educated inhabitants desire nothing more earnestly than that the debt should be provided for; but their opinion is overborne by the sordid mass, which will always have a considerable influence over a community whose institutions are so democratic as yours are. Were it not for this evil I should not have a shadow of doubt as to the issue; at present I own I have. Mr. Webster has spoken manfully, but why does he say so much about the great foreign capitalists, without giving a word to the very many who in humble life are stripped of their comforts, and even brought to want, by these defalcations. It is a sad return for the confidence they placed in the good faith of their transatlantic brethren. I do not mean to insinuate that the poor creditor should be paid at the expense of the rich, far from it; but it is for that portion of the sufferers that I chiefly grieve-and I mourn even still more for the disgrace brought upon, and the discouragement given to, the self-government of nations by the spread of the suffrage among the people. For I will not conceal from you that, as far as the people are capable of governing themselves, I am a Democrat.

.. Immediately upon the receipt of yours I wrote to a friend at Bristol to do what could be done for the fulfilment of Mr. Allston's and my own wishes in respect to the portrait. To that letter I have not yet received an answer. The portrait belongs, I believe, to a nephew or niece of the late Mr. Wade, for whom it was painted.

Thanks for your criticism upon the sonnet; let it be altered as you suggest, "for rightly were they taught," etc.

This is a

dry letter... Believe me to remain, ever truly and faith

fully yours,

WM. WORDSWORTH."

CHAPTER XLI.

THE QUESTION OF COPYRIGHT.

THE subject of copyright had a special interest to Wordsworth. He believed in the natural right of authors in their literary productions, and presented a petition to Parliament on the subject. Serjeant Talfourd, who introduced a Bill on Copyright into the House of Commons, had many conferences with him, both beforehand and during the progress of the measure. Wordsworth's own correspondence on the question, with some of the most eminent of his contemporaries, has a literary interest still, notwithstanding the advance of opinion during the fifty years that have intervened. He corresponded on the Bill, and on the general subject, with Sir Robert Peel and Lord Adair, with Mr. W. E. Gladstone, Sir Robert Inglis, Travers Twiss, Richard M. Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton), Edward Horsman, Samuel Rogers, E. Irton, E. Stanley, Thomas Aglionby, A. Dalrymple, R. N. Price, H. C. Robinson, J. W. Liddell, Frederick Pollock, W. James, C. Cresswell, Matthias Attwood, W. Johnston, Philip H. Howard, Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, and others. Much of his correspondence with these persons is extremely interesting; and the reason why the opinions of eminent men amongst Wordsworth's contemporaries upon this subject are still valuable is that the question of copyright is not yet settled. It is a subject of perennial interest, alike to authors, and publishers, and the public.

Rather than discuss the general question, or criticise the opinions advanced upon it by these correspondents, I prefer to state them, for the benefit of others.

Wordsworth's own case was referred to by Serjeant Talfourd, when introducing his measure into the House of Commons on the 18th of May 1839, in the following words :

"Let me suppose an author of true original genius, disgusted with the inane phraseology which had taken the place of poetry, and devoting himself from youth to its service, disdaining the superficial graces which attract the careless, and unskilled in the moving accidents of fortune, not sailing in the tempest of the passions, but in the serenity which lies. above them; whose works shall be scoffed at by fools, whose name made a by-word, yet who shall persevere in his high and holy cause, gradually impressing thoughtful minds with the perception of truths made visible in the severest forms of beauty, until he shall gradually create the taste by which he shall be appreciated-influence one or other of the masterspirits of his age--be felt pervading every part of the national. literature-softening, raising, and enriching it; and, when at last he shall find his confidence in his own aspirations justified, and the name which was the scorn admitted to be the glory of his age, he shall look forward to the close of his earthly. career, as the event that shall lend the last consecration to his fame, and deprive his children of the harvest he was just beginning to reap. As soon as his copyright becomes valuable, it is gone.

This is no imaginary case. I refer to one who, in this setting part of time,' has opened a vein of sentiment and thought unknown before, who has supplied the noblest antidote to the freezing effects of the scientific spirit of the age, who, while he has detected that poetry which is the essence of the greatest things, has cast a glory round the lowliest conditions of humanity, and traced out the subtle links by which they are connected with the highest-one whose name will now find an echo, not only in the heart of

the secluded student, but in that of the busiest of those who are fevered by political controversy-William Wordsworth." (Loud cheers.)

Wordsworth's own petition on the subject, and another from Thomas Carlyle, may precede a few specimens of the extensive correspondence which he carried on at this time with his contemporaries:

"The humble petition of William Wordsworth, of Rydal, in the county of Westmoreland,

Sheweth,

That your petitioner is on the point of attaining his seventieth year; that since his first literary production was given to the press forty-six years have elapsed, during which time he has at intervals published various original works, down to the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five.

That the copyright in all these works is unassigned, but that in a great part of them, under the existing law, that exclusive right is already contingent upon the duration of his life, and the same would be the case in a very few years with much the larger portion of the remainder, including the most important of these works, a poem entitled The Excursion, which, in the event of his decease, would become public property in less than four years from the present time.

That the short term of copyright now allowed by the law is a grievance common to all authors whose works are not liable to be superseded; but your petitioner takes leave respectfully to represent that this grievance falls still more heavily upon those who, like himself, have engaged and persevered in literary labour, less with the expectation of producing immediate or speedy effect than with a view to interest and benefit society, though remotely, yet permanently.

That it has happened to your petitioner, in consequence of having written with this aim, that his works, though never out

of demand, have made their way slowly into general circulation; yet he may be permitted to state a fact bearing obviously upon the Bill for the extension of the term of copyright now before your honourable House; that within the last four years these works have brought the author a larger pecuniary emolument than during the whole of the preceding years in which they have been before the public. This advantage would have in a great measure been lost to his family had he died a few years since.

That your petitioner ventures to submit to your honourable House his conviction that the duration of copyright, as the law now stands, is far from being co-extensive with the claims of natural affection: a hardship which will be still more apparent when the condition of distinguished authors is viewed in contrast with that of men who rise to eminence in other professions or employments, whereby they not only acquire wealth, but have patronage at command, or obtain the means of forming family establishments in business, which enable them to provide at once for their descendants, or for others who have claims upon them. He also trusts that to the wisdom of the House it will appear that the law-while it fails to pay due regard to the reasonable claims of natural affection-is also at variance, in an unwarrantable degree, with the principles that govern the right of property in all other matters (mechanical inventions and chemical discoveries only excepted), between which, however, and works in several of the highest departments of literature, there is in quality, circumstance, mode of operation, and oftentimes in origin, a broad line of distinction, as was shown when the subject in the preceding session was under the consideration of Parliament.

That in answer to the objection that the proposed measure would check the circulation of books, it may be urged, first, that to a great majority of publications the measure would be indifferent, they being adequately protected by the law as it

VOL. III.

X