Chapter 140
s.p.a.ce can only be found for one slight specimen of her gift in 'Lines written in Miss Dora Wordsworth's Alb.u.m,' as follows:
'It is not now that I can speak, while still Thy lakes, thy hills, thyself are in my sight; I would be quiet--for the thoughts that fill My spirit's urn are a confused delight; They must have time to settle to the clear Untroubled calm of memory, ere they show, True as the water-depths around thee here, These images, that then will come and go, An everlasting joy. Far, far away As life, extends the shadow of to-day; And keenlier present from the past will come Thy sweet laugh's freshness pure, with all the poet's home.
'_Rydal Mount_. 1830.'
'The Boys' School' is the t.i.tle of Miss Hamilton's poem referred to by Wordsworth. It occurs in the volume, pp. 126-131. Her brother's was one commencing, 'It haunts me yet.' The 'Mr. Nimmo' of this letter was a civil engineer connected with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.
P. 299, l. 18; 300, l. 8, &c. 'Countess of Winchelsea.' Sad to say, a collection of this remarkable English gentlewoman's Poems remains still an unfurnished _desideratum_.
P. 306, l. 11. 'The d.u.c.h.ess of Newcastle.' Edward Jenkins, Esq. M.P., has recently collected some of the Poems of this lady and her lord in a pretty little volume, which he ent.i.tles, 'The Cavalier and the Lady.'
P. 312, l. 32. 'Eschylus and the eagle. 'The reference doubtless is to Aeschylus' 'Prometheus Vinctus,' l. 1042:
[Greek: Dids de toi ptenos kuon, daphoinos aietos.]
Compare
'Aischulos' bronze-throat _eagle-bark_ at blood Has somehow spoiled my taste for twitterings.'
Robert Browning, 'Aristophanes' Apology' (1875), p. 94.
P. 321, ll. 32-3. Verse-quotation, from 'Macbeth,' viz. i. 3.
P. 333, l. 2. 'Russell.' Before misspelled 'Russel' (p. 155).
P. 337, ll. 17-18. 'Auld Robin Grey' [= Gray], by Lady Ann Lindsay.
'Lament for the Defeat,' &c., viz. 'The Flowers of the Forest,' by (1) Mrs. c.o.c.kburn; 'I've seen the smiling,' &c. (2), Miss Jane Elliot. 'I've heard the lilting,' &c.
P. 342, l. 1. 'Shakspeare.' Quotation from Sonnet lxxiii.
P. 380, ll. 6-7. Horace, Ep. i. l, 8-9.
P. 382, ll. 27-9. Southey's Letters. Admirably done by his son Cuthbert in many volumes. The seeming over-quant.i.ty have been reduced (to the look) by the American reproduction in a single handsome volume.
P. 394. Heading of Letter 144. 'Of the' has by
P. 449, l. 34 onward. Mrs. Wordsworth. My excellent Correspondent the Rev. R.P. Graves, of Dublin, thus writes me of Mrs. Wordsworth: 'I forget whether it has been put on record, as it certainly deserves to be, that Wordsworth habitually referred to his wife for the help of her judgment on his poems. Mrs. Wordsworth did not indeed possess the creative and colouring power of imagination that belonged to his sister as well as to himself; but her simple truthfulness, her strong good sense (which no sophistry could impose upon), and her delicate feeling for propriety, rendered her judgment a test of utmost value with regard to any subjects of which it could take adequate cognisance. And these were confined within no narrow range--the workings of Nature as it lived and moved around her, social equities and charities, religious and moral truth, tried by the heart as well as by the head, and verbal expression, required by her to avoid the regions of the merely abstract and philosophical, and keep to the lower but more poetical ground of idiomatic strength and transparent logic.'
P. 457, l. 18. 'The (almost) contemporary notice of Milton.' A still more significant contemporary notice of Milton than the well-known one of the text occurs in 'The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's book ent.i.tuled The Ready and Easie Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, 1660, by James Harrington,' as comes out at p. 16 ('_my_ Oceana'). As it seems to have escaped the commentators, a short quotation must be given here: 'Though you have scribled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the company of Chandlers and Tobacco-Men, who are your Stationers, and the onely men that vend your Labors' (pp. 4-5). 'He [a member of the Rota] said that he himself reprieved the Whole _Defence of the People of England_ for a groat, that was sentenced to vile _Mundungus_, and had suffer'd inevitably (but for him), though it cost you much oyle and the Rump 300_l._ a year,' &c. (ibid.). This of the 'Defence'!!!
P. 459, l. 7 onward. Horace, Ode iv. 2, 1; ibid. 2, 27.
P. 462, l. 15. 'Walter Scott is not a careful composer,' &c. This recurs in Mr. Aubrey do Vere's 'Recollections' (p. 487 onward). I venture as a Scot to observe that for this one slight misquotation by Scott, on which so large a conclusion is built, the quotations by Wordsworth from others would furnish twenty-fold. He was singularly inexact in quotation, as even these Notes and Ill.u.s.trations will satisfy in the places--scarcely in a single instance being verbally accurate. 'Sweet' certainly was a perfectly fitting word for the sequestered lake of St. Mary in its serene summer beauty. Moreover, swans are not usually found singly, but in pairs; and a pair surely differenced not greatly the symbol of loneliness. The latter remark points to Wordsworth's further objection, as stated to Mr. de Vere (as _supra_).
P. 492, l. 26. 'In the case of a certain poet since dead,' &c. I may record what his own son has not felt free to do, that this was Sir Aubrey de Vere, whose 'Song of Faith, and other Poems,' has not yet gathered its ultimate renown. Wordsworth greatly admired the modest little volume. See one of his Sonnets on page 495. Nor with the Laureate's poem-play of 'Queen Mary' (Tudor) winning inevitable welcome ought it to be forgotten--as even prominent critics of it are sorrowfully forgetting--that Sir Aubrey de Vere, so long ago as 1847, published _his_ drama of 'Mary Tudor.' I venture to affirm that it takes its place--a lofty one--beside 'Philip van Artevelde,' and that it need fear no comparison with 'Queen Mary.' Early and comparatively modern supreme poetry somehow gets out of sight for long.
P. 497, 1. 15. Read 'no angel smiled.' I can only offer the plea of an old Worthy, who said, 'Errata are inevitable, for we are human; and to have none would imply eyes behind as well as before, or the wallet of our errors all in front.' G.