APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

NOTE I.-JOHN WORDSWORTH.

(See pp. 50-56.)

To the notes on the Elegiac Verses in memory of John Wordsworth (pp. 50-53), the following may be added.

Southey, writing to his friend, C. W. W. Wynn, on the 3rd of April 1805, says:

"DEAR WYNN,

I have been grievously shocked this evening by the loss of the Abergavenny, of which Wordsworth's brother was captain. Of course the news came flying up to us from all quarters, and it has disordered me from head to foot. At such circumstances I believe we feel as much for others as for ourselves; just as a violent blow occasions the same pain as a wound, and he who breaks his shin feels as acutely at the moment as the man whose leg is shot off. In fact, I am writing to you merely because this dreadful shipwreck has left me utterly unable to do anything else. It is the heaviest calamity Wordsworth has ever experienced, and in all probability I shall have to communicate it to him, as he will very likely be here before the tidings can reach him. What renders any near loss of this kind so peculiarly distressing is, that the recollection is perpetually freshened when any like event occurs, by the mere mention of shipwreck, or the sound of the wind. Of all deaths it is the most dreadful, from the circumstances of terror which accompany it. . . .”—(See The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, Vol. II., p. 321.)

The following is part of a letter from Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth on the same subject. It is undated:

"MY DEAR MISS WORDSWORTH,——

"I wished to tell you that you would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind and sweet memory of the dead, which you so happily describe, as now almost begun; but I felt that it was improper, and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to them that the memory of their affliction would in time become a constant part, not only of their dreams, but of their most wakeful sense of happiness. That you would see every object with and through your lost brother, and that that

would at last become a real and everlasting source of comfort to you, I felt, and well knew, from my own experience in sorrow; but till you yourself began to feel this, I did not dare to tell you so; but I send you some poor lines, which I wrote under this conviction of mind, and before I heard Coleridge was returning home.

"Why is he wandering on the sea?—

Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be.

By slow degrees he'd steal away
Their woes, and gently bring a ray
(So happily he'd time relief,)

Of comfort from their very grief.

He'd tell them that their brother dead,
When years have passed o'er their head,
Will be remembered with such holy,

True and tender melancholy,

That ever this lost brother John
Will be their heart's companion.
His voice they'll always hear,

His face they'll always see;

There's naught in life so sweet
As such a memory."

(See Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, by Thomas Noon Talfourd, Vol. II., pp. 233, 234).

NOTE II.-SARA COLERIDGE'S CRITICISM OF THE

WAGGONER.
(See p. 118.)

The following is Sara Coleridge's criticism of The Waggoner. (See Biographia Literaria, Vol. II. pp. 183, 184, ed. 1847.)

"Due honour is done to Peter Bell, at this time, by students of poetry in general; but some, even of Mr Wordsworth's greatest admirers, do not quite satisfy me in their admiration of The Waggoner, a poem which my dear uncle, Mr Southey, preferred even to the former. Ich will meine Dunkungsart hierin niemanden aufdringen, as Lessing says: I will force my way of thinking on nobody, but take the liberty, for my own gratification, to express it. The sketches of hill and valley in this poem have a lightness, and spirit-an Allegro touch-distinguishing them from the grave and elevated splendour which characterises Mr Wordsworth's representations of Nature in general, and from the passive tenderness of those in The White Doe, while it harmonises well with the human interest of the piece; indeed it is the harmonious sweetness of the composition which is most dwelt upon by its special admirers. In its course it describes, with bold brief touches, the striking mountain tract from Grasmere to Keswick; it commences with an evening storm among the mountains, presents a lively interior

of a country inn during midnight, and concludes after bringing us in sight of St John's Vale and the Vale of Keswick seen by day-break— "Skiddaw touched with rosy light," and the prospect from Nathdale Fell "hoar with the frost-like dews of dawn:" thus giving a beautiful and well-contrasted Panorama, produced by the most delicate and masterly strokes of the pencil. Well may Mr Ruskin, a fine observer and eloquent describer of various classes of natural appearances, speak of Mr Wordsworth as the great poetic landscape painter of the age. But Mr Ruskin has found how seldom the great landscape painters are powerful in expressing human passions and affections on canvas, or even successful in the introduction of human figures into their foregrounds; whereas in the poetic paintings of Mr Wordsworth the landscape is always subordinate to a higher interest; certainly, in The Waggoner, the little sketch of human nature which occupies, as it were, the front of that encircling background, the picture of Benjamin and his temptations, his humble friends and the mute companions of his way, has a character of its own, combining with sportiveness a homely pathos, which must ever be delightful to some of those who are thoroughly conversant with the spirit of Mr Wordsworth's poetry. It may be compared with the ale-house scene in Tam o' Shanter, parts of Voss's Luise, or Ovid's Baucis and Philemon; though it differs from each of them as much as they differ from each other. The Epilogue carries on the feeling of the piece very beautifully."

The editor of Southey's Life and Correspondence-his son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey-tells us, in a note to a letter from S. T. Coleridge to his father, that the Waggoner's name was Jackson; and that "all the circumstances of the poem are accurately correct." This Jackson, after retiring from active work as waggoner, became the tenant of Greta Hall, where first Coleridge, and afterwards Southey lived. The Hall was divided into two houses, one of which Jackson occupied, and the other of which he let to Coleridge, who speaks thus of him in the letter to Southey, dated Greta Hall, Keswick, April 13, 1801" My landlord, who dwells next door, has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine; histories, encyclopedias, and all the modern poetry, &c., &c., &c. A more truly disinterested man I never met with; severely frugal, yet almost carelessly generous; and yet he got all his money as a common carrier, by hard labour, and by pennies and pennies. He is one instance among many in this country of the salutary effect of the love of knowledge—he was from a boy a lover of learning." (See Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, Vol. II. pp. 147-8.)

Charles Lamb-to whom The Waggoner was dedicated-wrote thus to Wordsworth in 1819 :

"MY DEAR WORDSWORTH,-You cannot imagine how proud we are here of the dedication.

We read it twice for once that we do the