'Pray impute to anything but a want of due sympathy with you in your affliction, my not having earlier given an answer to your letter. In truth, I was so much moved by it, that I had not, at first, sufficient resolution to bring my thoughts so very close to your trouble, as must have been done, had I taken up the pen immediately. I have been myself distressed in the same way, though my two children were taken from me at an earlier age, one in her fifth, the other in his seventh year, and within half a year of each other. I can, therefore, enter into your sorrows more feelingly than for others, is possible, who have not suffered like losses.

Your departed daughter struck me as having one of the most intelligent and impressive countenances I ever looked upon, and I spoke of her as such to Mrs. Wordsworth, Miss Fenwick, and to others. The indications which I saw in her, of a somewhat alarming state of health, I could not but mention to you, when you accompanied me a little way from your own door. You spoke something encouraging; but they continued to haunt me; so that your kind letter was something less of a shock than it would otherwise have been, though not less of a sorrow.

'How pathetic is your account of the piety with which the dear creature supported herself under those severe trials of mind and body with which it pleased God to prepare her for a happier world! The consolation which children and very young persons, who have been religiously brought up, draw from the Holy Scriptures, ought to be habitually on the minds of adults of all ages, for the benefit of their own souls, and requires to be treated in a loftier and more comprehensive train of thought and

feeling than by writers has been usually bestowed upon it. It does not, therefore, surprise me that you hinted at my own pen being employed upon the subject, as brought before the mind in your lamented daughter's own most touching case. I wish I were equal to anything so holy, but I feel that I am not. It is remarkable, however, that within the last few days the subject has been presented to my mind by two several persons, both unknown to me; which is something of a proof how widely its importance is felt, and also that there is a feeling that I am not wholly unworthy of treating it.

Your letter, my dear Sir, I value exceedingly, and shall take the liberty, as I have done more than once, with fit reverence, of reading it in quarters where it is likely to do good, or rather, where I know it must do good.

Wishing and praying that the Almighty may bestow upon yourself, the partner in your bereavement, and all the fellow-sufferers in your household, that consolation and support which can proceed only from His grace,

'I remain, my dear Dr. Parry,

'Most faithfully, your much obliged,

'W. WORDSWORTH.'

CHAPTER LVI.

PERSONAL HISTORY, 1840, 1841.

To the Rev. Henry Alford.

'My dear Sir,

(Postmark) 'Ambleside, Feb. 21, 1840.

'Pray excuse my having been some little time in your debt. I could plead many things in extenuation, the chief, that old one of the state of my eyes, which never leaves me at liberty either to read or write a tenth part as much as I could wish, and as otherwise I ought to do.

'It cannot but be highly gratifying to me to learn that my writings are prized so highly by a poet and critic of your powers. The essay upon them which you have so kindly sent me, seems well qualified to promote your views in writing it. I was particularly pleased with your distinction between religion in poetry, and versified religion. For my own part, I have been averse to frequent mention of the mysteries of Christian faith; not from a want of a due sense of their momentous nature, but the contrary. I felt it far too deeply to venture on handling the subject as familiarly as many scruple not to do. I am far from blaming them, but let them not blame me, nor turn from my companionship on that account. Besides general reasons for diffidence in treating subjects of holy writ, I have some especial ones. I might err in points of faith, and I should not deem my mistakes less to be

Even

eprecated because they were expressed in metre. ilton, in my humble judgment, has erred, and grievously; nd what poet could hope to atone for his apprehensions 1 n the way in which that mighty mind has done?

I am not at all desirous that any one should write an laborate critique on my poetry. There is no call for it. f they be from above, they will do their own work in course of time; if not, they will perish as they ought. But scarcely a week passes in which I do not receive grateful acknowledgments of the good they have done to the minds of the several writers. They speak of the relief they have received from them under affliction and in grief, and of the calmness and elevation of spirit which the poems either give or assist them in attaining. As these benefits are not without a traceable bearing upon the good of the immortal soul, the sooner, perhaps, they are pointed out and illustrated in a work like yours, the better.

Pray excuse my talking so much about myself: your letter and critique called me to the subject. But I assure you it would have been more grateful to me to acknowledge the debt we owe you in this house, where we have read your poems with no common pleasure. Your “Abbot of Muchelnage" also makes me curious to hear more of him.

This letter may be followed by a memorandum of a conversation with Mr. Wordsworth, communicated by the Rev. R. P. Graves.

'I must try to give you a summary of a long conversation I had with Wordsworth, on the subject of sacred poetry, and which I wish I were able to report in full. In the course of it he expressed to me the feelings of reverence which prevented him from venturing to lay his hand on what he always thought a subject too high for him; and he accompanied this with the earnest protest that his works, as well as those of any other poet, should not be considered as developing all the influences which his own heart recognised, but rather those which he considered himself able as an artist to display to advantage, and which he thought most applicable to the wants, and admitted by the usages, of the world at large. This was followed by a most interesting discussion upon Milton, Cowper, the general progress of religion as an element of poetry, and the gradual steps by which it must advance to a power comprehensive and universally admitted; steps which are defined in their order by the constitution of the human mind, and which must proceed with vastly more slowness in the case of the progress made by collective minds, than it does in an individual soul.'

To Lady Frederick Bentinck.

'July, 1840.

'I hope, dear Lady Frederick, that nothing will prevent my appearance at Lowther towards the end of next week. But I have for these last few years been visited always with a serious inflammation in my eyes about this season of the year, which causes me to have fears about the