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minds glow at the thought of their own mountains, and they realise it all more clearly than others.'

Thus ended our morning with Wordsworth.

The old man looks much aged; his manner is emphatic, almost peremptory, and his whole deportment is virtuous and didactic."

A letter from Wordsworth on Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, written in 1845 to the Rev. John Moultrie, may conclude this chapter:

"MY DEAR SIR,-My Copy of the Ode, in Gray's own handwriting, has

Ah happy Hills, ah pleasant Shade.

I wonder how Bentley could ever have substituted 'Rills,' a reading which has no support in the context. The common copies read, a few lines below

Gray's own copy

Full many a sprightly race.

Full many a smileing.

(For so he spells the word.)

Throughout the whole Poem the substantives are written in Capital Letters. He writes-Fury-Passions,' and not, as commonly printed, the 'fury-passions.' What is the reason. that our modern Compositors are so unwilling to employ Capital Letters ?-Believe me, my dear Sir, faithfully yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.”

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE END.

IN May 1845 we find Wordsworth in London. He was called up, as he tells us, by a summons, which he could not resist, from the Lord Chamberlain, to attend a State ball! There is something not a little incongruous in the severely simple, almost austere, poet of seventy-five years attending a ceremonial of this kind. But let us hear his friend Haydon's account of it in his Diary ::

“May 3d, 1845.*-Dear old Wordsworth called, looking hearty and strong. I came up to go to the State ball,' said he, and the Lord Chancellor (quare, Lord Chamberlain ?) told me at the ball I ought to go to the levee.' 'And will you put on a court dress?' said I. 'Why?' 'Let me see you, and

I'll write you a sonnet.' Wordsworth did not like this.

When Wilkie and I were at Coleorton in 1809, Sir George said, ' Wordsworth may walk in, but I caution you against his democratic principles.' What would Hazlitt say now? The poet of the lakes in bag-wig, sword, and ruffles!

I have never protested against any of these things, but I have never submitted to them but once, at George IV.'s coronation.

May 16th.- . . . Dined with my dear friend, Serjeant Talfourd. He said Wordsworth went to court in Rogers's clothes, buckles and stockings, and wore Davy's sword. Moxon had hard work to make the dress fit. It was a squeeze, but by pulling and hauling they got him in. Fancy the high priest

* Life of B. R. Haydon, vol. iii. pp. 302-6.

of mountain and of flood on his knees in a court, the quiz of courtiers, in a dress that did not belong to him, with a sword that was not his own, and a coat which he borrowed."

On the 22d of May, Haydon wrote to him from London :

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MY DEAR WORDSWORTH,-I wish you had not gone to Your climax was the shout of the Oxford Senate House. Why not rest on that? I think of you as Nature's high priest. I can't bear to associate a bag-wig and sword, ruffles and buckles, with Helvellyn and the mountain solitudes.

This is my feeling, and I regret if I have rubbed yours the wrong way.

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Talfourd thinks it was a glory to have compelled the court to send for you, but would it not have been a greater for you to have declined it? Perhaps he is right, however. I have not been able to suppress my feelings.-Believe me ever your old friend, B. R. HAYDON."

In January 1846, Haydon wrote to Wordsworth, asking for some motto for the picture which he had made of the poet ascending Helvellyn. Wordsworth replied:

"Rydal Mount, Jan. 24th, 1846.*

MY DEAR HAYDON,-I was sorry that I could not give you a more satisfactory answer to your request for a motto to the engraving of your admirable portrait of my ascent towards the top of Helvellyn. Pray let me have a few impressions, when it is finished, sent to Moxon, as I myself think that it is the best likeness, that is, the most characteristic, that has been done of me.-Believe me, dear Haydon, faithfully, your obliged friend, W. WORDSWORTH."

In January of this year Wordsworth sent a copy of his Poems to the Queen for the Royal Library at Windsor, and

*Life of B. R. Haydon, vol. iii. p. 327.

inscribed the following lines upon the fly-leaf. For their republication here, I am indebted to the gracious permission of Her Majesty :

:

Deign, Sovereign Mistress! to accept a lay,

No Laureate offering of elaborate art;

But salutation taking its glad way

From deep recesses of a loyal heart.

Queen, Wife, and Mother! may All-judging Heaven
Shower with a bounteous hand on Thee and Thine
Felicity that only can be given

On earth to goodness blest by grace divine.

Lady devoutly honoured and beloved

Through every realm confided to thy sway;
Mayst thou pursue thy course by God approved,
And He will teach thy people to obey.

As thou art wont, thy sovereignty adorn

With woman's gentleness, yet firm and staid;
So shall that earthly crown thy brows have worn
Be changed for one whose glory cannot fade.
And now, by duty urged, I lay this Book
Before thy Majesty, in humble trust
That on its simplest pages thou wilt look

With a benign indulgence more than just.
Nor wilt thou blame an aged Poet's prayer,
That issuing hence may steal into thy mind
Some solace under weight of royal care,

Or grief-the inheritance of humankind.
For know we not that from celestial spheres,
When Time was young, an inspiration came
(Oh, were it mine!) to hallow saddest tears,
And help life onward in it noblest aim?

9th January 1846.

W. W.

In March 1846, Wordsworth received information from his friend, Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, that he had been elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. He acknowledged it thus:

"Rydal Mount, March 14, 1846.*

MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM,-Having just received from you a notification that the Royal Irish Academy has conferred upon me the distinction of electing me an Honorary Member of their body, I beg you will express to the Council and to the Academy my deep sense of the honour of being admitted into a society so eminent for Science and Literature; let me add that the interest I have always taken in the sister country, and in everything calculated to promote its welfare, greatly enhances the gratification afforded me by this act of the Academy.

The diploma to which you refer has not yet reached me, or I should, of course, have acknowledged it. As the matter stands, this answer to your notification will, I hope, arrive in time to be read by you to the Academy before you resign the Chair, and be accepted by their courtesy in place of a more formal acknowledgment. I cannot conclude without expressing my sincere regret that the Society is about to lose the benefit of your services as President, and the honour of having your name at its head. It is impossible that any personal consideration could have made the honour which I now acknowledge more acceptable than its having been proposed by one holding so high a position as you do in the scientific and literary world, and filling an equally high place in the private regards of your friends, among whom I have long thought it a great happiness to be numbered.-Believe me, my dear Sir William, ever most faithfully your much obliged,

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH."

In 1846, the students of the University of Glasgow tried to

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