my father's character. He also wished three alterations to be made in them, in order to reduce the language to correctness and simplicity. In the third line, because the phrase 'casual eyes' is too unusual, he proposed—

Where'er I chance these eyes to cast.

In the sixth line, instead of converse,' 'commune'; because as it stands, the accent is wrong.

In the second stanza, he thought

While I understand and feel,

My cheeks have often been bedewed,

was a vicious construction grammatically, and proposed instead

My pensive cheeks are oft bedewed.

These suggestions were made too late for my father to profit by them."*

In the Forster Collection of letters in the South Kensington Museum, there are several from Wordsworth to Walter Savage Landor, for a knowledge of which, and copies of them, I am indebted to the courtesy of the librarian, Mr. R. F. Sketchley. They belong to. the years 1821-1824, and extracts from them may here be given in series.

MY DEAR SIR,- . . . I feel myself much honoured by the present of your book of Latin poems, and it arrived at a time when I had the use of my eyes for reading, and with great pleasure did I employ them in the perusal of the dissertation annexed to your poems, which I read several times; but the poems themselves I have not been able to look into, for I was

* The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, vol. v. pp. 109, 110.

seized with a fit of composition at that time, and deferred the pleasure to which your poems invited me till I could give them an undivided attention. . . . We live here somewhat singularly circumstanced-in solitude during nearly nine months of the year, and for the rest in a round of engagements. I have nobody near me who reads Latin, so that I can only speak of your essay from recollection. You will not perhaps

be surprised when I state that I differ from you in opinion as to the propriety of the Latin language being employed by moderns for works of taste and imagination. Miserable would have been the lot of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch if they had preferred the Latin to their mother tongue (there is, by-the-by, a Latin translation of Dante which you do not seem to know), and what could Milton, who was surely no mean master of the Latin tongue, have made of his Paradise Lost, had that vehicle been employed instead of the language of the Thames and Severn! Should we even admit that all modern dialects are comparatively changeable, and therefore limited in their efficacy, may not the sentiment which Milton so pleasingly expresses, when he says he is content to be read in his native isle only, be extended to durability; and is it not more desirable to be read with affection and pride, and familiarly for five hundred years, by all orders of minds, and all ranks of people, in your native tongue, than only by a few scattered scholars for the space of three thousand? Had your idylliums been in English, I should long ere this have been as well acquainted with them as with your Gebir, and with your other poems.

I met with a hundred things in your Dissertation' that fell in with my own judgments, but there are many opinions which I should like to talk over with you. Several of the separate remarks, upon Virgil in particular, though perfectly just, would perhaps have been better placed in notes or an appendix; they are details that obstruct the view of the whole.

Are you not also penurious in your praise of Gray? The fragment at the commencement of his fourth book, in which he laments the death of West, in cadence and sentiment, touches me in a manner for which I am grateful. The first book also of the same poems appears to me as well executed as anything of that kind is likely to be. Is there not a speech of Solon to which the concluding couplet of Gray's sonnet bears a more pointed resemblance than to any of the passages you have quoted? He was told not to grieve for the loss of his son, as tears would be of no avail; and for that very reason,' replied he, do I weep.' It is high time I should thank you for the honourable mention you have made of me.* It could not but be grateful to me to be praised by a poet who has written verses of which I would rather have been the author than of any produced in our time. What I now write to you, I have frequently said to many. . . .—I remain, my dear Sir, sincerely yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.

Rydal Mount, April 20th, [1822].

MY DEAR SIR,- . . .† I am surprised, and rather sorry when I hear you say you read little, because you are removed from the pressure of the trash, which, hourly issuing from the press in England, tends to make the very name of writing

* In a letter from Southey to Walter Savage Landor, written from Keswick, December 19, 1821, he said :—“. . . I shall send your letter to Wordsworth, who will, I am sure, be much gratified at seeing what you say of him. His merits are every day more widely acknowledged, in spite of the duncery, in spite of the personal malignity with which he is assailed, aud in spite of his injudicious imitators, who are the worst of all enemies. I will send you, in the next package, Humboldt's Travels, as far as they are published. He is among travellers what Wordsworth is among poets. . . . God bless you!-R. S.”—The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, vol. v. p. 106.

...

+ In the beginning of this letter he refers to the weakness in his eyes, and explains that it began in 1804, with inflammation of the eyelids, which had recurred again and again, so that almost any other ailment indirectly affected them.

books disgusting. I am so situated as to see little of it, but one cannot stop one's ears, and I sometimes envy you that distance which separates you altogether from this intrusion.

... We have as a near neighbour, an old acquaintance of yours, Mr. Quillinan, who knew you at Bath. He was lately of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, but has retired on half-pay. He married a daughter of Sir Egerton Brydges, and they live, with two nice children, at the foot of our hill. He begs to be kindly remembered to you.

In respect to Latin poetry, I ought to tell you that I am no judge, except upon general principles. I never practised Latin verse, not having been educated at one of the public schools. My acquaintance with Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, and Catullus is intimate; but as I never read them with a critical view to composition, great faults in language might be committed which would escape my notice. Any opinion of mine, therefore, on points of classical nicety would be of no value, should I be so inconsiderate as to offer it. A few days ago, being something better in my sight, I read your Sponsalia. It is full of spirit and animation, and is probably of that style of versification which suits the subject; yet, if you thought proper, you could produce, I think, a richer harmony; and I met some serious inaccuracies in the punctuation. . . . I must express a wish, however, that you would gratify us by writing in English. There are noble and stirring things in all that you have written in your native tongue, and that is enough for me. In your Simonidea, which I saw some years ago at Mr. Southey's, I was pleased to find rather an out-of-the-way image, in which the present hour is compared to the shade on the dial. It is a singular coincidence, that in the year 1793, when I first became an author, I illustrated the sentiment precisely in the same manner.** In the same work you com

See vol. i. p. 6.

mend the fine conclusion of Russel's sonnet upon Philoctetes, and depreciate that form of composition. I do not wonder at this. I used to think it egregiously absurd, though the greatest poets since the revival of literature have written in it. Many years ago my sister happened to read to me the sonnets of Milton, which I could at that time repeat; but somehow or other I was singularly struck with the style of harmony, and the gravity, and republican austerity of those compositions. In the course of the same afternoon I produced three sonnets, and soon after many others; since that time, and from want of resolution to take up anything of length, I have filled up many a moment in writing sonnets, which, if I had never fallen into the practice, might easily have been better employed. The Excursion is proud of your approbation. The Recluse has had a long sleep, save in my thoughts; my MSS. are so ill-penned, and blurred, that they are useless to all but myself; and at present I cannot face them. But if my stomach can be preserved in tolerable order, I hope you will hear of me again in the character chosen for the title of that poem. I am glad to hear from you.—I remain faithfully yours, WM. WORDSWORTH.

Rydal Mount, January 21, 1824.

MY DEAR SIR,-. . . You promise me a beautiful copy of Dante, but I ought to mention that I possess the Parma folio of 1795-much the grandest book on my shelves-presented to me by our common friend, Mr. Kenyon.

You have given me minute criticism of Laodamia. I concur with you in what you say of the first stanza, and had several times attempted to alter it upon your grounds: I cannot, however, accede to your objection to the 'second birth,' merely because the expression has been degraded by conventiclers. I certainly meant nothing more by it than the eadem cura, and the largior æther, etc., of Virgil's 6th Æneid.