Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

misery which he has inflicted? He does not give pain, I know, for the sake of giving pain; but who does, except the arch-fiend?

I shall call at Hatton Garden. . . It is a comfort that I have some friends on whose virtues I can pride myself, and you are among the number.-Your affectionate friend, C. C."

Mrs Clarkson again wrote to Robinson from Romford on the 29th March of the same year.

[ocr errors]

"MY DEAR FRIEND,-I am very much obliged to you for your letter, though there were one or two sentences in it which gave me inexpressible pain. I cannot be angry with Mary Lamb, but it is evident that she is not fit to be judge in the case before us. 'W. can now afford to take a journey or anything.'* This remark shows an ignorance not only of W.'s character, but of human nature itself. Was it ever known that money could cure any evil but poverty? What is to be desired is that C. should have the feelings towards them which would induce him to go. He had those feelings when he wrote, and said that nothing but his play kept him from them. They relied on that assertion with implicit faith. Wordsworth expressed his feelings when he wrote to C., lest the other should neglect his own interest to go to him. Dorothy wrote to me, I am sure he will come if his play is successful.' If he had but the courage to say that his heart fails him-that he cannot bear to be so near Keswick-but that he would meet W. at some other place. After all I do incline to think with M. L. that there is something amongst them which makes it perhaps better that they should not meet just now. I am, however, quite sure that nothing like indifference towards him exists on their

land.

[ocr errors]

Referring to his appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmore

part, and also that it rests with him entirely to recover all that he has lost in their hearts.

I am very glad that I have seen him, though I have gained nothing in hope or comfort concerning him. Yet I seem to have gained strength by it, which will, I trust, support me through the agony which I shall have to bear, whenever it pleases God to remove him from this world. It cannot be so great as that which I suffered for the extinction of his poetical life-weak creature, that I am. Even now I cannot help wishing that the pang had been made easier to me. Had he stayed another month at B[ury St Edmund], the truth, the awful truth, would have been revealed by slow degrees-he too would have been forced to have acknowledged it. He could not have gone back into that gloomy circle on which he has walked for years. He could not have forgotten when I was there unchanged before him, that he had said, 'Catherine, I shall soon be a poet again, you will make me a poet.' It is past, and I know by experience that

There is a virtue in the strength of love,

Which makes a thing endurable that else
Would break the heart.

I mean that he must have acknowledged that the cause of failure was in himself. He went to G

[? Grasmere], and it was put upon the change he found there. He found in me a being capable of sympathising with him. It would have made me supremely happy to have been the means of restoring him to himself. My husband would have valued me the more for having done it. My path is clear before me. Whenever the opportunity occurs, I will seek him out-soothe him with kindness greater than woman's-the kindness, the compassion. of angels when they pity human frailty. N.B.-You must

[ocr errors]

consider this as a figure of speech. It looks as if I thought myself an angel!

I have written to him to ask him to come hither. I do not expect that he will. If he does, I shall hope that I may be able to do away some of the false notions which he entertains respecting W. and his household. I may also learn something from him, which may be the ground of a letter to them, and which may bring about a thorough reunion. At all events, it is not fit that he should go to them in the present state of his feelings. It might give him a handle to justify himself in future no-doings (I will not say mis-doings), and this would be doing injustice to the Morgans-injustice to the children and their mother. And now, having finished my Elegy, I shall conclude like Milton,

To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

If I do not hear better accounts from Grasmere, I shall make an effort and go and see them. I think they will be better when they get into their new house, and perhaps better than if they had moved into it immediately. Indeed, I see in the effects of these losses upon them the evil of living so entirely out of the world, especially in that country. I remember the effect which it had upon me. Those mountains give a character of permanency to everything else. After middle life is past, the buoyancy of youth is gone. We have more need of variety in our occupations, our associates, &c. If human life is to be an uninterrupted scene of happiness, then retirement in a beautiful country, with books and a few friends and intimates, would be enough and more than enough. But liable as all things here are to change, we should provide against accidents. Our friends have no acquaintances. They have neighbours, but in their present circumstances they need the sight of

equals who are not intimate friends, in whose company they must put some restraint upon themselves, and in return they would be won from their sadness by hearing of other things the goings on of life in various ways. . . . In the end, no doubt, this acquisition to their income will be a great good-it will enable them to obey the generous impulses of their nature. It will relieve the females from a great deal of hard work, which they have performed most cheerfully, but which has certainly at times been prejudicial to them. It will raise them in the opinion of the world, and increase their usefulness, and what is the greatest good of all, it will release Wordsworth's mind from all anxiety about money.

If you hear anything about Remorse being played again, let me know.

-Your very affectionate friend,

Monday, 29th March 1813.

C. C."

CHAPTER XXVI.

WORDSWORTH IN LONDON.

IN the previous chapter a few details of Wordsworth's visit to London, in May 1812, have been given. Some additional particulars of this visit are recorded in Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary; and as Wordsworth's literary judgments, on his contemporaries and others, are disclosed in these jottings in an interesting way, extracts from the Diaries may be added in this chapter.

One or two notes from the previous year, however (1811), so far as they bear on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, &c., may serve as a preface to the Diary of 1812.

"Jan. 8, 1811.-Spent part of the evening with Charles Lamb and his sister. . . . We spoke of Wordsworth and Coleridge. C. L., to my surprise, asserted Coleridge to be the greater man. He preferred the Mariner to anything W. had written. W., he thought, is narrow and confined in his view compared with C.* He does not, like Shakespeare, become everything he pleases; but forces the reader to submit to his individual feelings. This, I observed, lies very much in the Lyrical Character, and C. L. concluded by expressing his high admiration of W. He had read many of his things with great admiration, especially the Sonnets, which I had before spoken of as my favourites. C. L. also spoke in high praise of Hart Leap Well, as one of W.'s most exquisite pieces, but did not think highly of The Leechgatherer.

* The Diary has 'W.,' but this is evidently a clerical error.

« AnteriorContinuar »