
 resting upon it in the midst of awful precipices. 
 
 DAYS IN SPRING AND AUTUMN (I835). 1 
 
 Days of unsettled weather, with partial showers, 
 are very frequent ; but the showers, darkening or 
 brightening, as they fly from hill to hill, are not 
 less grateful to the eye than finely interwoven 
 passages of gay ancl sad music are touching to 
 the ear. Vapours exhaling from the lakes and 
 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
DAYS IN SPRING AND AUTUMN. 145 
 
 meadows after sunrise, in a hot season, or, in 
 moist weather, brooding upon the heights, or 
 descending towards the valleys with inaudible 
 motion, give a visionary character to every thing 
 around them ; and are in themselves so beautiful, 
 as to dispose us to enter into the feelings of 
 those simple nations (such as the Laplanders of 
 this day) by whom they are taken for guardian 
 deities of the mountains ; or to sympathise with 
 others who have fancied these delicate appari- 
 tions to be the spirits of their departed ancestors. 
 Akin to these are fleecy clouds resting upon the 
 hill-tops; they are not easily managed in picture, 
 with their accompaniments of blue sky ; but 
 how glorious are they in Nature ! how pregnant 
 with imagination for the poet ! and the height of 
 the Cumbrian mountains is sufficient to exhibit 
 daily and hourly instances of those mysterious 
 attachments. Such clouds, cleaving to their 
 stations, or lifting up suddenly their glittering 
 heads from behind rocky barriers, or hurrying 
 out of sight with speed of the sharpest sledge 
 will often tempt an inhabitant to congratulate 
 himself on belonging to a country of mists and 
 clouds and storms, and make him think of the 
 blank sky of Egypt, and of the cerulean vacancy 
 of Italy, as an unanimated and even a sad 
 spectacle. . . . 
 
 It has been said that in human life there are 
 moments worth ages. In a more subdued tone of 
 
 10 
 
146 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 sympathy may we affirm, that in the climate of 
 England there are, for the lover of Nature, days 
 which are worth whole months, I might say 
 even years. One of these favoured days some- 
 times occurs in spring-time, when that soft air 
 is breathing over the blossoms and new-born 
 verdure, which inspired Buchanan with his beau- 
 tiful Ode to the first of May; the air, which, in 
 the luxuriance of his fancy, he likens to that of 
 the golden age, to that which gives motion to 
 the funereal cypresses on the banks of Lethe ; 
 to the air which is to salute beatified spirits when 
 expiatory fires shall have consumed the earth 
 with all her habitations. But it is in autumn 
 that days of such affecting influence most 
 frequently intervene; the atmosphere seems 
 refined, and the sky rendered more crystalline, as 
 the vivifying heat of the year abates ; the lights 
 and shadows are more delicate ; the colouring is 
 richer and more finely harmonised ; and, in this 
 season of stillness, the ear being unoccupied, or 
 only gently excited, the sense of vision becomes 
 more susceptible of its appropriate enjoyments. 
 A resident in a country like this which we are 
 treating of, will agree with me, that the presence 
 of a lake is indispensable to exhibit in perfection 
 the beauty of one of these days ; and he must 
 have experienced, while looking on the ruffled 
 waters, that the imagination, by their aid, is 
 carried into recesses of feeling otherwise im- 
 
DAYS IN SPRING AND AUTUMN. 147 
 
 penetrable. The reason of this is, that the 
 heavens are not only brought down into the 
 bosom of the earth, but that the earth is mainly 
 looked at, and thought of, through the medium 
 of a purer element. The happiest time is when 
 the equinoctial gales are departed ; but their 
 fury may probably be called to mind by the 
 sight of a few shattered boughs, whose leaves do 
 not differ in colour from the faded foliage of the 
 stately oaks from which these relics of the storm 
 depend : all else speaks of tranquillity ; not a 
 breath of air, no restlessness of insects, and not 
 a moving object perceptible except the clouds 
 gliding in the depths of the lake, or the traveller 
 passing along, an inverted image, whose motion 
 seems governed by the quiet of a time, to which 
 its archetype, the living person, is, perhaps, 
 insensible : or it may happen, that the figure 
 of one of the larger birds, a raven or a heron, is 
 crossing silently among the reflected clouds, 
 while the voice of the real bird, from the element 
 aloft, gently awakens in the spectator the recol- 
 lection of appetites and instincts, pursuits and 
 occupations, that deform and agitate the world, 
 yet have no power to prevent Nature from 
 putting on an aspect capable of satisfying the 
 most intense cravings for the tranquil, the lovely, 
 .and the perfect, to which man, the noblest of 
 her creatures, is subject. 
 
 Thus far, of climate, as influencing the feel- 
 
148 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 ings through its effect on the objects of sense. 
 We may add, that whatever has been said upon 
 the advantages derived to these scenes from a 
 changeable atmosphere, would apply, perhaps 
 still more forcibly, to their appearance under 
 the varied solemnities of night. Milton, it will 
 be remembered, has given a clouded moon to 
 Paradise itself. In the night-season also, the 
 narrowness of the vales, and comparative small- 
 ness of the lakes, are especially adapted to bring 
 surrounding objects home to the eye and to the 
 heart. The stars, taking their stations above 
 the hill-tops, are contemplated from a spot like 
 the Abyssinian recess of Rasselas, with much 
 more touching interest than they are likely 
 to excite when looked at from an open country 
 with ordinary undulations : and it must be 
 obvious, that it is the bays only of large lakes 
 that can present such contrasts of light and 
 shadow as those of smaller dimensions display 
 from every quarter. A deep contracted valley, 
 with diffused waters, such a valley and plains 
 level and wide as those of Chaldea, are the two 
 extremes in which the beauty of the heavens 
 and their connection with the earth are most 
 sensibly felt. Nor do the advantages I have 
 been speaking of imply here an exclusion of the 
 aerial effects of distance. 
 
COTTAGES. 149 
 
 COTTAGES 
 
 The cottages are scattered over the valleys, 
 and under the hillsides, and on the rocks; 
 and, even to this ilay, in the more retired 
 dales, without any intrusion of more assuming 
 buildings ; 
 
 Cluster'd like stars some few, but single most, 
 And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, 
 Or glancing on each other cheerful looks, 
 Like separated stars with clouds between. MS. 
 
 The dwelling-houses, and contiguous outhouses, 
 are, in many instances, of the colour of the 
 native rock, out of which they have been built , 
 but, frequently the Dwelling or Fire-house, as it 
 is ordinarily called, has been distinguished from 
 the barn or byre by rough-cast and white-wash, 
 which, as the inhabitants are not hasty in 
 renewing it, in a few years acquires, by the 
 influence of weather, a tint at once sober and 
 variegated. As these houses have been, from 
 father to son, inhabited by persons engaged in 
 the same occupations, yet necessarily with 
 changes in their circumstances, they have 
 received without incongruity additions and ac- 
 commodations adapted to the needs of each 
 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
i5o WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 successive occupant, who, being for the most 
 part proprietor, was at liberty to follow his own 
 fancy: so that these humble dwellings remind 
 the contemplative spectator of a production of 
 Nature, and may (using a strong expression) 
 rather be said to have grown than to have 
 been erected ; to have risen, by an instinct of 
 their own, out of the native rock so little is 
 there in them of formality, such is their wildness 
 and beauty. Among the numerous recesses 
 and projections in the walls and in the different 
 stages of their roofs, are seen bold and har- 
 monious effects of contrasted sunshine and 
 shadow. It is a favourable circumstance, that 
 the strong winds, which sweep down the valleys, 
 induced the inhabitants, at a time when the 
 materials for building were easily procured, to 
 furnish many of these dwellings with substantial 
 porches ; and such as have not this defence, are 
 seldom unprovided with a projection of two 
 large slates over their thresholds. Nor will the 
 singular beauty of the chimneys escape the eye 
 of the attentive traveller. Sometimes a low 
 chimney, almost upon a level with the roof, is 
 overlaid with a slate, supported upon four 
 slender pillars, to prevent the wind from driving 
 the smoke down the chimney. Others are of a 
 quadrangular shape, rising one or two feet above 
 the roof ; which low square is often surmounted 
 by a tall cylinder, giving to the cottage chimney 
 
COTTAGES. 151 
 
 the most beautiful shape in which it is ever seen. 
 Nor will it be too fanciful or refined to remark, 
 that there is a pleasing harmony between a tall 
 chimney of this circular form and the living 
 column of smoke, ascending from it through the 
 still air. These dwellings, mostly built, as has 
 been said, of rough unhewn stone, are roofed with 
 slates, which were rudely taken from the quarry 
 before the present art of splitting them was under- 
 stood, and are, therefore, rough and uneven in 
 their surface, so that both the coverings and sides 
 of the houses have furnished places of rest for 
 the seeds of lichens, mosses, ferns, and flowers. 
 Hence buildings, which in their very form call 
 to mind the processes of Nature, do thus, clothed 
 in part with a vegetable garb, appear to be 
 received into the bosom of the living principle 
 of things, as it acts and exists among the woods 
 and fields ; and, by their colour and their shape, 
 affectingly direct the thoughts to that tranquil 
 course of Nature and simplicity, along which 
 the humble-minded inhabitants have, through 
 so many generations, ^<?en led. Add the little 
 garden with its shed Tor bee-hives, its small bed 
 of pot-herbs, and its borders and patches of 
 flowers for Sunday posies, with sometimes a 
 choice few too much prized to be plucked ; an 
 orchard of proportioned size ; a cheese-press, 
 often supported by some tree near the door ; a 
 cluster of embowering sycamores for summer 
 
152 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 shade ; with a tall fir, through which the winds 
 sing when other trees are leafless ; the little rill 
 or household spout murmuring in all seasons ; 
 combine these incidents and images together, 
 and you have the representative idea of a 
 mountain-cottage in this country so beautifully 
 formed in itself, and so richly adorned by the 
 hand of Nature. 
 
 WHITE COLOUR IN NATURE 
 
 The objections to white, as a colour, in large 
 spots or masses in landscape, especially in a 
 mountainous country, are insurmountable. In 
 Nature, pure white is scarcely ever found but in 
 small objects, such as flowers ; or in those which 
 are transitory, as the clouds, foam of rivers, and 
 snow. Mr. Gilpin, who notices this, has also 
 recorded the just remark of Mr. Locke, of N -- , 
 that white destroys the gradations of distance ; 
 and, therefore, an object of pure white can 
 scarcely ever be managed with good effect in 
 landscape-.painting. Five or six white houses, 
 scattered over a valley, by their obtrusiveness, 
 dot the surface, and divide it into triangles, or 
 other mathematical figures, haunting the eye, 
 and disturbing that repose which might othcr- 
 J From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
WHITE COLOUR IN NATURE. 153 
 
 wise be perfect. I have seen a single white 
 house materially impair the majesty of a moun- 
 tain ; cutting away, by a harsh separation, the 
 whole of its base, below the point on which the 
 house stood. Thus was the apparent size of the 
 mountain reduced, not by the interposition of 
 another object in a manner to call forth the 
 imagination, which will give more than the eye 
 loses ; but what had been abstracted in this case 
 was left visible ; and the mountain appeared to 
 take its beginning, or to rise, from the line of 
 the house, instead of its own natural base. But, 
 if I may express my own individual feeling, it 
 is after sunset, at the coming on of twilight, 
 that white objects are most to be complained of. 
 The solemnity and quietness of Nature at that 
 time are always marred, and often destroyed by 
 them. When the ground is covered with snow, 
 they are of course inoffensive ; and in moonshine 
 they are always pleasing it is a tone of light 
 with which they accord : and the dimness of the 
 scene is enlivened by an object at once con- 
 spicuous and cheerful. I will conclude this 
 subject with noticing, that the cold, slaty colour, 
 which many persons, who have heard the white 
 condemned, have adopted in its stead, must be 
 disapproved of for the reason already given. 
 The flaring yellow runs into the opposite 
 extreme, and is still more censurable. Upon 
 the whole, the safest colour, for general use, is 
 
154 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 something between a cream and a dust-colour, 
 commonly called stone colour ; there are, 
 among the Lakes, examples of this that need 
 not be pointed out. 
 
 ENGLISH WARBLERS (I835). 1 
 
 Yet, as most travellers are either stinted, or 
 stint themselves, for time, the space between the 
 middle or last week in May, and the middle or 
 last week of June, may be pointed out as afford- 
 ing the best combination of long days, fine 
 weather, and variety of impressions. Few of 
 the native trees are then in full leaf; but, for 
 whatever may be wanting in depth of shade, 
 more than an equivalent will be found in the 
 diversity of foliage, in the blossoms of the fruit- 
 and-berry-bearing trees which abound in the 
 woods, and in the golden flowers of the broom 
 and other shrubs, with which many of the copses 
 are interveined. In those woods, also, and on 
 those mountain-sides which have a northern 
 aspect, and in the deep dells, many of the spring 
 flowers still linger ; while the open and sunny 
 places are stocked with the flowers of the 
 approaching summer. And, besides, is not an 
 exquisite pleasure still untastcd by him who 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
ENGLISH WARBLERS. 155 
 
 has not heard the choir of linnets and thrushes 
 chaunting their love-songs in the copses, woods, 
 and hedge-rows of a mountainous country; safe 
 from the birds of prey, which build in the 
 inaccessible crags, and are at all hours seen or 
 heard wheeling about in the air? The number 
 of these formidable creatures is probably the 
 cause why, in the narrow valleys, there are no 
 skylarks ; as the destroyer would be enabled 
 to dart upon them from the near and surround- 
 ing crags, before they could descend to their 
 ground-nests for protection. It is not often that 
 the nightingale resorts to these vales ; but 
 almost all the other tribes of our English 
 warblers are numerous ; and their notes, when 
 listened to by the side of broad still waters, 
 or when heard in unison with the murmuring 
 of mountain-brooks, have the compass of their 
 power enlarged accordingly. There is also an 
 imaginative influence in the voice of the cuckoo, 
 when that voice has taken possession of a deep 
 mountain valley, very different from anything 
 which can be excited by the same sound in a 
 flat country. 
 
156 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 COMPARISONS OF SCENERY 
 
 Nothing is more injurious to genuine feeling 
 than the practice of hastily and ungraciously 
 depreciating the face of one country by com- 
 paring it with that of another. True it is, Qui 
 bene distinguit bene docet; yet fastidiousness is 
 a wretched travelling companion ; and the best 
 guide to which, in matters of taste, we can 
 entrust ourselves, is a disposition to be pleased. 
 For example, if a traveller be among the Alps, 
 let him surrender up his mind to the fury of the 
 gigantic torrents, and take delight in the con- 
 templation of their almost irresistible violence, 
 without complaining of the monotony of their 
 foaming course, or being disgusted with the 
 muddiness of the water apparent even where 
 it is violently agitated. In Cumberland and 
 Westmorland, let not the comparative weakness 
 of the streams prevent him from sympathising 
 with such impetuosity as they possess ; and, 
 making the most of the present objects, let 
 him, as he justly may do, observe with admira- 
 tion the unrivalled brilliancy of the water, and 
 that variety of motion, mood, and character, 
 that arises out of the want of those resources 
 by which the power of the streams in the Alps 
 is supported. Again, with respect to the moun- 
 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
COMPARISONS OF SCENERY. 157 
 
 tains ; though these are comparatively of dimin- 
 utive size, though there is little of perpetual 
 snow, and no voice of summer-avalanches is 
 heard among them ; and though traces left by 
 the ravage of the elements are here compara- 
 tively rare and unimpressive, yet out of this 
 very deficiency proceeds a sense of stability 
 and permanence that is, to many minds, more 
 grateful 
 
 While the hoarse rushes to the sweeping breeze 
 Sigh forth their ancient melodies. 
 
 Among the Alps are few places that do not 
 preclude this feeling of tranquil sublimity. 
 Havoc, and ruin, and desolation, and encroach- 
 ment, are everywhere more or less obtruded ; 
 and it is difficult, notwithstanding the naked 
 loftiness of the pikes, and the snow-capped 
 summits of the mounts, to escape from the 
 depressing sensation, that the whole are in a 
 rapid process of dissolution ; and, were it not 
 that the destructive agency must abate as the 
 heights diminish, would, in time to come, be 
 levelled with the plains. . . . 
 
 As my object is to reconcile a Briton to the 
 scenery of his own country, though not at the 
 expense of truth, I am not afraid of asserting 
 that in many points of view our LAKES, also, 
 are much more interesting than those of the 
 Alps ; first, as is implied above, from being 
 
158 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 more happily proportioned to the other features 
 of the landscape ; and next, both as being 
 infinitely more pellucid, and less subject to 
 agitation from the winds. Como (which may 
 perhaps be styled the King of Lakes, as Lugano 
 is certainly the Queen) is disturbed by a period- 
 ical wind blowing from the head in the morning, 
 and towards it in the afternoon. The magnifi- 
 cent Lake of the four Cantons, especially its 
 noblest division, called the Lake of Uri, is not 
 only much agitated by winds, but in the night 
 time is disturbed from the bottom, as I was 
 told, and indeed as I witnessed, without any 
 apparent commotion in the air ; and when at 
 rest, the water is not pure to the eye, but of a 
 heavy green hue as is that of all the other 
 lakes, apparently according to the degree in 
 which they are fed by melted snows. If the 
 Lake of Geneva furnish an exception, this is 
 probably owing to its vast extent, which allows 
 the water to deposit its impurities. The water 
 of the English lakes, on the contrary, being of 
 a crystalline clearness, the reflections of the 
 surrounding hills are frequently so lively, that 
 it is scarcely possible to distinguish the point 
 where the real object terminates, and its unsub- 
 stantial duplicate begins. The lower part of the 
 Lake of Geneva, from its narrowness, must be 
 much less subject to agitation than the higher 
 divisions, and, as the water is clearer than that 
 
REFLECTIONS IN STILL WATER. 159 
 
 of the other Swiss Lakes, it will frequently 
 exhibit this appearance, though it is scarcely 
 possible in an equal degree. During two com- 
 prehensive tours among the Alps, I did not 
 observe, except on one of the smaller lakes 
 between Lugano and Ponte Tresa, a single 
 instance of those beautiful repetitions of sur- 
 rounding objects on the bosom of the water, 
 which are so frequently seen here : not to speak 
 of the fine, dazzling, trembling net-work, breezy 
 motions, and streaks and circles of intermingled 
 smooth and rippled water, which make the 
 surface of our lakes a field of endless variety. 
 
 REFLECTIONS IN STILL WATER 
 
 Recurring to the reflections from still water, I 
 will describe a singular phenomenon of this kind 
 of which I was an eye-witness. 
 
 Walking by the side of Ulswater upon a calm 
 September morning, I saw, deep within the 
 bosom of the Lake, a magnificent Castle, with 
 towers and battlements : nothing could be more 
 distinct than the whole edifice. After gazing 
 with delight upon it for some time, as upon a 
 work of enchantment, I could not but regret 
 that my previous knowledge of the place enabled 
 
 1 From A Guide through- the District of the Lakes. 
 
160 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 me to account for the appearance. It was in 
 fact the reflection of a pleasure-house called 
 Lyulph's Tower the towers and battlements 
 magnified and so much changed in shape as 
 not to be immediately recognised. In the 
 meanwhile, the pleasure-house itself was alto- 
 gether hidden from my view by a body of 
 vapour stretching over it and along the hill- 
 side on which it stands, but not so as to have 
 intercepted its communication with the lake ; 
 and hence this novel and most impressive object, 
 which, if I had been a stranger to the spot, 
 would, from its being inexplicable, have long 
 detained the mind in a state of pleasing aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 Appearances of this kind, acting upon the 
 credulity of early ages, may have given birth 
 to, and favoured the belief in, stories of sub- 
 aqueous palaces, gardens, and pleasure-grounds 
 the brilliant ornaments of Romance. 
 
 STORMS IN THE LAKES 
 
 On this day, March 30, 1822, the winds have 
 been acting upon the small Lake of Rydal, as 
 if they had received command to carry its waters 
 from their bed into the sky; the white billows 
 in different quarters disappeared under clouds, 
 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
STORMS IN THE LAKES. 161 
 
 or rather drifts, of spray, that were whirled 
 along, and up into the air by scouring winds, 
 charging each other in squadrons in every direc- 
 tion, upon the Lake. The spray, having been 
 hurried aloft till it lost its consistency and 
 whiteness, was driven along the mountain-tops 
 like flying showers that vanish in the distance. 
 Frequently an eddying wind scooped the waters 
 out of the basin, and forced them upwards in 
 the very shape of an Icelandic Geyser, or boil- 
 ing fountain, to the height of several hundred 
 feet. 
 
 This small Mere of Rydal, from its position, 
 is subject in a peculiar degree to these commo- 
 tions. The present season, however, is unusually 
 stormy ; great numbers of fish, two of them 
 not less than 12 pounds weight, were a few days 
 ago cast on the shores of Derwent-water by the 
 force of the waves. 
 
 ASCENT OF SCAWFELL 
 
 Having left Rosthwaite in Borrowdale, on a 
 bright morning in the first week of October, 
 we ascended from Seathwaite to the top of 
 the ridge, called Ash-course, and thence beheld 
 three distinct views ; on one side, the con- 
 tinuous Vale of Borrowdale, Keswick, and Bas- 
 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
 II 
 
1 62 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 senthwaite, with Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Saddle- 
 back, and numerous other mountains and, in 
 the distance, the Solway Frith and the Moun- 
 tains of Scotland ; on the other side, and below 
 us, the Langdale Pikes their own vale below 
 them; Windermere, and, far beyond Winder- 
 mere, Ingleborough in Yorkshire. But how 
 shall I speak of the deliciousness of the third 
 prospect ! At this time, that was most favoured 
 by sunshine and shade. The green Vale of Esk 
 deep and green, with its glittering serpent 
 stream, lay below us ; and on we looked to 
 the Mountains near the Sea, Black Comb pre- 
 eminent, and still beyond, to the Sea itself, in 
 dazzling brightness. Turning round, we saw the 
 Mountains of Wastdale in tumult ; to our right, 
 Great Gavel, the loftiest, a distinct, and huge 
 form, though the middle of the mountain was, 
 to our eyes, as its base. 
 
 We had attained the object of this journey; 
 but our ambition now mounted higher. We 
 saw the summit of Scawfell, apparently very 
 near to us ; and we shaped our course towards 
 it ; but, discovering that it could not be reached 
 without first making a considerable descent, we 
 resolved, instead, to aim at another point of the 
 same mountain, called the Pikes, which I have 
 since found has been estimated as higher than 
 the summit bearing the name of Scawfell Plead, 
 where the Stone Man is built. 
 
SCAWFELL. 163 
 
 The sun had never once been overshadowed 
 by a cloud during the whole of our progress 
 from the centre of Borrowdale. On the summit 
 of the Pike, which we gained after much toil, 
 though without difficulty, there was not a breath 
 of air to stir even the papers containing our 
 refreshment, as they lay spread out upon a rock. 
 The stillness seemed to be not of this world : we 
 paused, and kept silence to listen ; and no sound 
 could be heard : the Scawfell Cataracts were 
 voiceless to us ; and there was not an insect to 
 hum in the air. The vales which we had seen 
 from Ash-course lay yet in view ; and, side by 
 side with Eskdale, we now saw the sister Vale 
 of Donnerdale terminated by the Duddon Sands. 
 But the majesty of the mountains below, and 
 close to us, is not to be conceived. We now 
 beheld the whole mass of Great Gavel from 
 its base, the Den of Wastdale at our feet 
 a gulf immeasurable : Grasmire and the other 
 mountains of Crummock Ennerdale and its 
 mountains ; and the Sea beyond ! We sat 
 down to our repast, and gladly would we have 
 tempered our beverage (for there was no spring 
 or well near us) with such a supply of delicious 
 water as we might have procured, had we been 
 on the rival summit of Great Gavel ; for on its 
 highest point is a small triangular receptacle in 
 the native rock, which, the shepherds say, is 
 never dry. There we might have slaked our 
 
164 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 thirst plenteously with a pure and celestial 
 liquid, for the cup or basin, it appears, has no 
 other feeder than the dews of heaven, the 
 showers, the vapours, the hoar frost, and the 
 spotless snow. 
 
 While we were gazing around, " Look," I 
 exclaimed, "at yon ship upon the glittering 
 sea ! " " Is it a ship ? " replied our shepherd- 
 guide. " It can be nothing else," interposed 
 my companion ; " I cannot be mistaken, I am 
 so accustomed to the appearance of ships at 
 sea." The Guide dropped the argument ; but 
 before a minute was gone, he quietly said, " Now 
 look at your ship ; it is changed into a horse." 
 So indeed it was, a horse with a gallant neck 
 and head. We laughed heartily; and, I hope, 
 when again inclined to be positive, I may 
 remember the ship and the horse upon the 
 glittering sea ; and the calm confidence, yet 
 submissiveness, of our wise Man of the Moun- 
 tains, who certainly had more knowledge of 
 clouds than we, whatever might be our know- 
 ledge of ships. 
 
 I know not how long we might have remained 
 on the summit of the Pike, without a thought 
 of moving, had not our Guide warned us that 
 we must not linger ; for a storm was coming. 
 We looked in vain to espy the signs of it 
 Mountains, vales, and sea were touched with 
 the clear light of the sun. " It is there," said he, 
 
ULLS WATER. 165 
 
 pointing to the sea beyond Whitehaven, and 
 there we perceived a light vapour unnoticeable 
 but by a shepherd accustomed to watch all 
 mountain bodings. We gazed around again, 
 and yet again, unwilling to lose the remem- 
 brance of what lay before us in that lofty 
 solitude ; and then prepared to depart. Mean- 
 while the air changed to cold, and we saw that 
 tiny vapour swelled into mighty masses of cloud 
 which came boiling over the mountains. Great 
 Gavel, Helvellyn, and Skiddaw were wrapped 
 in storm ; yet Langdale, and the mountains in 
 that quarter, remained all bright in sunshine. 
 Soon the storm reached us ; we sheltered under 
 a crag ; and almost as rapidly as it had come it 
 passed away, and left us free to observe the 
 struggles of gloom and sunshine in other 
 quarters. Langdale now had its share, and the 
 Pikes of Langdale were decorated by two 
 splendid rainbows. Skiddaw also had his 
 own rainbows. Before we again reached 
 Ash-course every cloud had vanished from 
 every summit. 
 
 ULLSWATER (I835). 1 
 
 A.D. 1805. On the 7th of November, on a 
 damp and gloomy morning, we left Grasmerc 
 Vale, intending to pass a few days on the banks 
 
 1 From A Guide through the District of the Lakes. 
 
166 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 of Ullswater. A mild and dry autumn had been 
 unusually favourable to the preservation and 
 beauty of foliage ; and, far advanced as the 
 season was, the trees on the larger Island of 
 Rydal-mere retained a splendour which did not 
 need the heightening of sunshine. We noticed, 
 as we passed, that the line of the grey rocky 
 shore of that island, shaggy with variegated 
 bushes and shrubs, and spotted and striped with 
 purplish brown heath, indistinguishably blending 
 with its image reflected in the still water, pro- 
 duced a curious resemblance, both in form and 
 colour, to a richly-coated caterpillar, as it might 
 appear through a magnifying-glass of extra- 
 ordinary power. The mists gathered as we 
 went along : but, when we reached the top of 
 Kirkstone, we were glad we had not been dis- 
 couraged by the apprehension of bad weather. 
 Though not able to see a hundred yards before 
 us, we were more than contented. At such a 
 time, and in such a place, every scattered stone 
 the size of one's head becomes a companion. 
 Near the top of the Pass is the remnant of an 
 old wall, which (magnified, though obscured, by 
 the vapour) might have been taken for a frag- 
 ment of some monument of ancient grandeur, 
 yet that same pile of stones we had never before 
 even observed. This situation, it must be 
 allowed, is not favourable to gaiety ; but a 
 pleasing hurry of spirits accompanies the sur- 
 
ULLSWATER. 167 
 
 prise occasioned by objects transformed, dilated, 
 or distorted, as they are when seen through such 
 a medium. Many of the fragments of rock on 
 the top and slopes of Kirkstone, and of similar 
 places, are fantastic enough in themselves ; but 
 the full effect of such impressions can only be 
 had in a state of weather when they are not 
 likely to be sought for. It was not till we had 
 descended considerably that the fields of Harts- 
 hope were seen, like a lake tinged by the 
 reflection of sunny clouds : I mistook them for 
 Brothers-water, but, soon after, we saw that lake 
 gleaming faintly with a steely brightness, then, 
 as we continued to descend, appeared the brown 
 oaks, and the birches of lively yellow and the 
 cottages and the lowly Hall of Hartshope, with 
 its long roof and ancient chimneys. During 
 great part of our way to Patterdale, we had rain, 
 or rather drizzling vapour ; for there was never 
 a drop upon our hair or clothes larger than the 
 smallest pearls upon a lady's ring. 
 
 The following morning, incessant rain till 
 II o'clock, when the sky began to clear, and 
 we walked along the eastern shore of Ullswater 
 towards the farm of Blowick. The wind blew 
 strong, and drove the clouds forward, on the 
 side of the mountain above our heads ; two 
 storm-stiffened black yew-trees fixed our notice, 
 seen through, or under the edge of, the flying 
 mists, four or five goats were bounding among 
 
168 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 the rocks ; the sheep moved about more quietly, 
 or cowered beneath their sheltering places. This 
 is the only part of the country where goats are 
 now found ; but this morning, before we had 
 seen these, I was reminded of that picturesque 
 animal by two rams of mountain breed, both 
 with Ammonian horns, and with beards majestic 
 as that which Michael Angelo has given to his 
 statue of Moses. But to return; when our path 
 had brought us to that part of the naked common 
 which overlooks the woods and bush-besprinkled 
 fields of Blowick, the lake, clouds, and mists 
 were all in motion to the sound of sweeping 
 winds ; the church and cottages of Patterdale 
 scarcely visible, or seen only by fits between the 
 shifting vapours. To the northward the scene 
 was less visionary; Place Fell steady and bold ; 
 the whole lake driving onward like a great 
 river waves dancing round the small islands. 
 The house at Blowick was the boundary of our 
 walk ; and we returned, lamenting to see a 
 decaying and uncomfortable dwelling in a place 
 where sublimity and beauty seemed to contend 
 with each other. But these regrets were dis- 
 pelled by a glance on the woods that clothe the 
 opposite steeps of the lake. How exquisite was 
 the mixture of sober and splendid hues ! The 
 general colouring of the trees was brown rather 
 that of ripe hazel nuts ; but towards the water, 
 there were yet beds of green, and in the highest 
 
ULLSWATER. 169 
 
 parts of the wood was abundance of yellow 
 foliage, which, gleaming through a vapoury 
 lustre, reminded us of masses of clouds, as you 
 see them gathered together in the west, and 
 touched with the golden light of the setting 
 sun. 
 
 After dinner we walked up the Vale ; I had 
 never had an idea of its extent and width in 
 passing along the public road on the other side. 
 We followed the path that leads from house to 
 house ; two or three times it took us through 
 some of those copses or groves that cover the 
 little hillocks in the middle of the vale, making 
 an intricate and pleasing intermixture of lawn 
 and wood. Our fancies could not resist the 
 temptation ; and we fixed upon a spot for a 
 cottage, which we began to build : and finished 
 as easily as castles are raised in the air. Visited 
 the same spot in the evening. I shall say 
 nothing of the moonlight aspect of the situation 
 which had charmed us so much in the after- 
 noon ; but I wish you had been with us when, 
 in returning to our friend's house, we espied his 
 lady's large white dog, lying in the moonshine 
 upon the round knoll under the old yew-tree in 
 the garden, a romantic image the dark tree and 
 its dark shadow and the elegant creature, as 
 fair as a spirit ! The torrents murmured softly : 
 the mountains down which they were falling did 
 not, to my sight, furnish a background for this 
 
170 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 Ossianic picture ; but I had a consciousness of 
 the depth of the seclusion, and that mountains 
 were embracing us on all sides ; " I saw not, but 
 I felt that they were there." . . . 
 
 At the end of Gowbarrow park a large herd 
 of deer were either moving slowly or standing 
 still among the fern. I was sorry when a 
 chance-companion, who had joined us by the 
 way, startled them with a whistle, disturbing 
 an image of grave simplicity and thoughtful 
 enjoyment ; for I could have fancied that those 
 natives of this wild and beautiful region were 
 partaking with us a sensation of the solemnity 
 of the closing day. The sun had been set some 
 time ; and we could perceive that the light was 
 fading away from the coves of Helvellyn, but 
 the lake under a luminous sky was more bril- 
 liant than before. 
 
 After tea at Patterdale, set out again : a 
 fine evening ; the seven stars close to the 
 mountain-top ; all the stars seemed brighter 
 than usual. The steeps were reflected in 
 Brothers-water, and, above the lake, appeared 
 like enormous black perpendicular walls. The 
 Kirkstone torrents had been swoln by the rains, 
 and now filled the mountain pass with their 
 roaring, which added greatly to the solemnity 
 of our walk. Behind us, when we had climbed 
 to a great height, we saw one light, very distinct, 
 in the vale, like a large red star a solitary one 
 
IMMORTALITY. 171 
 
 in the gloomy region. The cheerfulness of the 
 scene was in the sky above us. 
 
 IMMORTALITY, ETC. (I839). 1 
 
 I am standing on the brink of that vast ocean 
 I rnust~sail jso^soon ; I must speedily lose sight 
 of the shore; and I could not once have con- 
 ceived how little I now am troubled by the 
 thought of how long or short a time they who 
 remain on that shore may have sight of me. 
 The other day I chanced to be looking over 
 a MS. poem, belonging to the year 1803, 
 though not actually composed till many years 
 afterwards. It was suggested by visiting the 
 neighbourhood of Dumfries, in which Burns 
 had resided, and where he died ; it concluded 
 thus : 
 
 Sweet Mercy to the gates of heaven 
 
 This minstrel led, his sins forgiven ; 
 
 The rueful conflict, the heart riven 
 With vain endeavour, 
 
 And memory of earth's bitter leaven 
 Effaced for ever. 
 
 Here the verses closed ; but I instantly added, 
 the other day, 
 
 But why to him confine the prayer, 
 
 When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear 
 
 1 From a letter to Professor Henry Reed. 
 
WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 On the frail heart the purest share 
 
 With all that live ? 
 The best of what we do and are, 
 
 Just God, forgive ! 
 
 The more I reflect upon this last exclamation, 
 the more I feel (and perhaps it may in some 
 degree be the same with you) justified in 
 attaching comparatively small importance to 
 any literary monument that I may be enabled 
 to leave behind. It is well, however, I am 
 convinced that men think otherwise in the 
 earlier part of their lives. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM WORDSWORTH'S NOTES IN 
 ILLUSTRATION OF HIS POEMS. 
 
 Prefatory Lines. 
 
 If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven, 
 Then to the measure of that heaven-born light, 
 Shine, POET, in thy place, and be content : 
 
 " Like an untended watch-fire," etc. (1. 10) : 
 These Verses were written some time after we 
 had become residents at Rydal Mount ; and I 
 will take occasion from them to observe upon 
 the beauty of that situation, as being backed and 
 flanked by lofty fells, which bring the heavenly 
 bodies to touch, as it were, the earth upon the 
 
AN EVENING WALK. 173 
 
 mountain-tops, while the prospect in front lies 
 open to a length of level valley, the extended 
 lake, and a terminating ridge of low hills ; so 
 that it gives an opportunity to the inhabitants 
 of the place of noticing the stars in both the 
 positions here alluded to namely, on the tops 
 of the mountains, and as winter-lamps at a 
 distance among the leafless trees. 
 
 Aii Evening Walk. Addressed to a Young 
 Lady. 
 
 The young lady to whom this was addressed 
 was my sister. It was composed at School and 
 during my first two college vacations. There 
 is not an image in it which I have not ob- 
 served ; and, now in my seventy-third year, I 
 recollect the time and place where most of 
 them were noticed. I will confine myself to 
 one instance. 
 
 Waving his hat, the shepherd from the vale 
 Directs his wandering dog the cliffs to scale ; 
 The dog bounds barking 'mid the glittering rocks, 
 Hunts where his master points, the intercepted flocks. 
 
 I was an eye-witness of this for the first time 
 while crossing the pass of Dunmail Raise. 
 Upon second thought, I will mention another 
 
174 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 And fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines 
 Its darkening boughs and leaves in stronger lines. 
 
 This is feebly and imperfectly exprest ; but I 
 recollect distinctly the very spot where this first 
 struck me. It was on the way between Hawks- 
 head and Ambleside, and gave me extreme 
 pleasure. The moment was important in my 
 poetical history; for I date from it my con- 
 sciousness of the infinite variety of natural 
 appearances which had been unnoticed by the 
 poets of any age or country, so far as I was 
 acquainted with them ; and I made a resolution 
 to supply in some degree the deficiency. I 
 could not have been at that time above fourteen 
 years of age. The description of the swans that 
 follows, was taken from the daily opportunities 
 I had of observing their habits, not as confined 
 to the gentleman's park, but in a state of nature. 
 There were two pairs of them that divided the 
 lake of Esthwaite and its in-and-out-flowing 
 streams between them, never trespassing a 
 single yard upon each other's separate domain. 
 They were of the old magnificent species, bear- 
 ing in beauty and majesty about the same 
 relation to the Thames swan which that does 
 to the goose. It was from the remembrance 
 of these noble creatures I took, thirty years 
 after, the picture of the swan which I have 
 discarded from the poem of " Dion." While I 
 
THE FORSAKEN. 175 
 
 was a school-boy, the late Mr. Curwen intro- 
 duced a little fleet of these birds, but of the 
 inferior species, to the Lake of Windermere. 
 Their principal home was about his own islands; 
 but they sailed about into remote parts of the 
 lake, and either from real or imagined injury 
 done to the adjoining fields, they were got rid 
 of at the request of the farmers and proprietors, 
 but to the great regret of all who had become 
 attached to them from noticing their beauty 
 and quiet habits. I will conclude my notice of 
 this poem by observing that the plan of it 
 has not been confined to a particular walk, or 
 an individual place ; a proof (of which I was 
 unconscious at the time) of my unwillingness 
 to submit the poetic spirit to the chains of 
 fact and real circumstance. The country is 
 idealised rather than described in any one of 
 its local aspects. 
 
 The Forsaken. 
 " Lyre ! though such power do in thy magic live !" 
 
 The natural imagery of these verses was 
 supplied by frequent, I might say intense, 
 observation of the Rydal Torrent. What an 
 animating contrast is the ever-changing aspect 
 of that, and indeed of every one of our mountain 
 brooks, to the monotonous tone and unmitigated 
 
176 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 fury of such streams among the Alps as are fed 
 all the summer long by glaciers and melting 
 snows ! A traveller, observing the exquisite 
 purity of the great rivers, such as the Rhone at 
 Geneva, and the Reuss at Lucerne, where they 
 issue out of their respective lakes, might fancy 
 for a moment that some power in Nature 
 produced this beautiful change, with a view to 
 make amends for those Alpine sullyings which 
 the waters exhibit near their fountain heads ; 
 but, alas ! how soon does that purity depart, 
 before the influx of tributary waters that have 
 flowed through cultivated plains and the crowded 
 abodes of men. 
 
 The Borderers. 
 
 The study of human nature suggests this 
 awful truth, that, as in the trial to which life 
 subjects us, sin and crime are apt to start from 
 their very opposite qualities, so are there no 
 limits to the hardening of the heart, and the 
 perversion of the understanding to which they 
 may carry their slaves. During my long resi- 
 dence in France, while the Revolution was 
 rapidly advancing to its extreme of wickedness, 
 I had frequent opportunities of being an eye- 
 witness of this process, and it was while that 
 knowledge was fresh upon my memory that the 
 Tragedy of the Borderers was composed. 
 
THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 177 
 
 The Lyrical Ballads. 
 
 In the spring of the year 1798, Coleridge, my 
 sister, and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty 
 late in the afternoon, with a view to visit Linton, 
 and the Valley of Stones near it ; and as our 
 united funds were very small, we agreed to 
 defray the expense of the tour by writing a 
 poem, to be sent to the New Monthly Magazine, 
 set up by Phillips, the bookseller, and edited by 
 Dr. Aikin. Accordingly we set off, and pro- 
 ceeded, along the Quantock Hills, towards 
 Watchet ; and in the course of this walk was 
 planned the poem of the "Ancient Mariner," 
 founded on a dream, 'as Mr. Coleridge said, of 
 his friend Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest 
 part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention ; 
 but certain parts I myself suggested ; for 
 example, some crime was to be committed 
 which would bring upon the Old Navigator, as 
 Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the 
 spectral persecution, as a consequence of that 
 crime and his own wanderings. I had been 
 reading in Shelvocke's Voyages, a day or two 
 before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they 
 frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the 
 largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their 
 wings twelve or thirteen feet. " Suppose," said 
 I, " you represent him as having killed one of 
 these birds on entering the South Sea, and that 
 
 12 
 
178 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon 
 them to avenge the crime." The incident was 
 thought fit for the purpose, and adopted accord- 
 ingly. I also suggested the navigation of the 
 ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that 
 I had anything more to do with the scheme of 
 the poem. The gloss with which it was sub- 
 sequently accompanied was not thought of by 
 either of us at the time, at least not a hint of it 
 was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a 
 gratuitous after-thought. We began the com- 
 position together, on that to me memorable 
 evening : I furnished two or three lines at the 
 beginning of the poem, in particular 
 
 And listen'd like a three years' child ; 
 The Mariner had his will. 
 
 These trifling contributions, all but one 
 (which Mr. C. has with unnecessary scrupu- 
 losity recorded), slipt out of his mind, as they 
 well might As we endeavoured to proceed 
 conjointly (I speak of the same evening), our 
 respective manners proved so widely different, 
 that it would have been quite presumptuous in 
 me to do anything but separate from an under- 
 taking upon which I could only have been a 
 clog. We returned after a few days from a 
 delightful tour, of which I have many pleasant, 
 and some of them droll enough, recollections. 
 We returned by Dulverton to Alfoxden. The 
 
THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 179 
 
 " Ancient Manner " grew and grew till it 
 became too important for our first object, 
 which was limited to our expectation of five 
 pounds ; and we began to talk of a volume 
 which was to consist, as Mr. Coleridge has 
 told the world, of Poems chiefly on natural 
 subjects, taken from common life, but looked 
 at, as much as might be, through an imaginative 
 medium. Accordingly I wrote "The Idiot 
 Boy," " Her Eyes are wild," etc., " We are 
 Seven," " The Thorn," and some others. To 
 return to " We are Seven," the piece that called 
 forth this note : I composed it while walking 
 in the grove of Alfoxden. My friends will not 
 deem it too trifling to relate, that while walking 
 to and fro I composed the last stanza first, 
 having begun with the last line. When it was 
 all but finished, I came in and recited it to 
 Mr. Coleridge and my sister, and said, " A 
 prefatory stanza must be added, and I should 
 sit down to our little tea-meal with greater 
 pleasure if my task was finished." I mentioned 
 in substance what I wished to be expressed, 
 and Coleridge immediately threw off the stanza, 
 thus : 
 
 A little child, dear brother Jem. 
 
 I objected to the rhyme, " dear brother Jem," 
 as being ludicrous ; but we all enjoyed the joke 
 
i8o WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 of hitching in our friend James Tobi-n's name, 
 who was familiarly called Jem. He was the 
 brother of the dramatist ; and this' reminds me 
 of an anecdote which it may be worth while 
 here to notice. The said Jem got a sight of 
 the Lyrical Ballads as it was going through the 
 press at Bristol, during which time I was residing 
 in that city. One evening he came to me with 
 a grave face, and said, " Wordsworth, I have 
 seen the volume that Coleridge and you are 
 about to publish. There is one poem in it 
 which I earnestly entreat you will cancel, for, 
 if published, it will make you everlastingly 
 ridiculous." I answered, that I felt much 
 obliged by the interest he took in my good 
 name as a writer, and begged to know what 
 was the unfortunate piece he alluded to. He 
 said, "It is called 'We are Seven."' "Nay," 
 said I, " that shall take its chance, however ; " 
 and he left me in despair. 
 
 Musings near Aquapendente. 
 
 We took boat near the lighthouse at the point 
 of the right horn of the bay, which makes a 
 sort of natural port for Genoa ; but the wind 
 was high, and the waves long and rough, so 
 that I did not feel quite recompensed by the 
 view of the city, splendid as it was, for the 
 danger apparently incurred. The boatman (I 
 
AT ROME. 181 
 
 had only one) encouraged me, saying, we were 
 quite safe ; but I was not a little glad when we 
 gained the shore, though Shelley and Byron 
 one of them at least who seemed to have 
 courted agitation from every quarter would 
 have probably rejoiced in such a situation. 
 More than once, I believe, were they both in 
 extreme danger even on the Lake of Geneva. 
 Every man, however, has his fears of some kind 
 or other, and, no doubt, they had theirs. Of all 
 men whom I have ever known, Coleridge had 
 the most of passive courage in bodily peril, but 
 no one was so easily cowed when moral firmness 
 was required in miscellaneous conversation or in 
 the daily intercourse of social life. 
 
 At Rome. 
 
 Sight is at first a sad enemy to imagination, 
 and to those pleasures belonging to old times 
 with which some exertions of that power will 
 always mingle. Nothing perhaps brings this 
 truth home to the feelings more than the city of 
 Rome, not so much in respect to the impression 
 made at the moment when it is first seen and 
 looked at as a whole, for then the imagination 
 may be invigorated, and the mind's eye quickened 
 to perceive as much as that of the [imagination] ; 
 but when particular spots or objects are sought 
 
1 82 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 out, disappointment is, I believe, invariably felt 
 Ability to recover from this disappointment will 
 exist in proportion to knowledge, and the power 
 of the mind to reconstruct out of fragments and 
 parts, and to make details in the present sub- 
 servient to more adequate comprehension of the 
 past 
 
 The River Duddon. 
 
 It is with the little River Duddon as it is with 
 most other rivers, Ganges and Nile not excepted, 
 many springs might claim the honour of being 
 its head. In my own fancy, I have fixed its rise 
 near the noted Shire Stones placed at the 
 meeting point of the counties Westmorland, 
 Cumberland, and Lancashire. They stand by 
 the wayside, on the top of the Wry-nose Pass, 
 and it used to be reckoned a proud thing to say, 
 that by touching them at the same time with 
 feet and hands, one had been in three counties 
 at once. At what point of its course the stream 
 takes the name of Duddon, I do not know. I first 
 became acquainted with the Duddon, as I have 
 good reason to remember, in early boyhood. 
 Upon the banks of the Derwent I had learnt 
 to be very fond of angling. Fish abound in that 
 large river, not so in the small streams in the 
 neighbourhood of Hawkshead ; and I fell into 
 the common delusion, that the further from 
 
THE RIVER DUDDON. 183 
 
 home the better sport would be had. Accord- 
 ingly, one day I attached myself to a person 
 living in the neighbourhood of Hawkshead, who 
 was going to try his fortune, as an angler, near 
 the source of the Duddon. We fished a great 
 part of the day with very sorry success, the rain 
 pouring torrents ; and long before we got home, 
 I was worn out with fatigue ; and if the good 
 man had not carried me on his back, I must 
 have lain down under the best shelter I could 
 find. Little did I think then it would have 
 been my lot to celebrate, in a strain of love and 
 admiration, the stream which for many years I 
 never thought of without recollections of dis- 
 appointment and distress. . . . 
 
 The traveller would be most gratified who 
 should approach this beautiful Stream, neither 
 at its source, as is done in the Sonnets, nor from 
 its termination ; but from Coniston over Walna 
 Scar ; first descending into a little circular 
 valley, a collateral compartment of the long 
 winding vale through which flows the Duddon. 
 This recess, towards the close of September, 
 when the after-grass of the meadow is still of a 
 fresh green, with the leaves of many of the trees 
 faded, but perhaps none fallen, is truly enchant- 
 ing. At a point elevated enough to show the 
 various objects in the valley, and not so high as 
 to diminish their importance, the stranger will 
 instinctively halt. On the foreground, a little 
 
1 84 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 below the most favourable station, a rude foot- 
 bridge is thrown over the bed of the noisy brook 
 foaming by the way-side. Russet and craggy 
 hills, of bold and varied outline, surround the 
 level valley, which is besprinkled with grey 
 rocks plumed with birch trees. A few home- 
 steads are interspersed, in some places peeping 
 out from among the rocks like hermitages, 
 whose site has been chosen for the benefit of 
 sunshine as well as shelter ; in other instances, 
 the dwelling-house, barn, and byre compose 
 together a cruciform structure, which, with its 
 embowering trees, and the ivy clothing part of 
 the walls and roof like a fleece, call to mind the 
 remains of an ancient abbey. Time, in most 
 cases, and Nature everywhere, have given a 
 sanctity to the humble works of man that are 
 scattered over this peaceful retirement. Hence 
 a harmony of tone and colour, a consummation 
 and perfection of beauty, which would have 
 been marred had aim or purpose interfered with 
 the course of convenience, utility, or necessity. 
 This unvitiated region stands in no need of the 
 veil of twilight to soften or disguise its features. 
 As it glistens in the morning sunshine, it would 
 fill the spectator's heart with gladsomeness. 
 Looking from our chosen station, he would feel 
 an impatience to rove among its pathways, to be 
 greeted by the milkmaid, to wander from house 
 to house, exchanging "good-morrows" as he 
 
THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 185 
 
 passed the open doors ; but, at evening, when 
 the sun is set, and a pearly light gleams from 
 the western quarter of the sky, with an answer- 
 ing light from the smooth surface of the 
 meadows ; when the trees are dusky, but each 
 kind still distinguishable ; when the cool air has 
 condensed the blue smoke rising from the 
 cottage chimneys ; when the dark mossy stones 
 seem to sleep in the bed of the foaming brook ; 
 then, he would be unwilling to move forward, 
 not less from a reluctance to relinquish what he 
 beholds, than from an apprehension of disturb- 
 ing, by his approach, the quietness beneath him. 
 
 The White Doe of Rylstone. 
 
 Everything that is attempted by the principal 
 personages in the " White Doe " fails, so far as 
 its object is external and substantial : so far as 
 it is moral and spiritual, it succeeds. The heroine 
 of the poem knows that her duty is not to inter- 
 fere with the current of events, either to forward 
 or delay them ; but 
 
 To abide 
 
 The shock, and finally secure 
 O'er pain and grief a triumph pure. 
 
 This she does in obedience to her brother's 
 injunction, as most suitable to a mind and 
 character that, under previous trials, had been 
 
 proved to accord with his. She achieves this, 
 
 12* 
 
1 86 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 not without aid from the communication with 
 the inferior creature, which often leads her 
 thoughts to revolve upon the past with a tender 
 and humanising influence that exalts rather than 
 depresses her. The anticipated beatification, if 
 I may so say, of her mind, and the apotheosis of 
 the companion of her solitude, are the points at 
 which the poem aims, and constitute its legi- 
 timate catastrophe ; far too spiritual a one for 
 instant or widely-spread sympathy, but not 
 therefore the less fitted to make a deep and per- 
 manent impression upon that class of minds who 
 think and feel more independently than the 
 many do of the surfaces of things, and interests 
 transitory because belonging more to the out- 
 ward and social forms of life than to its internal 
 spirit. 
 
 How insignificant a thing, for example, does 
 personal prowess appear, compared with the 
 fortitude of patience and heroic martyrdom; in 
 other words, with struggles for the sake of 
 principle, in preference to victory gloried in 
 for its own sake ! 
 
 Yarrow Revisited. 
 
 In the autumn of 1831, my daughter and I set 
 off from Rydal to visit Sir Walter Scott, before 
 his departure for Italy. This journey had been 
 delayed, by an inflammation in my eyes, till we 
 
YARROW REVISITED. 187 
 
 found that the time appointed for his leaving 
 home would be too near for him to receive us 
 without considerable inconvenience. Neverthe- 
 less, we proceeded, and reached Abbotsford on 
 Monday. I was then scarcely able to lift up my 
 eyes to the light. How sadly changed did I 
 find him from the man I had seen so healthy, 
 gay, and hopeful a few years before, when he 
 said at the inn at Paterdale, in my presence, his 
 daughter Anne also being there, with Mr. Lock- 
 hart, my own wife and daughter, and Mr. 
 Quillinan, " I mean to live till I am eighty, 
 and shall write as long as I live." Though we 
 had none of us the least thought of the cloud of 
 misfortune which was then going to break upon 
 his head, I was startled, and almost shocked, 
 at that bold saying, which could scarcely be 
 uttered by such a man, sanguine as he was, 
 without a momentary forgetfulness of the 
 instability of human life. But to return to 
 Abbotsford. The inmates and guests we found 
 there were Sir Walter, Major Scott, Anne Scott, 
 and Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart ; Mr. Liddell, his 
 lady and brother, and Mr. Allan, the painter, 
 and Mr. Laidlaw, a very old friend of Sir 
 Walter's. One of Burns's sons, an officer in the 
 Indian service, had left the house a day or two 
 before, and had kindly expressed his regret that 
 he could not wait my arrival, a regret that I 
 may truly say was mutual. In the evening, 
 
1 88 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Liddell sang, and Mrs. Lockhart 
 chaunted old ballads to her harp; and Mr. 
 Allan, hanging over the back of a chair, told 
 and acted odd stories in a humorous way. With 
 this exhibition, and his daughter's singing, Sir 
 Walter was much amused, and, indeed, were we 
 all, as far as circumstances would allow. But 
 what is most worthy of mention is the admirable 
 demeanour of Major Scott during that evening. 
 He had much to suffer from the sight of his 
 father's infirmities and from the great change 
 that was about to take place at the residence he 
 had built, and where he had long lived in so 
 much prosperity and happiness. But what 
 struck me most was the patient kindness with 
 which he supported himself under the many 
 fretful expressions that his sister Anne ad- 
 dressed to him or uttered in his hearing. She, 
 poor thing, as mistress of that house, had been 
 subject, after her mother's death, to a heavier 
 load of care and responsibility, and greater 
 sacrifices of time, than one of such a constitution 
 of body and mind was able to bear. Of this 
 Dora and I were made so sensible, that as soon 
 as we had crossed the Tweed on our departure, 
 we gave vent at the same moment to our appre- 
 hensions that her brain would fail and she would 
 go out of her mind, or that she would sink under 
 the trials she had passed and those which 
 awaited her. 
 
YARROW REVISITED. 189 
 
 On Tuesday morning, Sir Walter Scott accom- 
 panied us, and most of the party, to Newark 
 Castle, on the Yarrow. When we alighted from 
 the carriages, he walked pretty stoutly, and had 
 great pleasure in revisiting these his favourite 
 haunts. Of that excursion, the verses, "Yarrow 
 Revisited," are a memorial. Notwithstanding 
 the romance that pervades Sir Walter's works, 
 and attaches to many of his habits, there is too 
 much pressure of fact for these verses to har- 
 monise, as much as I could wish, with the two 
 preceding poems. On our return in the after- 
 noon, we had to cross the Tweed, directly opposite 
 Abbotsford. The wheels of our carriage grated 
 upon the pebbles in the bed of the stream, that 
 there flows somewhat rapidly. A rich, but sad 
 light, of rather a purple than a golden hue, was 
 spread over the Eildon Hills at that moment ; 
 and, thinking it probable that it might be the 
 last time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I 
 was not a little moved, and expressed some of 
 my feelings in the sonnet beginning, 
 
 A trouble, not of clouds. 
 
 At noon on Thursday we left Abbotsford, and 
 on the morning of that day, Sir Walter and I 
 had a serious conversation, tete-a-tete, when he 
 spoke with gratitude of the happy life which, 
 upon the whole, he had led He had written in 
 my daughter's album, before he came into the 
 
WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 breakfast -room that morning, a few stanzas 
 addressed to her ; and while putting the book 
 into her hand, in his own Study, standing by 
 his desk, he said to her in my presence, " I 
 should not have done anything of this kind, but 
 for your father's sake ; they are probably the 
 last verses I shall ever write" 
 
 Roslin Chapel during a Storm. 
 
 We were detained, by incessant rain and 
 storm, at the small inn near Roslin Chapel, and 
 I passed a great part of the day pacing to and 
 fro in this beautiful structure, which, though not 
 used for public service, is not allowed to go to 
 ruin. Here this sonnet was composed, and [I 
 shall be fully satisfied] if it has at all done 
 justice to the feeling which the place and the 
 storm raging without inspired. I was as a 
 prisoner. A Painter delineating the interior of 
 the chapel and its minute features, under such 
 circumstances, would have no doubt found his 
 time agreeably shortened. But the movements 
 of the mind must be more free while dealing 
 with words than with lines and colours. Such, 
 at least, was then, and has been on many other 
 occasions, my belief; and as it is allotted to 
 few to follow both arts with success, I am 
 grateful to my own calling for this and a 
 
AILSA CRAG. 191 
 
 thousand other recommendations which are 
 denied to that of the Painter. 
 
 Ailsa Crag during an eclipse of the sun, 
 July 17, 1833. 
 
 The morning of the eclipse was exquisitely 
 beautiful while we passed the Crag, as described 
 in the sonnet. On the deck of the steamboat 
 were several persons of the poor and labouring 
 class ; and I could not but be struck with their 
 cheerful talk with each other, while not one of 
 them seemed to notice the magnificent objects 
 with which we were surrounded ; and even the 
 phenomenon of the eclipse attracted but little of 
 their attention. Was it right not to regret this ? 
 They appeared to me, however, so much alive in 
 their own minds to their own concerns that I 
 could not look upon it as a misfortune that 
 they had little perception for such pleasures as 
 cannot be cultivated without ease and leisure. 
 Yet, if one surveys life in all its duties and 
 relations, such ease and leisure will not be found 
 so enviable a privilege as it may at first appear. 
 Natural philosophy, painting, and poetry, and 
 refined taste, are no doubt great acquisitions to 
 society ; but among those who dedicate them- 
 selves to such pursuits it is to be feared that 
 few are as happy and as consistent in the 
 
192 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 management of their lives as the class of 
 persons who at that time led me into this 
 course of reflection. 
 
 Lines written in Germany (1798-99). 
 " A plague," etc. 
 
 A bitter winter it was when these verses were 
 composed by the side of my sister, in our lodg- 
 ings, at a draper's house, in the romantic imperial 
 town of Gosla'r, on the edge of the Hartz Forest. 
 In this town the German Emperors of the 
 Franconian line were accustomed to keep their 
 court, and it retains vestiges of ancient splendour. 
 So severe was the cold of this winter, that when 
 we passed out of the parlour warmed by the 
 stove, our cheeks were struck by the air as by 
 cold iron. I slept in a room over a passage that 
 was not ceiled. The people of the house used 
 to say rather unfeelingly, that they expected I 
 should be frozen to death some night ; but with 
 the protection of a pelisse lined with fur, and a 
 dog's-skin bonnet, such as was worn by the 
 peasants, I walked daily on the ramparts, or in a 
 sort of public ground or garden, in which was a 
 pond. Here I had no companion but a king- 
 fisher, a beautiful creature that used to glance by 
 me. 
 
ODE TO DUTY. 193 
 
 Ode to 'Duty. 
 
 Many and many a time have I been twitted 
 by my wife and sister for having forgotten this 
 dedication of myself to the stern lawgiver. 
 Transgressor indeed I have been, from hour to 
 hour, from day to day ; I would fain hope however 
 not more flagrantly or in a worse way than most 
 of my tuneful brethren. But these last words 
 are in a wrong strain. We should be rigorous 
 to ourselves, and forbearing, if not indulgent, to 
 others, and if we make comparisons at all it 
 ought to be with those who have morally 
 excelled us. 
 
 The Lawn at Rydal Mount. 
 
 This lawn is the sloping one approaching 
 the kitchen-garden, and was made out of it. 
 Hundreds of times have I here watched the 
 dancing of shadows amid a press of sunshine, 
 and other beautiful appearances of light and 
 shade, flowers and shrubs. What a contrast 
 between this and the cabbages and onions and 
 carrots that used to grow there on a piece of 
 ugly-shaped unsightly ground ! No reflection, 
 however, either upon cabbages or onions. The 
 latter, we know, were worshipped by the Egyp- 
 tians ; and he must have a poor eye for beauty 
 who has not observed how much of it there is 
 
194 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 in the form and colour which cabbages and 
 plants of this genus exhibit through the various 
 stages of their growth and decay. A richer 
 display of colour in vegetable nature can scarcely 
 be conceived than Coleridge, my sister, and I 
 saw in a bed of potato plants in blossom near 
 a hut upon the moor between Inversneyd and 
 Loch Katrine. These blossoms were of such 
 extraordinary beauty and richness that no one 
 could have passed them without notice. But 
 the sense must be cultivated through the mind 
 before we can perceive those inexhaustible 
 treasures of Nature for such they truly are 
 without the least necessary reference to the 
 utility of her productions, or even to the laws 
 whereupon, as we learn by research, they are 
 dependent. Some are of opinion that the habit 
 of analysing, decomposing, and anatomising, is 
 inevitably unfavourable to the perception of 
 beauty. People are led into this mistake by 
 overlooking the fact that such processes being 
 to a certain extent within the reach of a limited 
 intellect, we are apt to ascribe to them that 
 insensibility of which they are in truth the 
 effect, and not the cause. Admiration and love, 
 to which all knowledge truly vital must tend, 
 are felt by men of real genius in proportion 
 as their discoveries in Natural Philosophy are 
 enlarged ; and the beauty in form of a plant or 
 an animal is not made less but more apparent 
 
RYDAL MOUNT. 195 
 
 as a whole by a more accurate insight into its 
 constituent properties and powers. A Savant, 
 who is not also a poet in soul and a religionist 
 in heart, is a feeble and unhappy creature. 
 
 Rydal Mount. 
 
 I often ask myself what will become of Rydal 
 Mount after our day. Will the old walls and 
 steps remain in front of the house and about 
 the grounds, or will they be swept away with 
 all the beautiful mosses and ferns and wild 
 geraniums and other flowers which their rude 
 construction suffered and encouraged to grow 
 among them ? This little wild flower, " Poor 
 Robin," is here constantly courting my atten- 
 tion and exciting what may be called a domestic 
 interest with the varying aspects of its stalks 
 and leaves and flowers. Strangely do the 
 tastes of men differ, according to their employ- 
 ment and habits of life. " What a nice well 
 would that be," said a labouring man to me 
 one day, "if all that rubbish was cleared off." 
 The "rubbish" was some of the most beautiful 
 mosses and lichens and ferns and other wild 
 growths, as could possibly be seen. Defend us 
 from the tyranny of trimness and neatness, show- 
 ing itself in this way ! Chatterton says of Free- 
 dom, " Upon her head wild weeds were spread," 
 and depend upon it, if " the marvellous boy " 
 
196 WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 had undertaken to give Flora a garland, he 
 would have preferred what we are apt to call 
 weeds to garden-flowers. 
 
 Intimations of Immortality, from Recollections 
 of early Childhood. 
 
 Nothing was more difficult for me in child- 
 hood than to admit the notion of death as a 
 state applicable to my own being. I have said 
 elsewhere 
 
 A simple child 
 That lightly draws its breath, 
 And feels its life in every limb, 
 What should it know of death ? 
 
 But it was not so much from the source of 
 animal vivacity that my difficulty came as from 
 a sense of the indomitableness of the spirit 
 within me. I used to brood over the stories of 
 Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade my- 
 self that, whatever might become of others, I 
 should be translated in something of the same 
 way to heaven. With a feeling congenial to 
 this, I was often unable to think of external 
 things as having external existence, and I com- 
 muned with all that I saw as something not 
 apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial 
 nature. Many times while going to school have 
 
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 197 
 
 I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from 
 this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that 
 time I was afraid of such processes. In later 
 periods of life I have deplored, as we have all 
 reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite 
 character, and have rejoiced over the remem- 
 brances, as is expressed in the lines, " Obstinate 
 questionings," etc. To that dreamlike vividness 
 and splendour which invest objects of sight in 
 childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look 
 back, could bear testimony, and I need not 
 dwell upon it here; but having in the Poem 
 regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior 
 state of existence, I think it right to protest 
 against a conclusion which has given pain to 
 some good and pious persons, that I meant to 
 inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a 
 notion to be recommended to faith as more than 
 an element in our instincts of immortality. But 
 let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not 
 advanced in Revelation, there is nothing there 
 to contradict it, and the fall of man presents 
 an analogy in its favour. Accordingly, a pre- 
 existent state has entered into the popular 
 creeds of many nations, and among all persons 
 acquainted with classic literature is known as an 
 ingredient in Platonic philosophy. Archimedes 
 said that he could move the world if he had a 
 point whereon to rest his machine. Who has 
 not felt the same aspirations as regards the 
 
198 . WORDSWORTH'S PROSE. 
 
 world of his own mind ? Having to wield some 
 of its elements when I was impelled to write 
 this poem on the " Immortality of the Soul," I 
 took hold of the notion of pre-existence as 
 having sufficient foundation in humanity for 
 authorising me to make for my purpose the 
 best use of it I could as a Poet 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TVNR. 
 
SPECIAL EDITION OF THE 
 
 CANTERBURY POETS. 
 
 Square 8vo, Cloth, Gilt Top Eleganf, Price 2s. 
 
 EACH VOLUME WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN PHOTOGRAVURE. 
 
 1 CHRISTIAN YEAR. With Portrait of John Keble. 
 
 2 LONGFELLOW. With Portrait of Longfellow. 
 
 3 SHELLEY. With Portrait of Shelley. 
 
 4 WORDSWORTH. With Portrait of Wordsworth. 
 
 5 WHITTIER. With Portrait of Whittier. 
 
 6 BURNS. Songs \With Portrait of Burns, and View of "Tho 
 
 7 BURNS. Poems/ Auld Brig o' Doon. 1 
 
 8 KEATS. With Portrait of Keats. 
 
 9 EMERSON. With Portrait of Emerson. 
 
 10 SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY. With Portrait of D. G. 
 
 Rossetti. 
 
 11 WHITMAN. With Portrait of Whitman. 
 
 12 LOVE LETTERS OF A VIOLINIST. With Portrait of Eric 
 
 Mackay. 
 
 13 SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, ~ With Portrait of Sir Walter Scott, 
 
 etc. j- and View of " The Silver 
 
 14 SCOTT. Marmion, etc. J Strand, Loch Katrine." 
 
 15 CHILDREN OF THE POETS. With an Engraving of " The 
 
 Orphans," by Gainsborough. 
 
 16 SONNETS OF EUROPE. With Portrait of J. A. Symonds. 
 
 17 SYDNEY DOBELL. With Portrait of Sydney Dobell. 
 
 18 HERRICK. With Portrait of Herrick. 
 
 19 BALLADS AND RONDEAUS. Portrait of W. E. Henley. 
 
 20 IRISH MINSTRELSY. With Portrait of Thomas Davis. 
 
 21 PARADISE LOST. With Portrait of Milton. 
 
 22 FAIRY MUSIC. With Engraving from a Drawing by C. E. 
 
 23 GOLDEN TREASURY. With Engraving of St John the 
 
 Baptist Preaching. 
 
 24 AMERICAN SONNETS. With Portrait of J. R. Lowell. 
 
 25 IMITATION OF CHRIST. With an Engraving of the 
 
 26 PAINTER POETS. With Portrait of Walter Crane. 
 
 27 WOMEN POETS. With Portrait of Mrs. Browning. 
 
 28 POEMS OF HON. RODEN NOEL. Portrait of Hon. R. Noel. 
 
 29 AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE. With Portrait of Mark 
 
 Twain. 
 
 30 SONGS OF FREEDOM. With Portrait of William Morris. 
 
 31 SCOTTISH MINOR POETS. With Portrait of R. Tannahill. 
 
 32 CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH VERSE. With Portrait of 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 33 PARADISE RKGAINED. With Portrait of Milton, 
 
 34 CAVALIER POETS, \\ith Portrait of Suckling. 
 
 35 HUMOROUS POEMS. With Portrait of Hood. 
 S6 HERBERT. With Portrait of Herbert. 
 
 37 POK. With Portrait of Poe. 
 
 38 OWEN MEREDITH. With Portrait of late Lord Lytton. 
 
 39 LOVE LYRICS. 
 
 40 GERMAN BALLADS. With Portrait of Schiller. 
 
 London : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, 24 Warwick Lane. 
 
BOOKS OF FAIRY TALES. 
 
 Crown 8v0, Cloth Elegant, Price $s. 6d. per vol. 
 
 ENGLISH FAIRY AND OTHER 
 FOLK TALES. 
 
 Selected and Edited, with an Introduction, 
 
 BY EDWIN SIDNEY HARTLAND. 
 With 12 Full- Page Illustrations by CHARLES E. BROCK. 
 
 SCOTTISH FAIRY AND FOLK 
 TALES. 
 
 Selected and Edited, with an Introduction, 
 
 BY SIR GEORGE DOUGLAS, BART. 
 With 12 Full- Page Illustrations by JAMES TORRAXCE. 
 
 IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES, 
 
 Selected and Edited, with an Introduction, 
 
 BY W. B. YEATS. 
 With 12 Full-Page Illustrations by JAMES TORRANCE, 
 
 London: WALTER SCOTT, LTD., 24 Warwick Lane. 
 
THE WORLD'S LITERARY MASTERPIECES. 
 
 THE SCOTT LIBRARY. 
 
 Maroon Cloth, Gilt. Price Is. net per Volume. 
 
 VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED- 
 
 1 MALORY'S ROMANCE OF KING ARTHUR AND THE 
 
 Quest of the Holy Grail. Edited by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 2 THOREAU'S WALDEN. WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 by Will H. Dircks. 
 
 3 THOREAU'S "WEEK." WITH PREFATORY NOTE BY 
 
 Will H. Dircks. 
 
 4 THOREAU'S ESSAYS. EDITED, WITH AN INTRO- 
 
 duction, by 'Will H. Dircks. 
 
 5 CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, ETC. 
 
 By Thomas De Quincey, With Introductory Note by William Sharp. 
 
 6 LANDOR'S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. SELECTED, 
 
 with Introduction, by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 7 PLUTARCH'S LIVES (LANGHORNE). WITH INTRO- 
 
 ductory Note by B. J. Snell, M.A. 
 
 8 BROWNE'S RELIGIO MEDICI, ETC. WITH INTRO- 
 
 duction by J. Addington Symonds. 
 
 9 SHELLEY'S ESSAYS AND LETTERS. EDITED, WITH 
 
 Introductory Note, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 10 SWIFT'S PROSE WRITINGS. CHOSEN AND ARRANGED, 
 
 with Introduction, by Walter Lewin. 
 
 11 MY STUDY WINDOWS. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 With Introduction by R. Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 12 LOWELL'S ESSAYS ON THE ENGLISH POETS. WITH 
 
 a new Introduction by Mr. Lowell. 
 
 13 THE BIGLOW PAPERS. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 With a Prefatory Note by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 14 GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS. SELECTED FROM 
 
 Cunningham's Lives. Edited by William Sharp. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
THE SCOTT LIBRARY continued. 
 
 15 BYRON'S LETTERS AND JOURNALS. SELECTED, 
 
 with Introduction, by Mathilde Blind. 
 
 16 LEIGH HUNT'S ESSAYS. WITH INTRODUCTION AND 
 
 Notes by Arthur Symons. 
 
 17 LONGFELLOW'S "HYPERION," "KAVANAGH," AND 
 
 "The TrouYeres." With Introduction by W. Tirebuck. 
 
 18 GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSERS. BY G. F. FERRIS. 
 
 Edited, with Introduction, by Mrs. William Sharp. 
 
 19 THE MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS. EDITED 
 
 by Alice Zimmern. 
 
 ao THE TEACHING OF EPICTETUS. TRANSLATED FROM 
 the Greek, with Introduction and Notes, by T. W. Rolleston. 
 
 21 SELECTIONS PROM SENECA. WITH INTRODUCTION 
 
 by Walter Clode. 
 
 22 SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA. BY WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Revised by the Author, with fresh Preface. 
 
 23 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS, AND OTHER PAPERS. BY 
 
 Walt Whitman. (Published by arrangement with the Author.) 
 
 24 WHITE'S NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. WITH 
 
 a Preface by Richard Jefferies. 
 
 S DEFOE'S CAPTAIN SINGLETON. EDITED, WITH 
 Introduction, by H. Halliday Sparling. 
 
 6 MAZZINI'S ESSAYS: LITERARY, POLITICAL, AND 
 Religious. With Introduction by William Clarke. 
 
 27 PROSE WRITINGS OF HEINE. WITH INTRODUCTION 
 by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 18 REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. WITH INTRODUCTION 
 by Helen Zimmern. 
 
 29 PAPERS OF STEELE AND ADDISON. EDITED BY 
 Walter Lewin. 
 
 jo BURNS'S LETTERS. SELECTED AND ARRANGED, 
 with Introduction, by J. Logie Robertson, M. A. 
 
 ji VOLSUNGA SAGA. WILLIAM MORRIS. WITH INTRO- 
 unction by H. H. Sparling. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
THE SCOTT LIBRARY continued. 
 
 32 SARTOR RESARTUS. BY THOMAS CARLYLE. WITH 
 
 Introduction by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 33 SELECT WRITINGS OF EMERSON. WITH INTRO- 
 
 duction by Percival Chubb. 
 
 34 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LORD HERBERT. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Will H. Dircks. 
 
 35 ENGLISH PROSE, FROM MAUNDEVILLE TO 
 
 Thackeray. Chosen and Edited by Arthur Galton. 
 
 36 THE PILLARS OF SpCIETY, AND OTHER PLAYS. BY 
 
 Henrik Ibsen. Edited, with an Introduction, by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 37 IRISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. EDITED AND 
 
 Selected by W. B. Yeats. 
 
 38 ESSAYS OF DR. JOHNSON, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 Introduction and Notes by Stuart J. Reid. 
 
 39 ESSAYS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. SELECTED AND 
 
 Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Frank Carr. 
 
 40 LANDOR'S PENTAMERON AND OTHER IMAGINARY 
 
 Conversations. Edited, with a Preface, by H. Ellis. 
 
 41 POE'S TALES AND ESSAYS. EDITED, WITH INTRO- 
 
 duction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 42 VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 
 
 Edited, with Preface, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 43 POLITICAL ORATIONS, FROM WENTWORTH TO 
 
 Macaulay. Edited, with Introduction, by William Clarke 
 
 44 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. BY 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 45 THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. BY OLIVER 
 
 Wendell Holmes. 
 
 46 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. BY 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 47 LORD CHESTERFIELD'S LETTERS TO HIS SON. 
 
 Selected, with Introduction, by Charles Sayle. 
 
 48 STORIES FROM CARLETON. SELECTED, WITH INTRO- 
 
 duction, by W. Yeats. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
THE SCOTT LIBRARY continued. 
 
 49 JANE EYRE. BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE. EDITED BY 
 
 Clement K. Shorter. 
 
 50 ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND. EDITED BY LOTHROP 
 
 Withington, with a Preface by Dr. Furnivall. 
 
 51 THE PROSE WRITINGS OF THOMAS DAVIS. EDITED- 
 
 by T. W. Bolleston. 
 
 52 SPENCE'S ANECDOTES. A SELECTION. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction and Notes, by John Underbill. 
 
 53 MORE'S UTOPIA, AND LIFE OF EDWARD V. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Maurice Adams. 
 
 54 SADI'S GULISTAN, OR FLOWER GARDEN. TRANS- 
 
 lated, with an Essay, by James Ross. 
 
 55 ENGLISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES. EDITED BY 
 
 E. Sidney Hartland. 
 
 56 NORTHERN STUDIES. BY EDMUND GOSSE. WITH 
 
 a Note by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 57 EARLY REVIEWS OF GREAT WRITERS. EDITED BY 
 
 E. Stevenson. 
 
 58 ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. WITH GEORGE HENRY 
 
 Lewes's Essay on Aristotle prefixed. 
 
 59 LANDOR'S PERICLES AND ASPASIA. EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Uavelock Ellis. 
 
 60 ANNALS OF TACITUS. THOMAS GORDON'S TRANS- 
 
 lation. Edited, with an Introduction, by Arthur Galton. 
 
 61 ESSAYS OF ELI A. BY CHARLES LAMB. EDITED 
 
 with an Introduction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 62 BALZAC'S SHORTER STORIES. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 William Wilson and the Count Stenbock. 
 
 63 COMEDIES OF DE MUSSET. EDITED, WITH AN 
 
 Introductory Note, by S. L. Gwynn. 
 
 64 CORAL REEFS. BY CHARLES DARWIN. EDITED,. 
 
 with an Introduction, by Dr. J. W. Williams. 
 
 65 SHERIDAN'S PLAYS. EDITED, WITH AN 1NTRO- 
 
 duction, by Rudolf Dircks. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
THE SCOTT LIBRARY-continued. 
 
 66 OUR VILLAGE. BY MISS MITFORD. EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 67 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 By Charles Dickens. With Introduction by Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 68 OXFORD MOVEMENT, THE. BEING A SELECTION 
 
 from " Tracts for the Times." Edited, with an Introduction, by William 
 O. Hutchison. 
 
 69 ESSAYS AND PAPERS BY DOUGLAS JERROLD. EDITED 
 
 by Walter Jerrold. 
 
 70 VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. BY 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft. Introduction by Mrs. E. Robins Pennell. 
 
 71 "THE ATHENIAN ORACLE." A SELECTION. EDITED 
 
 by John Underbill, with Prefatory Note by Walter Besant. 
 
 72 ESSAYS OF SAINTE-BEUVE. TRANSLATED AND 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Elizabeth Lee. 
 
 73 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. FROM THE TRANS- 
 
 lation of Sydenham and Taylor. Edited by T. W. Rollestou. 
 
 74 HEINE'S ITALIAN TRAVEL SKETCHES, ETC. TRANS- 
 
 lated by Elizabeth A. Sharp. With an Introduction from the French of 
 Theophile Gautier. 
 
 75 SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS. TRANSLATED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 76 SELECTIONS FROM SYDNEY SMITH. EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 77 THE NEW SPIRIT. BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 
 78 THE BOOK OF MARVELLOUS ADVENTURES. FROM 
 
 the "Morte d' Arthur." Edited by Ernest Rhys. (This, together with 
 No. 1, forms the complete "Morte d'Arthur.") 
 
 79 ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. BY SIR ARTHUR HELPS. 
 
 With an Introduction by E. A. Helps. 
 
 80 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE. SELECTED, WITH A 
 
 Prefatory Note, by Percival Chubb. 
 
 51 THE LUCK OF BARRY LYNDON. BY W. M. 
 
 Thackeray. Edited by F. T. Marzials. 
 
 52 SCHILLER'S WILLIAM TELL. TRANSLATED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Major- General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNB. 
 
THE SCOTT LIBRARY- continued. 
 
 83 CARLYLE'S ESSAYS ON GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 With an Introduction by Ernest Rhys. 
 
 84 PLAYS AND DRAMATIC ESSAYS OF CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Rudolph Dircks. 
 
 85 THE PROSE OF WORDSWORTH. SELECTED AND 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Professor William Knight. 
 
 86 ESSAYS, DIALOGUES, AND THOUGHTS OF COUNT 
 
 Giacomo Leopard!. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by 
 Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 87 THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL. A RUSSIAN COMEDY. 
 
 By Nikolai V. Gogol. Translat 
 and Notes, by Arthur A. Sykes. 
 
 By Nikolai V. Gogol. Translated from the original, with an Introduction- 
 ' ' thur A. r ' 
 
 88 ESSAYS AND APOTHEGMS OF FRANCIS, LORD BACON. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by John Buchan. 
 
 89 PROSE OF MILTON. SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by Richard Garnett, LL.D. 
 
 90 THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Thomas Taylor, with an Introduction by Theodore Wratislaw. 
 
 91 PASSAGES FROM FROISSART. WITH AN INTRO- 
 
 duction by Frank T. Marzials. 
 
 92 THE PROSE AND TABLE TALK OF COLERIDGE, 
 
 Edited by Will H. Dircks. 
 
 93 HEINE IN ART AND LETTERS. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Elizabeth A. Sharp. 
 
 94 SELECTED ESSAYS OF DE QUINCEY. WITH AN 
 
 Introduction by Sir George Douglas, Bart. 
 
 95 VASARI'S LIVES OF ITALIAN PAINTERS. SELECTED- 
 
 and Prefaced by Havelock Ellis. 
 
 96 LAOCOON, AND OTHER PROSE WRITINGS OF 
 
 LESSING. A new Translation by W. B. Ronnfeldt. 
 
 97 PELLEAS AND MELISANDA, AND THE SIGHTLESS. 
 
 Two Plays by Maurice Maeterlinck. Translated from the French by- 
 Laurence Alma Tadema. 
 
 98 THE COMPLETE ANGLER OF WALTpN AND COTTON- 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Charles Hill Dick. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNR. 
 
THE SCOTT LIBRARY continued. 
 
 99 LESSING'S NATHAN THE WISE. TRANSLATED BY 
 Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 
 
 100 THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES, AND OTHER 
 
 Essays of Ernest Renan. Translated by W. G. Hutchison. 
 
 101 CRITICISMS, REFLECTIONS, AND MAXIMS OF GOETHE. 
 
 Translated, with an Introduction, by W. B. Rb'nnfeldt. 
 
 102 ESSAYS OF SCHOPENHAUER. TRANSLATED BY 
 
 Mrs. Rudolf Dircks. With an Introduction. 
 
 103 RENAN'S LIFE OF JESUS. TRANSLATED, WITH AN 
 
 Introduction, by William G. Hutchison. 
 
 104 THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Arthur Symons. 
 
 105 THE PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS IN LITERATURE. 
 
 By George Henry Lewes. Edited by T. Sharper Knowlson. 
 
 106 THE LIVES OF DR. JOHN DONNE, SIR HENRY WOTTON, 
 
 Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. 
 By Izaac Walton. Edited, with an Introduction, by Charles Hill Dick. 
 
 107 POLITICAL ECONOMY: EXPOSITIONS OF ITS 
 
 Fundamental Doctrines. Selected, with an Introduction, by W. B. 
 Robertson, M.A. 
 
 108 RENAN'S ANTICHRIST. TRANSLATED, WITH AN 
 
 Introduction, by W. G. Hutchison. 
 
 109 ORATIONS OF CICERO. SELECTED AND EDITED, 
 
 with an Introduction, by Fred. W. Norris. 
 
 1 10 REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 
 
 By Edmund Burke. With an Introduction by George Sampson. 
 
 in THE LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. SERIES I. 
 Translated, with an Introductory Essay, by John B. Firth, B.A., Late 
 Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING ON-TYNE. 
 
THE SCOTT LIBRARY continued. 
 
 112 THE LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. SERIES II. 
 Translated by John B. Firth, B.A, 
 
 113 SELECTED THOUGHTS OF BLAISE PASCAL. TRANS- 
 
 lated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Gertrude Burford Rawlings. 
 
 114 SCOTS ESSAYISTS: FROM STIRLING TO STEVENSON. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by Oliphant Smeaton. 
 
 115 ON LIBERTY. BY JOHN STUART MILL. WITH AN 
 
 Introduction by W. L. Courtney. 
 
 116 THE DISCOURSE ON METHOD AND METAPHYSICAL 
 
 Meditations of ReniS Descartes. Translated, with Introduction, by 
 Gertrude B. Rawlings. 
 
 117 KALIDASA'S SAKUNTALA, ETC. EDITED, WITH AN 
 
 Introduction, by T. Holme. 
 
 118 NEWMAN'S UNIVERSITY SKETCHES. EDITED, WITH 
 
 Introduction, by George Sampson. 
 
 119 NEWMAN'S SELECT ESSAYS. EDITED, WITH AN 
 
 Introduction, by George Sampson. 
 
 120 RENAN'S MARCUS AURELIUS. TRANSLATED, WITH 
 
 an Introduction, by William G. Hutchison. 
 
 121 FROUDE'S NEMESIS OF FAITH. WITH AN INTRO- 
 
 duction by William G. Hutchison. 
 
 122 WHAT IS ART? BY LEO TOLSTOY. TRANSLATED 
 
 from the Original Russian MS. with Introduction, by Alymer Maude. 
 
 123 HUME'S POLITICAL ESSAYS. EDITED, WITH AN 
 
 Introduction, by W. B. Robertson. 
 
 124 SINGOALLA: A MEDIAEVAL LEGEND. BY VIKTOR 
 
 Rydberg. 
 
 125 PETRONIUS TRIMALCHIO'S BANQUET. TRANS- 
 
 lated by Michael J. Ryan. 
 
 OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
Crown 8vo, C/oth, Richly Gilt. Price js. 6d. 
 
 Musicians' Wit^ Humour, and 
 Anecdote : 
 
 BEING 
 
 ON DITS OF COMPOSERS, SINGERS, AND 
 INSTRUMENTALISTS OF ALL TIMES. 
 
 BY FREDERICK J. CROWEST, 
 
 Author of "The Great Tone Poets," "The Story of British Music"; 
 Editor of "The Master Musicians" Series, etc., etc. 
 
 Profusely Illustrated with Quaint Drawings by J. P. DONNE. 
 
 WHAT THE REVIEWERS SAY. 
 
 " It is one of those delightful medleys of anecdote of all times, 
 seasons, and persons, in every page of which there is a new speci- 
 men of humour, strange adventure, and quaint saying." T. P. 
 O'CONNOR in T. P.'s Weekly. 
 
 "A remarkable collection of good stories which must have 
 taken years of perseverance to get together." Morning Leader. 
 
 "A book which should prove acceptable to two large sections of 
 the public those who are interested in musicians and those who 
 have an adequate sense of the comic." Globe. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
The Makers of British Art. 
 
 A NEW SERIES OF MONOGRAPHS OF 
 BRITISH PAINTERS. 
 
 Each volume illustrated with Twenty Full-page Reproductions 
 and a Photogravure Portrait. 
 
 Square Crown &z>0, Cloth, Gilt Top, Deckled Edges, 35. 6d. net. 
 
 VOLUMES READY. 
 
 
 
 LANDSEER, SIR EDWIN. By JAMES A. MANSON. 
 REYNOLDS, SIR JOSHUA. By ELSA D'ESTERRE-KEELING. 
 
 TURNER, J. M. W. By ROBERT CHIGNELL, Author of 
 "The Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole, R.A." 
 
 ROMNEY, GEORGE. By SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart., 
 F.R.S., M.P. 
 
 " Likely to remain the best account of the painter's life. " Athtnaum. 
 
 "WILKIE, SIR DAVID. By Professor BAYNE. 
 CONSTABLE, JOHN. By the EARL OF PLYMOUTH. 
 RAEBURN, SIR HENRY. By EDWARD PINNINGTON. 
 GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS. By A. E. FLETCHER. 
 HOGARTH, WILLIAM. By Prof. G. BALDWIN BROWN. 
 MOORE, HENRY. By FRANK J. MACLEAN. 
 LEIGHTON, LORD. By EDGCUMBE STALEY. 
 MORLAND, GEORGE. By D. H. WILSON, M.A., LL.M. 
 "WILSON, RICHARD. By BEAUMONT FLETCHER. 
 MILLAIS, SIR JOHN EVERETT. By J. EADIE REID. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
Crown 8vo, about 350 pp. each, Cloth Cover, 2/6 per Vol.; 
 Half-Polished Morocco, Gilt Top, 53. 
 
 Count Tolstoy's Works. 
 
 The following Volumes are already issued 
 
 A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR. 
 
 THE COSSACKS. 
 
 IVAN ILYITCH, AND OTHER 
 
 STORIES. 
 MY RELIGION. 
 LIFE. 
 
 MY CONFESSION. 
 CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, 
 
 YOUTH. 
 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR. 
 ANNA KARENINA. 3/6. 
 
 WHAT TO DO ? 
 
 WAR AND PEACE. (4 vols.) 
 
 THE LONG EXILE, ETC. 
 
 SEVASTOPOL. 
 
 THE KREUTZER SONATA, AND 
 
 FAMILY HAPPINESS. 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS 
 
 WITHIN YOU. 
 WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE 
 
 LIGHT. 
 THE GOSPEL IN BRIEF. 
 
 Uniform with the above 
 IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA. By Dr. GEORG BRANDES. 
 
 Post 410, Cloth, Price is. 
 
 PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 To which is appended a Reply to Criticisms of the Work. 
 
 By COUNT TOLSTOY. 
 
 i/- Booklets by Count Tolstoy. 
 
 Bound in White Grained Boards, with Gilt Lettering. 
 THE GODSON. 
 IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE, 
 
 YOU DON'T PUT IT OUT. 
 * WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN? 
 
 WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD 
 
 IS ALSO. 
 
 THE TWO PILGRIMS. 
 WHAT MEN LIVE BY. 
 
 2/- Booklets by Count Tolstoy. 
 
 NEW EDITIONS, REVISED. 
 
 Small I2mo, Cloth, with Embossed Design on Cover, each containing 
 
 Two Stories by Count Tolstoy, and Two Drawings by 
 
 H. R. Millar. In Box, Price 2s. each. 
 
 Volume I. contains 
 WHERE LOVE IS, THERE GOD 
 
 IS ALSO. 
 THE GODSON. 
 
 Volume II. contains 
 
 WHAT MEN LIVE BY. 
 
 WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A 
 
 MAN? 
 
 Volume III. contains 
 THE TWO PILGRIMS. 
 IF YOU NEGLECT THE FIRE, 
 
 YOU DON'T PUT IT OUT. 
 
 Volume IV. contains 
 
 MASTER AND MAN. 
 
 Volume V. contains 
 TOLSTOY'S PARABLES. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
Crown %vo, Cloth, y. 6d. each; some vo's,, 6s. 
 
 The 
 
 Contemporary Science Series. 
 
 EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 
 Illustrated Vols. between 300 and 400 pp. each. 
 EVOLUTION OF SEX. By Professors GEDDES and THOMSON. 6s. 
 ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE. By G. W. DE TUNZELMANN. 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. By Dr. TAYLOR. 
 PHYSIOGNOMY AND EXPRESSION. By P. MANTEGAZZA. 
 EVOLUTION AND DISEASE. By J. B. SUTTON. 
 THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. By G. L. GOMME. 
 THE CRIMINAL. By HAVELOCK ELLIS. New Edition. 6s. 
 SANITY AND INSANITY. By Dr. C. MERCIER. 
 MANUAL TRAINING. By Dr. WOODWARD (St. Louis). 
 SCIENCE OF FAIRY TALES. By E. S. HARTLAND. 
 PRIMITIVE FOLK. By ELIE RECLUS. 
 EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE. By CH. LETOURNEAU. 
 BACTERIA AND THEIR PROpUCTS. By Dr. WOODHEAD. 
 EDUCATION AND HEREDITY. ByJ. M. GUYAU. 
 THE MAN OF GENIUS. By Prof. LOMBROSO. 
 PROPERTY : ITS ORIGIN. By CH. LETOURNEAU. 
 VOLCANOES PAST AND PRESENT. By Prof. HULL. 
 PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEMS. By Dr. J. F. SYKES. 
 MODERN METEOROLOGY. By FRANK WALDO, Ph.D. 
 THE GERM-PLASM. By Professor WEISMANN. 6s. 
 THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. By F. HOUSSAY. 
 MAN AND WOMAN. By HAVELOCK ELLIS. 6s. 
 MODERN CAPITALISM. By JOHN A. HOBSON, M.A. 6s. 
 THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE. By F. PODMORE, M.A. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES // 
 
 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. By Prof. C. L. MORGAN, F.R.S. 6s. 
 THE ORIGINS OF INVENTION. By O. T. MASON. 
 THE GROWTH OF THE BRAIN. By H. H. DONALDSON. 
 EVOLUTION IN ART. By Prof. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S. 
 HALLUCINATIONS AND ILLUSIONS. By E. PARISH. 6s. 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS. By Prof. RIBOT. 6s. 
 THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. By Dr. E. W. SCRIPTURE. 6s. 
 SLEEP : ITS PHYSIOLOGY. By MARIE DE MANACEINE. 
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DIGESTION. By A. LOCKHART 
 GILLESPIE, M.D., F.R.C.P. ED., F.R.S. ED. 6s. 
 
 DEGENERACY: ITS CAUSES, SIGNS, AND RESULTS. By Prof. 
 EUGENE S. TALBOT, M.D., Chicago. 6s. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN FAUNA. By R. F. 
 SCHARFF, B.Sc., PH.D., F.Z.S. 6s. 
 
 THE RACES OF MAN. By J. DENIKER. 6s. 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. By Prof. STARBUCK. 6s. 
 THE CHILD. By ALEXANDER FRANCIS CHAMBERLAIN, M. A., Ph.D. 6s. 
 THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE. By Prof. SEKGI. 6s. 
 THE STUDY OF RELIGION. By MORRIS JASTROW, Jun., Ph.D. 6s. 
 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. By Prof. 
 KARL ALFRED VON ZITTEL, Munich. 6s. 
 
 THE MAKING OF CITIZENS : A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCA- 
 TION. By R. E. HUGHES, M.A. 6s. 
 
 MORALS : A TREATISE ON THE PSYCHO-SOCIOLOGICAL BASES OF 
 ETHICS. By Prof. G. L. DUPRAT. 6s. 
 
 EARTHQUAKES, A STUDY OF RECENT. By Prof. CHARLES 
 DAVISON, D.Sc., F.G.S. 6s. 
 
 NEW ADDITIONS. 
 
 MODERN ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. By Dr. CHARLES A. KEANE, 
 D.Sc., PH.D., F.I.C. 6s. 
 
 HYPNOTISM. By Dr. ALBERT MOLL (Berlin). New and Enlarged 
 Edition. 6s. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 
 LONDON AND FEI.LING-ON-TYNE. 
 
SPECIAL EDITION OF THE 
 
 CANTERBURY POETS. 
 
 Square $vo, Cloth, Gilt Top Elegant, Price 2s, 
 Each Volume with a Frontispiece in Photogravure. 
 
 CHRISTIAN YEAE. With Portrait of John Keble. 
 
 LONGFELLOW. With Portrait of Longfellow. 
 
 SHELLEY. With Portrait of Shelley. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. With Portrait of Wordsworth, 
 
 WHITTIER. With Portrait of Whittier. 
 
 BURNS. Songs ) With Portrait of Burns, and View of " Tha 
 
 BURNS. Poems/ Auld Brig o' Doon." 
 
 KEATS. With Portrait of Keats. 
 
 EMERSON. With Portrait of Emerson. 
 
 SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY. Portrait of P. B. Marston. 
 
 WHITMAN. With Portrait of Whitman. 
 
 LOVE LETTERS OF A VIOLINIST. Portrait of Eric Maekay. 
 
 SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, ^ With Portrait of Sir Walter Scott, 
 
 etc. V and View of " The Silver 
 
 SCOTT. Marmion, etc. J Strand, Loch Katrine." 
 CHILDREN OF THE POETS. With an Engraving of " Ths 
 
 Orphans," by Gainsborough. 
 
 SONNETS OF EUROPE. With Portrait of J. A. Symonds. 
 SYDNEY DOBELL. With Portrait of Sydney Dobell. 
 HERRICK. With Portrait of Herrick. 
 BALLADS AND RONDEAUS. Portrait of W. E. Henley. 
 IRISH MINSTRELSY. With Portrait of Thomas Davis. 
 PARADISE LOST. With Portrait of Milton. 
 FAIRY MUSIC. Engraving from Drawing by C. E. Brock. 
 OOLDEN TREASURY. With Engraving of Virgin Mother. 
 AMERICAN SONNETS. With Portrait of J. R. Lowell. 
 IMITATION OF CHRIST. With Engraving, "EcceHomo." 
 PAINTER POETS. With Portrait of Walter Crane. 
 WOMEN POETS. With Portrait of Mrs. Browning. 
 POEMS OF HON. RODEN NOEL. Portrait of Hon. R. Noel. 
 AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE. Portrait of Mark Twain. 
 SONGS OF FREEDOM. With Portrait of William Morris. 
 SCOTTISH MINOR POETS. With Portrait of R. Tannahill. 
 CONTEMPORARY SCOTTISH VERSE. With Portrait of 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 PARADISE REGAINED. With Portrait of Milton. 
 CAVALIER POETS. With Portrait of Suckling. 
 HUMOROUS POEMS. With Portrait of Hood. 
 HERBERT. With Portrait of Herbert. 
 POE. With Portrait of Poe. 
 
 OWEN MEREDITH. With Portrait of late Lord Lytton. 
 LOVE LYRICS. With Portrait of Raleigh. 
 GERMAN BALLADS. With Portrait of Schiller* 
 CAMPBELL. With Portrait of Campbell. 
 CANADIAN POEMS. With View of Mount Stephen. 
 EARLY ENGLISH POETRY. With Portrait of Earl of Surrey. 
 AT.LAN RAMSAY. With Portrait of Ramsay. 
 SPENSER. With Portrait of Spenser. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY. LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
CHATTERTON. With Engraving, " The Death of Chatterton." 
 COWPER. With Portrait of Cowper. 
 CHAUCER. With Portrait of Chaucer. 
 COLERIDGE. With Portrait of Coleridge. 
 POPE. With Portrait of Pope. 
 
 !YBON: SSST"} wtthp " ta ' B ^ 
 
 JACOBITE SONGS. With Portrait of Prince Charlie. 
 
 BORDER BALLADS. With View of Neidpath Castle. 
 
 AUSTRALIAN BALLADS. With Portrait of A. L. Gordon. 
 
 HOGG. With Portrait of Hogg. 
 
 GOLDSMITH. With Portrait of Goldsmith. 
 
 MOORE. With Portrait of Moore. 
 
 DORA GREENWELL. With Portrait of Dora GreenwelL 
 
 BLAKE. With Portrait of Blake. 
 
 POEMS OF NATURE. With Portrait of Andrew Lang. 
 
 PRAED. With Portrait. 
 
 SOUTHEY. With Portrait. 
 
 HUGO. With Portrait. 
 
 GOETHE. With Portrait 
 
 BERANGER. With Portrait 
 
 HEINE. With Portrait 
 
 SEA MUSIC. With View of Corbiere Rocks, Jersey. 
 
 SONG-TIDE. With Portrait of Philip Bourke Marston. 
 
 LADY OP LYONS. With Portrait of Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE : Songs and Sonnets. With Portrait 
 
 BEN JONSON. With Portrait 
 
 HORACE. With Portrait 
 
 CRABBE. With Portrait. 
 
 CRADLE SONGS. With Engraving from Drawing by T. E. Macklln. 
 
 BALLADS OF SPORT. Do. do. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. With Portrait. 
 
 AUSTIN'S DAYS OF THE YEAR. With Portrait 
 
 CLOUGH'S KOTHIE, and other Poems. With View. 
 
 BROWNING'S Pippa Passes, etc. 1 
 
 BROWNING'S Blot in the 'Scutcheon, etc. > With Portrait 
 
 BROWNING'S Dramatic Lyrics. ) 
 
 MACKAY'S LOVER'S MISSAL. With Portrait 
 
 KIRKE WHITE'S POEMS. With Portrait 
 
 LYRA NICOTIANA. With Portrait. 
 
 AURORA LEIGH. With Portrait of E. B. Browning. 
 
 NAVAL SONGS. With Portrait of Lord Nelson. 
 
 TENNYSON : In Memoriara, Maud, etc. With Portrait 
 
 TENNYSON : English Idyls, The Princess, etc. With View of 
 
 Farringford House. 
 
 WAR SONGS. With Portrait of Lord Roberts. 
 JAMES THOMSON. With Portrait. 
 ALEXANDER SMITH. With Portrait. 
 PAUL VERLAINE. With Portrait. 
 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. With Portrait 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
Music Story Series. 
 
 A SERIES OF LITERARY-MUSICAL MONOGRAPHS. 
 
 Edited by FREDERICK J. CROWEST, 
 
 Author of "The Great Tone Poets," etc., etc. 
 
 Illustrated with Photogravure and Collotype Portraits, Half-tone tind Line 
 Pictures, Facsimiles, etc. 
 
 Square Crown 8vo, Cloth, js. 6d. net. 
 
 VOLUMES NOW READY. 
 
 THE STORY OF ORATORIO. By ANNIE W. PATTER- 
 SON, B.A., Mus. Doc. 
 
 THE STORY OF NOTATION. By C. F. ABDY WILLIAMS, 
 M.A., Mus. Bac. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE ORGAN. By C. F. ABDY 
 WILLIAMS, M.A., Author of "Bach" and "Handel" ("Master 
 Musicians' Series "). 
 
 THE STORY OF CHAMBER MUSIC. By N. KILBURN, 
 
 Mus. BAC. (Cantab.). 
 
 THE STORY OF THE VIOLIN. By PAUL STOEVING, 
 Professor of the Violin, Guildhall School of Music, London. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE HARP. By WILLIAM H. GRATTAN 
 FLOOD, Author of " History of Irish Music." 
 
 THE STORY OF ORGAN MUSIC, By C. F. ABDY 
 WILLIAMS, M.A., Mus. Bac. 
 
 THE STORY OF ENGLISH MUSIC (1604-1904): being the 
 Worshipful Company of Musicians' Lectures. 
 
 THE STORY OF MINSTRELSY. By EDMONDSTOUNE 
 
 DUNCAN. 
 THE STORY OF MUSICAL FORM. By CLARENCE 
 
 LUCAS. 
 THE STORY OF OPERA. By E. MARKHAM LEE, Mus. 
 
 Doc. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE PIANOFORTE. By ALGERNON S. 
 ROSE, Author of "Talks with Bandsmen." 
 
 THE STORY OF MUSICAL SOUND. By CHURCHILL 
 SIBLEY, Mus. Doc. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE. 
 
A 000 544 221 5