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Writing in the same month to James Montgomery, acknowledging a copy of his poems, he said :

I cannot conclude without one word of literary advice, which I hope you will deem my advanced age entitles me to give. Do not, my dear Sir, be anxious about any individual's opinion concerning your writings, however highly you may think of his genius, or rate his judgment. Be a severe critic to yourself; and, depend upon it, no person's decision upon the merit of your works will bear comparison in point of value with your own. Above all, I would remind you, with a view to tranquillise and steady your mind, that no man takes the trouble of surveying and pondering another's writings with a hundredth part of the care which an author of sense and genius will have bestowed upon his own. Add to this reflection another, which I press upon you, as it has supported me through life, viz. that Posterity will settle all accounts justly, and that works which deserve to last will last; and if undeserving this fate, the sooner they perish the better."

Early in 1835, Wordsworth went up to London with his wife. In the Journal of Thomas Moore we find an entry referring to this visit to the following effect :

February 20th 1835.-After some hours' work, set off westward. . . . Found that Rogers, though engaged out himself, had asked Wordsworth and his wife, who are just arrived in town, to dinner..

My companion, according to his usual fashion, very soliloquacious, but saying much, of course, that was interesting to hear.... This led to Wordsworth telling me, what certainly is no small disgrace to the taste of the English public, of the

very limited sale of his works, and the very scanty sum, on the whole, which he had received for them, not more, I think, than about a thousand pounds in all. I dare say I must have made by my writings at least twenty times that sum; but then I have written twenty times as much, such as it is. In giving me an account of the sort of society he has in his neighbourhood in the country, and saying that he rarely went out to dinner, he gave a very intelligible picture of the sort of thing it must be, when he does go out. The conversation,' he said, 'may be called catechetical; for, as they do me the honour to wish to know my opinions on the different subjects, they ask me questions, and I am induced to answer them at great length, till I become quite tired.' And so he does, I'll warrant him nor is it possible, indeed, to edge in a word, at least in a téte-à-tête, till he does get tired. I was, however, very well pleased to be a listener.

Spoke of the immense time it took him to write even the shortest copy of verses,—sometimes whole weeks employed in shaping two or three lines, before he can satisfy himself with their structure. Attributed much of this to the unmanageableness of the English as a poetical language; contrasted it with the Italian in this respect, and repeated a stanza of Tasso to show how naturally the words fell into music of themselves. It was one where the double rhymes 'ella,' 'nella,'' quella' occurred, which he compared with the meagre and harsh English words, she,' 'that,' 'this,' etc. etc. Thought, however, that, on the whole, there were advantages in having a rugged language to deal with, as in struggling with words one was led to give birth to and dwell upon thoughts, while, on the contrary, an easy and mellifluous language was apt to tempt, by its felicity, into negligence, and to lead the poet to substitute music for thought. I do not give these as at all his words ; but rather my deductions from his sayings, than what he actually

said. Talked of Coleridge, and praised him, not merely as a poet, but as a man, to a degree which I could not listen to without putting in my protest. . . . Hinted something of this in reply to Wordsworth's praises, and adverted to Southey's opinion of him, as expressed in a letter to Bowles (saying, if I recollect right, that he was 'lamented by few, and regretted by none'), but Wordsworth continued his eulogium. Defended Coleridge's desertion of his family on the grounds of incompatibility, etc., between him and Mrs. Coleridge; said that Southey took a rigid view' of the whole matter.

In remarking upon the causes of an author's popularity (with reference to his own failure, as he thought, in that respect), he mentioned, as one of them, the frequent occurrence of quotable passages,-of lines that dwelt in people's memories, and passed into general circulation. . . . On the subject of Coleridge as a writer, Wordsworth gave it as his opinion (strangely, I think) that his prose would live, and deserved to live; while of his poetry he thought by no means so highly. I had mentioned Genevieve as a beautiful thing, but to this he objected: there was too much of the sensual in it.*

Again :

"28th to 30th March 1835.- . . . The day I met Wordsworth at dinner at Rogers's, the last time I was in town, he asked us all in the evening to write something in a little album of his daughter's, and Wilkie drew a slight sketch in it. One of the things Luttrell wrote was the following epitaph on a man who was run over by an omnibus :—

→ Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, edited by the Right Hon. Lord John Russell, M.P., vol. vii. 69-73.

Killed by an omnibus-why not?
So quick a death a boon is.

Let not his friends lament his lot,

Mors omnibus communis.

As an instance of very close translation, he gave me the following of his own, from the well-known Greek epigram, Χρύσον ἄνης εὑρών, etc. :

:—

A thief found gold and left a rope, but he who could not find
The gold he left tied on the rope the thief had left behind.*

An undated letter of Wordsworth to Crabb Robinson, belonging to the year 1835, and evidently written from Rydal Mount, tells of his having been in London, and taken three days to come down to Westmoreland. He speaks of Hampstead, Trentham, Coventry, and Birmingham, and adds :— "The weather here is very sharp, and to-day we have a blustering wind, tearing off the blossoms and twigs from the trees with almost equal disregard. At breakfast, this morning, we received from some unknown friend the Examiner, containing a friendly notice of my late volume. Is it discreditable to say that these things interest me little but as they may tend to promote the sale, which, with the prospects of unavoidable expense before me, is a greater object to me, much greater, than it would otherwise have been? The private testimonies which I receive very frequently of the effect of my writings upon the hearts and minds of men are indeed very gratifying, because I am sure they must be written under pure influences; but it is not necessarily, or even probably so, with strictures intended for the public. The one are effusions, the other compositions, and liable in various degrees to inter

* Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, vol. vii. p. 85. Compare S. T. Coleridge's translation of the same epigram in Omniana (1812), ii. 123 :

Jack finding gold, left a rope on the ground;

Will missing his gold, used the rope which he found.

mixtures that take from their value. It is amusing to me to have proofs how critics and authors differ in judgment, both as to fundamentals and incidentals. As an instance of the latter, see the passage where I speak of Horace, quoted in the Examiner. The critic marks in italics for approbation certain passages, but he takes no notice of three words, in delicacy of feeling worth, in my estimation, all the rest-'he only listening.' Again, what he observes in praise of my mode of dealing with nature as opposed to my treatment of human life—which as he says, is not to be trusted-would be reversed, as it has been by many, who hear that I ran into excess in my pictures of the influence of natural objects, and assign to them an importance which they are not entitled to; while in my treatment of the intellectual instincts, affections, and passions of mankind, I am nobly distinguished by having drawn out into notice the points in which they resemble each other, in preference to dwelling (as dramatic authors must do) upon those in which they differ. If my writings are to last, it will, I myself believe, be mainly owing to this characteristic. They will please for the single cause, 'That we have all of us one human heart.' Farewell."

On his way north, at Cambridge, he heard of the death of his friend, Richard Sharp,-" Conversation Sharp," as he was called, the man of whom Wordsworth used to say that he knew Italy better than any other person he had met with. From the Master's Lodge at Trinity he wrote to Rogers on this subject:

“15th April 1835.

MY DEAR ROGERS,-The papers record the death of your, and let me add, my long-known and long-valued friend, Richard Sharp. Sincerely do I condole with you, and with his nearest connections. How a thought of the presence of living