formal military conventional levelling, encouraging in all a certain amount of talent, but cramping the finer natures, and obliging Guizot, and the few other men of real genius—whom God Almighty is too good to leave them entirely destitute of, to stoop to the common limits, to flatter and conciliate the headstrong ardent unthinking multitude of ordinary men, who dictate to France through the journals which they edit. There is little of large stirring life in politics now, all is conducted for some small immediate ends; this is the case in Germany as well as France. Goethe was amusing himself with fine fancies, when his country was invaded. How unlike Milton, who only asked himself whether he could best serve his country as a soldier or a statesman, and decided that he could fight no better than others, but he might govern them better. Schiller had far more heart and ardour than Goethe, and would not, like him, have professed indifference to theology and politics, which are the two deepest things in man—indeed, all a man is worth, involving duty to God and to man.' He took us to his terrace, whence the view is delicious; he said, 'Without those autumn tints it would be beautiful, but with them it is exquisite.' It had been a wet morning, but the landscape was then coming out with perfect clearness. 'It is,' he said, 'like the human heart emerging from sorrow, shone on by the grace of God.' We wondered whether the scenery had any effect on the minds of the poorer people. He thinks it has, though they don't learn to express it in neat phrases, but it dwells silently within them. How constantly mountains are mentioned in Scripture as the scene of extraordinary events; the Law was given on a mountain, Christ was transfigured on a mountain, on a mountain the great act of our redemption was accomplished, and I cannot believe but that when the poor read of these things in their Bibles, and the frequent mention of mountains in the Psalms, their 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 (qucere, 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?' I'll write you a sonnet.' 'Let me see you, and 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 : "MY DEAR WORDSWORTH,-I wish you had not gone to court. 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. 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 On earth to goodness blest by grace divine. Lady devoutly honoured and beloved Through every realm confided to thy sway; As thou art wont, thy sovereignty adorn With woman's gentleness, yet firm and staid; With a benign indulgence more than just. Or grief-the inheritance of humankind. 9th January 1846. W. W. |