Arts; especially those whose medium is words. Sculpture and painting may be helped by it; but even in these departments there is much to be dreaded. The French have established an academy at Rome upon an extensive scale; and, so far from doing good, I was told by every one that it had done much harm. The plan is this: they select the most distinguished students from the school, or academy, at Paris, and send them to Rome with handsome stipends, by which they are tempted into idleness, and of course into vice; so that it looks like a contrivance for preventing the French nation, and the world at large, from profiting by the genius which Nature may have bestowed, and which, left to itself, would, in most cases perhaps, have prospered. The principal, I was indeed told the only, condition imposed upon these students, is that each of them send annually some work of his hands to Paris. When at Rome I saw a great deal of English artists; they seemed to be living happily and doing well, though, as you are aware, the public patronage any of them receive is trifling.

Genius in poetry, or any department of what is called the Belles Lettres, is much more likely to be cramped than fostered by public support; better wait to reward those who have done their work, though even here national rewards are not necessary, unless the labourers be, if not in poverty, at least in narrow circumstances. Let the laws be but just to them, and they will be sure of attaining competence, if they have not misguided their own talents, or misapplied them. The cases of Chatterton, Burns, and others might, it should seem, be urged against the conclusion that help beforehand is not required; but I do think that in the temperament of the two I have mentioned there was something which, however favourable had been their circumstances, however much they had been encouraged and supported, would have brought on their ruin. As to what patronage can do in science, discoveries in

physics, mechanic arts, etc., you know far better than I can pretend to do.

As to better canons of criticism, and general improvement of scholars,' I really, speaking without affectation, am so little of a critic or scholar, that it would be presumptuous in me to write upon the subject to you. . . . In attempting to comply with your wish, I should only lose myself in a wilderness. I have been applied to, to give lectures upon poetry in a public institution in London, but I was conscious that I was neither competent to the office, nor the public prepared to receive what I should have felt it my duty to say, however imperfectly.

I had a very pleasant, and not profitless, tour on the Continent, though with one great drawback-the being obliged, on account of the cholera, to return without seeing Naples and its neighbourhood."

The following is Rowan Hamilton's reply to the above letter of Wordsworth :

...

"Observatory, December 30, 1837.

I agree with you in thinking that direct patronage can do little for genius. What I look to, then-and even that without any very sanguine hope of great and immediate. good-is the drawing forth of critical essays, more philosophical and elaborate than would suit the taste of the mere ordinary reading public, by inviting and encouraging the presentation of such essays to its Transactions.*

May I dare to illustrate my meaning by applying it to your own case? Suppose that you could be induced to favour us with any critical reflections, detailed and particular, if you so chose-but I prefer to conceive them as general and abstractly philosophical-embodying or sketching out any views of yours, respecting the spirit and philosophy of criticism, or the nature and essential laws of poetry, or the objects and prospects of

* Of the Royal Irish Academy.

literature, and illustrated by applications, or not, at your pleasure;-suppose this done, with so little adaptation to prevailing popular tastes, that in whatever manner the work might be published it must be as bread cast upon the waters, to be found only after many days; yet not, like poetry, appealing to the universal heart of man, but rather to the calm deliberate judgment of the thoughtful student or philosopher; I think that no more appropriate mode of publishing such a composition could easily be devised, than by presenting it to a literary society like ours, whose published Transactions have among learned men an increasing circulation, at home and abroad, and who would of course present you in return with a number of separate copies (in our case fifty)." *

*Life of Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, vol. ii. pp. 229-30.

CHAPTER XL.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH HENRY REED.

IN December 1838 Wordsworth told Crabb Robinson that the University of Durham had conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. "last summer." "It was the first time that the honour had been received there by any one in person." He added, that the matter was worth adverting to "only as a sign that Imaginative Literature, notwithstanding the homage now paid to Science, was not wholly without esteem."

Robinson went down to the Lakes in the end of December 1838. He tells us that he called with Wordsworth (January 3, '39), on Miss Fenwick, and adds:

"Wordsworth spoke of poetry. At the head of the natural and sensual school was Chaucer, the greatest poet of his class. Next comes Burns: Crabbe, too, has great truth, but he is too far removed from beauty and refinement. This, however, is better than the opposite extreme. I told Wordsworth that in this he unconsciously sympathised with Goethe."

He records Miss Harriet Martineau's impression of Wordsworth's talk. "Sometimes he is annoying from the pertinacity with which he dwells on trifles at other times he flows on in the utmost grandeur, leaving a strong impression of inspiration.

Southey came on from Keswick to visit Miss Fenwick, and meet the Wordsworths and Arnolds. He was depressed and dull. Wordsworth remarked on his having become completely dead to everything but books. When in Paris lately with

VOL. III.

Robinson, he never entered the town, cared only for the old bookshops. When Southey had gone, Dr. Arnold expressed a wonder if he should ever, like Southey, lose interest in things, retaining interest in books only; and Wordsworth said: 'If I must lose my interest in one of them, I would rather give up books than men.""

1818.

Staying on at the Lakes till February, Robinson records his impression of Wordsworth's political pamphlets written in He says they show that Wordsworth "would have been a masterly political pamphleteer. There is nothing cloudy about his style," and he instances such a sentence as " Independence is the explosive energy of conceit making blind havoc with expediency."

Although Wordsworth did not write much himself during the last decade of his life, he kept up an extensive correspondence with his friends, by the help of his ever willing amanuenses at Rydal Mount. Much of his correspondence with two of his friends-Professor Henry Reed, Philadelphia, who edited his poems in America, and Mr. Moxon, his London publisher— has an interest for posterity, as it referred to his own works, to literary questions, and contemporary politics. It may be the most convenient arrangement to print some of his letters to these two friends in chronological order, each series by itself. Two of the former, but none of the latter, have been already published. The following were addressed to Professor Reed, Philadelphia :

:

MY DEAR SIR,-Upon returning from a tour of several months upon the Continent, I find two letters from you awaiting my arrival, along with the edition of my poems you have done me the honour of editing. . . . It is gratifying to one, whose aim as an author has been to reach the hearts of his fellow-creatures of all ranks and in all stations, to find that he