Ever faithfully and affectionately yours,
WM. WORDSWORTH.
The print of Bishop White is noble, everything, indeed, that could be wished.
147. Governor Malartie: Lord Hector of Glasgow University, &c.
LETTER TO SIR W. GOMM. &c. &c., PORT LOUIS, MAURITIUS.
Rydal Mount, Ambleside, Nov. 23. 1846.
DEAR SIR WILLIAM,
Your kind letter of the 4th of August I have just received; and I thank you sincerely for this mark of your attention, and for the gratification it afforded me. It is pleasing to see fancy amusements giving birth to works of solid profit, as, under the auspices of Lady Gomm, they are doing in your island.
Your sonnet addressed to the unfinished monument of Governor Malartie is conceived with appropriate feeling and just discrimination. Long may the finished monument last as a tribute to departed worth, and as a check and restraint upon intemperate desires for change, to which the inhabitants of the island may hereafter be liable!
Before this letter reaches you the newspapers will probably have told you that I have been recently put in nomination, unknown to myself, for the high office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and that there was a majority of twenty-one votes in my favour, in opposition to the premier, Lord John Russell. The forms of the election, however, allowed Lord John Russell to be returned, through the single vote of the sub-rector voting for his superior. To say the truth, I am glad of this result; being too advanced in life to undertake with comfort any considerable public duty, and it might have seemed ungracious to decline the office.
Men of rank, or of high station, with the exception of the poet Campbell, who was, I believe, educated at this university, have almost invariably been chosen for a rector of this ancient university; and that another exception was made in my favour by a considerable majority affords a proof that literature, independent of office, does not want due estimation. I should not have dwelt so long upon this subject, had anything personal to myself occurred in which you could have taken interest.
As you do not mention your own health, or that of Lady Gomm, I infer with pleasure that the climate agrees with you both. That this may continue to be so is my earnest and sincere wish, in which Mrs. Wordsworth cordially unites.
Believe me, dear Sir William,
Faithfully yours,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
148. Death of ‘Dora.’
[Received July 10. 1847.]
MY DEAR C — — ,
Last night (I ought to have said a quarter before one this morning), it pleased God to take to Himself the spirit of our beloved daughter, and your truly affectionate cousin. She had latterly much bodily suffering, under which she supported herself by prayer, and gratitude to her heavenly Father, for granting her to the last so many of His blessings.
I need not write more. Your aunt bears up under this affliction as becomes a Christian.
Kindest love to Susan, of whose sympathy we are fully assured.
Your affectionate uncle, and the more so for this affliction,
WM. WORDSWORTH.
Pray for us!
149. Of the Same: Sorrow.
We bear up under our affliction as well as God enables us to do. But oh! my dear friend, our loss is immeasurable. God bless you and yours.
Our sorrow, I feel, is for life; but God’s will be done!
150.
TO JOHN PEACE, ESQ.
Brigham [Postmark, ‘Cockermouth,
Nov. 18. 1848’].
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Mrs. Wordsworth has deputed to me the acceptable office of answering your friendly letter, which has followed us to Brigham, upon the banks of the river Derwent, near Cockermouth, the birthplace of four brothers and their sister. Of these four, I, the second, am now the only one left. Am I wrong in supposing that you have been here? The house was driven out of its place by a railway, and stands now nothing like so advantageously for a prospect of this beautiful country, though at only a small distance from its former situation.
We are expecting Mr. Cuthbert Southey to-day, from his curacy, seven or eight miles distant. He is busy in carrying through the press the first volume of his father’s letters, or rather, collecting and preparing them for it. Do you happen to have any in your possession? If so, be so kind as to let me or his son know what they are, if you think they contain anything which would interest the public.
Mrs. W. and I are, thank God, both in good health, and possessing a degree of strength beyond what is usual at our age, being both in our seventy-ninth year. The beloved daughter whom it has pleased God to remove from this anxious and sorrowful world, I have not mentioned; but I can judge of the depth of your fellow-feeling for us. Many thanks to you for referring to the text in Scripture which I quoted to you so long ago. ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.’ He who does not find support and consolation there, will find it nowhere. God grant that it may he continued to me and mine, and to all sufferers! Believe me, with Mrs. W.’s very kind remembrance,
Faithfully yours,
WM. WORDSWORTH.
When you see Mr. Cottle, pray remember us most affectionately to him, with respectful regards to his sister.
151. Illness and Death of a Servant at Rydal Mount.
Our anxieties are over, and our sorrow is not without heartfelt, I may say heavenly, consolation. Dear, and good, and faithful, and dutiful Jane breathed her last about twelve o’clock last night. The doctor had seen her at noon; he found her much weaker. She said to him, ‘I cannot stand now,’ but he gave us no reason to believe her end was so very near. You shall hear all particulars when we are permitted to meet, which God grant may be soon. Nothing could be more gentle than her departure.
Yesterday Mary read to her in my presence some chapters from the New Testament, and her faculties were as clear as any one’s in perfect health, and so they have ever been to the last.
152. Humility.
Writing to a friend, he says: ‘I feel myself in so many respects unworthy of your love, and too likely to become more so.’ (This was in 1844.) ‘Worldly-minded I am not; on the contrary, my wish to benefit those within my humble sphere strengthens seemingly in exact proportion to my inability to realise those wishes. What I lament most is, that the spirituality of my nature does not expand and rise the nearer I approach the grave, as yours does, and as it fares with my beloved partner. The pleasure which I derive from God’s works in His visible creation is not with me, I think, impaired, but reading does not interest me as it used to do, and I feel that I am becoming daily a less instructive companion to others. Excuse this egotism. I feel it necessary to your understanding what I am, and how little you would gain by habitual intercourse with me, however greatly I might benefit from intercourse with you.’
153. Hopefulness.
Writing to a friend at a time of public excitement, he thus speaks: ‘After all (as an excellent Bishop of the Scotch Church said to a friendly correspondent of mine), “Be of good heart; the affairs of the world will be conducted as heretofore, — by the foolishness of man and the wisdom of God.”‘
III. CONVERSATIONS AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF WORDSWORTH.
(a) FROM ‘SATYRANE’S LETTERS:’ KLOPSTOCK.
(b) PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE HON. MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.
(c) RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN ITALY, BY H.C. ROBINSON.
(d) REMINISCENCES OF LADY RICHARDSON AND MRS. DAVY.
(e) CONVERSATIONS AND REMINISCENCES RECORDED BY THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN.
(f) REMINISCENCES OF REV. R.P. GRAVES, M.A., DUBLIN.
(g) ON DEATH OF COLERIDGE.
(h) FURTHER REMINISCENCES AND MEMORABILIA, BY REV. R.P. GRAVES, M.A., DUBLIN, NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.
(i) AN AMERICAN’S REMINISCENCES.
(j) RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE, ESQ., NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.
(k) FROM ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON,’ BY E.J. TRELAWNY, ESQ.
(l) FROM LETTERS OF PROFESSOR TAYLER (1872).
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(m) ANECDOTE OF CRABBE, FROM DIARY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.
(n) WORDSWORTH’S LATER OPINION OF LORD BROUGHAM.
NOTE.
On these ‘Personal Reminiscences’ see the Preface in Vol. I. G.
(a) KLOPSTOCK: NOTES OF HIS CONVERSATION.
From ‘Satyrane’s Letters’ (Biographia Literaria, vol. ii. pp. 228-254,
ed. 1847).
Ratzeburg.
No little fish thrown back again into the water, no fly unimprisoned from a child’s hand, could more buoyantly enjoy its element, than I this clean and peaceful house, with this lovely view of the town, groves, and lake of Ratzeburg, from the window at which I am writing. My spirits certainly, and my health I fancied, were beginning to sink under the noise, dirt, and unwholesome air of our Hamburg hotel. I left it on Sunday, Sept. 23rd. with a letter of introduction from the poet Klopstock, to the Amtmann of Ratzeburg. The Amtmann received me with kindness, and introduced me to the worthy pastor, who agreed to board and lodge me for any length of time not less than a month. The vehicle, in which I took my place, was considerably larger than an English stage-coach, to which it bore much the same proportion and rude resemblance, that an elephant’s ear does to the human. Its top was composed of naked boards of different colours, and seeming to have been parts of different wainscots. Instead of windows there were leathern curtains with a little eye of glass in each: they perfectly answered the purpose of keeping out the prospect and letting in the cold. I could observe little, therefore, but the inns and farm-houses at which we stopped. They were all alike, except in size: one great room, like a barn, with a hay-loft over it, the straw and hay dangling in tufts through the boards which formed the ceiling of the room, and the floor of the loft. From this room, which is paved like a street, sometimes one, sometimes two smaller ones, are enclosed at one end. These are commonly floored. In the large room the cattle, pigs, poultry, men, women, and children, live in amicable community: yet there was an appearance of cleanliness and rustic comfort. One of these houses I measured. It was an hundred feet in length. The apartments were taken off from one corner. Between these and the stalls there was a small interspace, and here the breadth was forty-eight feet, but thirty-two where the stalls were; of course, the stalls were on each side eight feet in depth. The faces of the cows &c. were turned towards the room; indeed they were in it, so that they had at least the comfort of seeing each other’s faces. Stall-feeding is universal in this part of Germany, a practice concerning which the agriculturist and the poet are likely to entertain opposite opinions — or at least, to have very different feelings. The wood-work of these buildings on the outside is left unplastered, as in old houses among us, and, being painted red and green, it cuts and tesselates the buildings very gaily. From within three miles of Hamburg almost to Molln, which is thirty miles from it, the country, as far as I could see it was a dead flat, only varied by woods. At Molln it became more beautiful. I observed a small lake nearly surrounded with groves, and a palace in view belonging to the King of Great Britain, and inhabited by the Inspector of the Forests. We were nearly the same time in travelling the thirty-five miles from Hamburg to Ratzeburg, as we had been in going from London to Yarmouth, one hundred and twenty-six miles.
The lake of Ratzeburg runs from south to north, about nine miles in length, and varying in breadth from three miles to half a mile. About a mile from the southernmost point it is divided into two, of course very unequal, parts by an island, which, being connected by a bridge and a narrow slip of land with the one shore, and by another bridge of immense length with the other shore, forms a complete isthmus. On this island the town of Ratzeburg is built. The pastor’s house or vicarage, together with the Amtmann’s, Amtsschreiber’s, and the church, stands near the summit of a hill, which slopes down to the slip of land and the little bridge, from which, through a superb military gate, you step into the island-town of Ratzeburg. This again is itself a little hill, by ascending and descending which, you arrive at the long bridge, and so to the other shore. The water to the south of the town is called the Little Lake, which however almost engrosses the beauties of the whole: the shores being just often enough green and bare to give the proper effect to the magnificent groves which occupy the greater part of their circumference. From the turnings, windings, and indentations of the shore, the views vary almost every ten steps, and the whole has a sort of majestic beauty, a feminine grandeur. At the north of the Great Lake, and peeping over it, I see the seven church towers of Lubec, at the distance of twelve or thirteen miles, yet as distinctly as if they were not three. The only defect in the view is, that Ratzeburg is built entirely of red bricks, and all the houses roofed with red tiles. To the eye, therefore, it presents a clump of brick-dust red. Yet this evening, Oct. 10th. twenty minutes past five, I saw the town perfectly beautiful, and the whole softened down into complete keeping, if I may borrow a term from the painters. The sky over Ratzeburg and all the east was a pure evening blue, while over the west it was covered with light sandy clouds. Hence a deep red light spread over the whole prospect, in undisturbed harmony with the red town, the brown-red woods, and the yellow-red reeds on the skirts of the lake. Two or three boats, with single persons paddling them, floated up and down in the rich light, which not only was itself in harmony with all, but brought all into harmony.
I should have told you that I went back to Hamburg on Thursday (Sept. 27th.) to take leave of my friend, who travels southward, and returned hither on the Monday following. From Empfelde, a village half way from Ratzeburg, I walked to Hamburg through deep sandy roads and a dreary flat: the soil everywhere white, hungry, and excessively pulverised; but the approach to the city is pleasing. Light cool country houses, which you can look through and see the gardens behind them, with arbours and trellis work, and thick vegetable walls, and trees in cloisters and piazzas, each house with neat rails before it, and green seats within the rails. Every object, whether the growth of Nature or the work of man, was neat and artificial. It pleased me far better, than if the houses and gardens, and pleasure fields, had been in a nobler taste: for this nobler taste would have been mere apery. The busy, anxious, money-loving merchant of Hamburg could only have adopted, he could not have enjoyed the simplicity of Nature. The mind begins to love Nature by imitating human conveniences in Nature; but this is a step in intellect, though a low one — and were it not so, yet all around me spoke of innocent enjoyment and sensitive comforts, and I entered with unscrupulous sympathy into the enjoyments and comforts even of the busy, anxious, money-loving merchants of Hamburg. In this charitable and catholic mood I reached the vast ramparts of the city. These are huge green cushions, one rising above the other, with trees growing in the interspaces, pledges and symbols of a long peace. Of my return I have nothing worth communicating, except that I took extra post, which answers to posting in England. These north German post chaises are uncovered wicker carts. An English dust-cart is a piece of finery, a chef d’oeuvre of mechanism, compared with them: and the horses! — a savage might use their ribs instead of his fingers for a numeration table. Wherever we stopped, the postilion fed his cattle with the brown rye bread of which he eat himself, all breakfasting together; only the horses had no gin to their water, and the postilion no water to his gin. Now and henceforward for subjects of more interest to you, and to the objects in search of which I loft you: namely, the literati and literature of Germany.
Believe me, I walked with an impression of awe on my spirits, as W — — and myself accompanied Mr. Klopstock to the house of his brother, the poet, which stands about a quarter of a mile from the city gate. It is one of a row of little common-place summer-houses, (for so they looked,) with four or five rows of young meagre elm trees before the windows, beyond which is a green, and then a dead flat intersected with several roads. Whatever beauty, (thought I,) may be before the poet’s eyes at present, it must certainly be purely of his own creation. We waited a few minutes in a neat little parlour, ornamented with the figures of two of the Muse
s and with prints, the subjects of which were from Klopstock’s odes.
The poet entered. I was much disappointed in his countenance, and recognised in it no likeness to the bust. There was no comprehension in the forehead, no weight over the eye-brows, no expression of peculiarity, moral or intellectual, on the eyes, no massiveness in the general countenance. He is, if anything, rather below the middle size. He wore very large half-boots, which his legs filled, so fearfully were they swollen. However, though neither W — — nor myself could discover any indications of sublimity or enthusiasm in his physiognomy, we were both equally impressed with his liveliness, and his kind and ready courtesy. He talked in French with my friend, and with difficulty spoke a few sentences to me in English. His enunciation was not in the least affected by the entire want of his upper teeth. The conversation began on his part by the expression of his rapture at the surrender of the detachment of French troops under General Humbert. Their proceedings in Ireland with regard to the committee which they had appointed, with the rest of their organizing system, seemed to have given the poet great entertainment. He then declared his sanguine belief in Nelson’s victory, and anticipated its confirmation with a keen and triumphant pleasure. His words, tones, looks, implied the most vehement Anti-Gallicanism. The subject changed to literature, and I inquired in Latin concerning the history of German poetry and the elder German poets. To my great astonishment he confessed, that he knew very little on the subject. He had indeed occasionally read one or two of their elder writers, but not so as to enable him to speak of their merits. Professor Ebeling, he said, would probably give me every information of this kind: the subject had not particularly excited his curiosity. He then talked of Milton and Glover, and thought Glover’s blank verse superiour to Milton’s.
W — — and myself expressed our surprise: and my friend gave his definition and notion of harmonious verse, that it consisted, (the English iambic blank verse above all,) in the apt arrangement of pauses and cadences, and the sweep of whole paragraphs,
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