Having said all that appears necessary on this subject, I cannot but add to an old friend two or three words about myself, though you probably will have heard from others how I am going on. I live at present in a most delightful situation; and have a public employment which is a comfortable addition to my income, but I pay £100 per annum out of it to my predecessor, and it falls nearly another 100 below the value at which my noble patron-Lord Lonsdale-had been led to estimate it. My marriage has been as happy as man's could be, saving that we have lost two sweet children (out of five), a boy and girl of the several ages of six and a half and four years. This was a heavy affliction to us, as they were as amiable and promising creatures as a house could be blest with. My poetical labours have often suffered long interruptions; but I have at last resolved to send to the press a portion of a poem which, if I live to finish it, I hope future times will not willingly let die.' These you know are the words of my great predecessor, and the depth of my feelings upon some subjects seems to justify me in the act of applying them to myself, while speaking to a friend, who I know has always been partial to me. When you write, speak of yourself and your family. I hear wonders of a niece of yours. May we not hope to see you here? Let it not be during my

absence. I shall be from home at least for six weeks during the ensuing summer, meaning to take a tour in Scotland with my wife and her sister. My sister joins in affectionate remembrances to you; and I shall say for my wife that she will be most happy to see you in this place, with which I venture to promise that you will be much pleased. Believe me, my dear Poole, most faithfully yours, W. WORDSWORTH."

Shortly afterwards he wrote thus to Samuel Rogers.

"RYDAL MOUNT, May 5, 1814. MY DEAR SIR,-Some little time since, in consequence of a distressful representation made to me of the condition of some person connected nearly by marriage with Mrs Wordsworth, I applied to our common friend Mr Sharp to know if he had any means of procuring an admittance into Christ's Hospital, for a child of one of the parties. His reply was such as I feared it would be. He referred me to you.

I have to thank you for a present of your volume of poems, received some time since, through the hands of Southey. I have read it with great pleasure. The Columbus is what you intended. It has many bright and striking passages, and poems upon this plan please better on a second perusal than the first. The gaps at first disappoint and vex you.

There is a pretty piece in which you have done me the honour of imitating me towards the conclusion particularly, where you must have remembered the Highland Girl. I like the poem much; but the first paragraph is hurt by two apostrophes, to objects of different character, one to Luss, and one to your sister, and the apostrophe is not a figure that like Janus carries two faces with a good grace.

I am about to print (do not start) eight thousand lines, which is but a small portion of what I shall oppress the world with, if strength and life do not fail me. I shall be content if the publication pays the expenses; for Mr Scott, and your friend Lord Byron, flourishing at the rate they do, how can an honest Poet hope to thrive ?

I expect to hear of your taking flight to Paris, unless the convocation of emperors and other personages by which London is to be honoured, detain you to assist at the festivities.

For me, I would like dearly to see old Blucher, but as

the fates will not allow, I mean to recompense myself by an excursion with Mrs Wordsworth to Scotland, where I hope to fall in occasionally with a ptarmigan, a roe, or an eagle; and the living bird I certainly should prefer to its image on the panel of a dishonoured Emperor's coach.

Farewell. I shall be happy to see you here at all times, for your company is a treat.-Most truly yours,

W. WORDSWORTH."

In July 1814 Wordsworth made a second tour in Scotland, accompanied this time by his wife, and her sister, Sarah Hutchinson. They left Rydal Mount on the 18th of July, and were absent six weeks. The five poems, published under the title of Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, 1814, are the only literary record of that tour. We have no "journal" of it, such as Dorothy Wordsworth kept in 1803. References to it, however, and to what they did, will be found, under the respective poems, in vol. vi. of this edition. The poems were, The Brownie's Cell, Cora Linn, The Bran, a sonnet on Mr Gillies, and the second of the three poems on Yarrow. On his visit to Yarrow, the party were accompanied by Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, and Dr Anderson, the editor of the British Poets. An interesting account of the meeting with Dr Anderson will be found in vol. vi., pp. 41-2. Mr Gillies was the cousin of the lady who took Wordsworth's portrait five successive times. He was editor of the Foreign Quarterly Review, and author of a work in three volumes, the Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, published in 1851. In the second volume of that work there is a sketch of Wordsworth, and several letters from him to the author.

*

Mr Gillies says, "Out of sight the most remarkable

* Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, vol. ii., p. 137.

event of my life during this year (1814) was my first meeting with Mr Wordsworth." Part of his somewhat gossipy narrative may be quoted, as it is almost the only independent record we have of this Scottish Tour.

Among convivial spirits no one could be more joyous than Wordsworth; no one could enter more heartily and readily into the humours of the passing hour; and among eminent authors no one could ever be found more willing than he was to make allowances for the faults of others, or to afford instruction, whenever he met with a pupil whose attachment to literature was not founded on vanity or affectation. His own lofty and buoyant spirit very obviously resulted from three causes- -1st, natural energy of constitution and character; 2nd, calmness and wisdom, founded on moral principles inflexibly firm; 3rd, a course of training, to him become habitual, namely, the hydropathic (though the name of Priesnitz was not then dreamed of), for he detested wine and other fermented liquors, and every day climbed the mountains, composing his poems, and giving them utterance in the deepest tone of invocation and inspiration as he ascended. Truly it was a laborious and joyous life, and it was needful for him to say, labor ipsa voluptas erat; seeing that our ancient world, under the exemplary reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second, was not more obtuse to the poetical merits of John Milton, than our modern world in the enlightened era of George the Fourth, to those of William Wordsworth. Scotland, as already said, it had been currently believed that our "Edinburgh Review" had for ever demolished his pretensions; and it could only be by a species of monomania that he continued travelling uphill in the teeth of those merciless blasts from the cold North! It would, however, be impossible in any words to do justice to the calmness of

In

contempt with which Wordsworth regarded such attacks. In his own words applied to Milton

His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.

How completely his genius triumphed at last, and established its empire over the public mind 'for all time,' it would be very needless to say.

Mr Wordsworth came at two o'clock, in order to join in my then favourite walk to the top of Corstorphine Hill, whither we were accompanied by Mrs Wordsworth, Miss Hutchinson, and Mr James Wilson. . . . In his own words again, as applied to Milton, he could lay on himself the lowliest duties,' and so would try to enlighten the humblest tyro, provided he found a willing and attentive auditor. . . . I contended for the poet's right to be singular, to feel differently from all the world about him,-to have his own world (with its imaginary beings, no doubt), wherein he should keep aloof and alone,-finally, to make his own peculiar impressions the subject matter of his poetry.

Mr Wordsworth with alacrity granted my premisses, so far as there was any truth in them. Peculiarity of feelings, morbid weakness, and idiosyncracy, might all be very pardonable; indeed sometimes (as in the case of Mr Charles Lloyd) could not be helped; but to stickle for these, and industriously make them, as if par excellence, the chosen matériel of poetical composition, was the most egregious blunder that an author could commit. Cowper (one of my special favourites) was weak and morbid, no doubt, and he could not help this; but he wisely tried to help it, by looking abroad on nature and society, by endeavouring to do good, and in that pursuit to lose sight of himself. Originality and singularity were not to be regarded as synonymous words.*

* Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, vol. ii., pp. 137-143.