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 fellowfeeling for us. Many thanks to you for referring to the text in Scripture which I quoted to you so long ago.1 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 be continued to me and mine, and to all sufferers! Believe me, with Mrs. W.'s very kind remembrance, 66 'Faithfully yours, 'WM. WORDsworth. 'When you see Mr. Cottle, pray remember us most affectionately to him, with respectful regards to his sister.' 1 [Note by Mr. Peace.] At Rydal Mount in 1838. Ephesians, v. 20. My favourite Text,' said he. CHAPTER LXII. REMINISCENCES. BEFORE We enter on the closing scene of these Memoirs, let us pause a little, and revert to an earlier period in the narrative. I have been favoured with some Reminiscences of Mr. Wordsworth's intercourse with his neighbours at Rydal, and they appear to furnish material for an interesting chapter in his history, and to afford an agreeable illustration of his character in his daily habits, and to show that the spirit of his poetry was embodied in the life of the Poet. I will, therefore, make some selections from these records. 'Lancrigg, Easedale,2 Aug. 26, 1841. 'Wordsworth made some striking remarks on Goëthe in a walk on the terrace yesterday. He thinks that the German poet is greatly overrated, both in this country and his He said, "He does not seem to me to be a great poet in either of the classes of poets. At the head of the first class I would place Homer and Shakspeare, whose universal minds are able to reach every variety of thought and feeling without bringing their own individuality before own. By Lady Richardson; Mrs. Davy, of the Oaks, Ambleside ; Rev. R. P. Graves, of the Parsonage, Windermere. 2 Mrs. Fletcher's. the reader. They infuse, they breathe life into every object they approach, but you never find themselves. At the head of the second class, those whom you can trace individually in all they write, I would place Spenser and Milton. In all that Spenser writes you can trace the gentle affectionate spirit of the man; in all that Milton writes you find the exalted sustained being that he was. Now in what Goëthe writes, who aims to be of the first class, the universal, you find the man himself, the artificial man, where he should not be found; so that I consider him a very artificial writer, aiming to be universal, and yet constantly exposing his individuality, which his character was not of a kind to dignify. He had not sufficiently clear moral perceptions to make him anything but an artificial writer." 66 Tuesday, the 2d of May, Wordsworth and Miss F. came early to walk about and dine. He was in a very happy, kindly mood. We took a walk on the terrace, and he went as usual to his favourite points. On our return he was struck with the berries on the holly tree, and said, Why should not you and I go and pull some berries from the other side of the tree, which is not seen from the window? and then we can go and plant them in the rocky ground behind the house." We pulled the berries, and set forth with our tool. I made the holes, and the Poet put in the berries. He was as earnest and eager about it, as if it had been a matter of importance; and as he put the seeds in, he every now and then muttered, in his low solemn tone, that beautiful verse from Burns's Vision: "And wear thou this, she solemn said, Did rustling play; And like a passing thought she fled He clambered to the highest rocks in the "Tom Intach," and put in the berries in such situations as Nature sometimes does with such true and beautiful effect. He said, "I like to do this for posterity. Some people are selfish enough to say, What has posterity done for me? but the past does much for us." ‘November, 1843.— Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infinitely lower than the inventive; and he said to-day that if the quantity of time consumed in writing critiques on the works of others, were given to original composition, of whatever kind it might be, it would be much better employed; it would make a man find out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely less mischief. A false or malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of others; a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless. 'December 22d, 1843.-The shortest day is past, and it was a very pleasant one to us, for Wordsworth and Miss Fenwick offered to spend it with us. They came early, and, although it was misty and dingy, he proposed to walk up Easedale. We went by the terrace, and through the little gate on the fell, round by Brimmer Head, having diverged a little up from Easedale, nearly as far as the ruined cottage. He said, when he and his sister wandered there so much, that cottage was inhabited by a man of the name of Benson, a waller, its last inhabitant. He said on the terrace, "This is a striking anniversary to me; for this day forty-four years ago, my sister and I took up our abode at Grasmere, and three days after, we found out this walk, which long remained our favourite haunt." There is always something very touching in his way of speaking of his sister; the tones of his voice become more gentle and solemn, and he ceases to have that flow of expression which is so remarkable in him on all other subjects. It is as if the sadness connected with her pres ent condition, was too much for him to dwell upon in connection with the past, although habit and the "omnipotence of circumstance," have made its daily presence less oppressive to his spirits. He said that his sister spoke constantly of their early days, but more of the years they spent together in other parts of England, than those at Grasmere. As we proceeded on our walk, he happened to speak of the frequent unhappiness of married persons, and the low and wretched principles on which the greater number of marriages were formed. He said that unless there was a strong foundation of love and respect, the “unavoidable breaks and cataracts" of domestic life must soon end in mutual aversion, for that married life ought not to be in theory, and assuredly it never was in practice, a system of mere submission on either side, but it should be a system of mutual co-operation for the good of each. If the wife is always expected to conceal her difference of opinion from her husband, she ceases to be an equal, and the man loses the advantage which the marriage tie is intended to provide for him in a civilized and Christian country. He then went on to say, that, although he never saw an amiable single woman, without wishing that she were married, from his strong feeling of the happiness of a well assorted marriage, yet he was far from thinking that marriage always improved people. It certainly did not, unless it was a congenial marriage. During tea, he talked with great animation of the unfortunate separation of feeling between the rich and the poor in this country. The reason of this he thinks is our greater freedom; that the line of demar cation not being so clearly laid down in this country by the law as in others, people fancy they must make it for themselves. He considers Christian education the only cure for this state of things. He spoke of his own desire |