their issue, they may at first appear to be; for, if the many be hasty to condemn, there is a re-action of generosity which stimulates them-when forcibly summoned-to redress the wrong; and, for the sensible part of mankind, they are neither dull to understand, nor slow to make allowance for, the aberrations of men, whose intellectual powers do honour to their species.

I am, dear Sir, respectfully yours,

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Rydal Mount, January, 1816.

LETTER TO SOUTHEY (1)

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,

(1816)

I am much of your mind in respect to my Ode. Had it been a hymn, uttering the sentiments of a multitude, a stanza would have been indispensable. But though I have called it a Thanksgiving Ode, strictly speaking, it is not so, but a poem, composed, or supposed to be composed, on the morning of the thanksgiving, uttering the sentiments of an individual upon that occasion. It is a dramatized ejaculation; and this, if any thing can, must excuse the irregular frame of the metre. In respect to a stanza for a grand subject designed to be treated comprehensively, there are great objections. If the stanza be short, it will scarcely allow of fervour and impetuosity, unless so short, as that the sense is run perpetually from one stanza to another, as in Horace's Alcaics; and if it be long, it will be as apt to generate diffuseness as to check it. Of this we have innumerable instances in Spenser and the Italian poets. The sense required

cannot be included in one given stanza, so that another whole stanza is added, not unfrequently, for the sake of matter which would naturally include few lines.

itself in a very

If Gray's plan be adopted, there is not time to become acquainted with the arrangement, and to recognize with pleasure the recurrence of the move

ment.

Be so good as to let me know where you found most difficulty in following me. The passage which I most suspect of being misunderstood is,

And thus is missed the sole true glory;

and the passage, where I doubt most about the reasonableness of expecting that the reader should follow me in the luxuriance of the imagery and the language, is the one that describes, under so many metaphors, the spreading of the news of the Waterloo victory over the globe. Tell me if this displeased you.

Do you know who reviewed The White Doe, in the Quarterly? After having asserted that Mr. W. uses his words without any regard to their sense, the writer says, that on no other principle can he explain that Emily is always called 'the consecrated Emily.' Now, the name Emily occurs just fifteen times in the poem; and out of these fifteen, the epithet is attached to it once, and that for the express purpose of recalling the scene in which she had been consecrated by her brother's solemn adjuration, that she would fulfil her destiny, and become a soul,

By force of sorrows high
Uplifted to the purest sky

Of undisturbed mortality.

The point upon which the whole moral interest of

the piece hinges, when that speech is closed, occurs in this line,

He kissed the consecrated maid;

and to bring back this to the reader, I repeated the epithet.

The service I have lately rendered to Burns' genius, will one day be performed to mine. The quotations, also, are printed with the most culpable neglect of correctness: there are lines turned into nonsense. Too much of this. Farewell!

Believe me affectionately yours,
W. WORDSWORTH.

LETTER TO SOUTHEY (2)
(UNDATED)

DEAR SOUTHEY,

My opinion in respect to epic poetry is much the same as the critic whom Lucien Buonaparte has quoted in his preface. Epic poetry, of the highest class, requires in the first place an action eminently influential, an action with a grand or sublime train of consequences; it next requires the intervention and guidance of beings superior to man, what the critics I believe call machinery; and, lastly, I think with Dennis, that no subject but a religious one can answer the demand of the soul in the highest class of this species of poetry. Now Tasso's is a religious subject, and in my opinion, a most happy one; but I am confidently of opinion that the movement of Tasso's poem rarely corresponds with the essential character of the subject; nor do I think it possible that written in stanzas it should. The celestial movement cannot, I think, be kept up, if the sense is to be

broken in that despotic manner at the close of every eight lines. Spenser's stanza is infinitely finer than the ottava rhima, but even Spenser's will not allow the epic movement as exhibited by Homer, Virgil, and Milton. How noble is the first paragraph of the Aeneid in point of sound, compared with the first stanza of the Jerusalem Delivered! The one winds with the majesty of the Conscript Fathers entering the Senate House in solemn procession; and the other has the pace of a set of recruits shuffling on the drill-ground, and receiving from the adjutant or drill-serjeant the command to halt at every ten or twenty steps. Farewell.

Affectionately yours,

W. WORDSWORTH.

LETTER TO FRIEND ON MONUMENTS TO LITERARY MEN

SIR,

(1819)

Rydal Mount, April 21, 1819.

The letter with which you have honoured me, bearing date the thirty-first of March, I did not receive until yesterday; and, therefore, could not earlier express my regret that, notwithstanding a cordial approbation of the feeling which has prompted the undertaking, and a genuine sympathy in admiration with the gentlemen who have subscribed towards a Monument for Burns, I cannot unite my humble efforts with theirs in promoting this object.

Sincerely can I affirm that my respect for the motives which have swayed these gentlemen has

W. PR.

urged me to trouble you with a brief statement of the reasons of my dissent.

In the first place: Eminent poets appear to me to be a class of men, who less than any others stand in need of such marks of distinction; and hence I infer, that this mode of acknowledging their merits is one for which they would not, in general, be themselves solicitous. Burns did, indeed, erect a monument to Ferguson; but I apprehend his gratitude took this course because he felt that Ferguson had been prematurely cut off, and that his fame bore no proportion to his deserts. In neither of these particulars can the fate of Burns justly be said to resemble that of his predecessor: his years were indeed few, but numerous enough to allow him to spread his name far and wide, and to take permanent root in the affections of his countrymen; in short, he has raised for himself a monument so conspicuous, and of such imperishable materials, as to render a local fabric of stone superfluous, and, therefore, comparatively insignificant.

But why, if this be granted, should not his fond admirers be permitted to indulge their feelings, and at the same time to embellish the metropolis of Scotland? If this may be justly objected to, and in my opinion it may, it is because the showy tributes to genius are apt to draw off attention from those efforts by which the interests of literature might be substantially promoted; and to exhaust public spirit in comparatively unprofitable exertions, when the wrongs of literary men are crying out for redress on all sides. It appears to me, that towards no class of his Majesty's subjects are the laws so unjust and oppressive. The attention of Parliament has lately been directed, by petition, to the exaction of copies of newly published works for certain libraries; but