his scholarship was respectable, but not remarkable, he felt of course the fire darting words of Homer, the graceful flow of Virgil, the moral grandeur of Eschylus and Sophocles, and the philosophic grace and ease of Horace, but he had no acquaintance with the stream of the world's Literature; and modern books, excepting books of travel, it would seem he was all but entirely ignorant of. He seems to have stood affected by even the evanescence of books, as compared with what, by a bold figure of speech, may almost be called the eternity of Nature. He felt her power, untouched by change that he could observe, or that man could record. She sufficed for him, and in her presence he felt a higher repose and consolation.

Thus in illustration of our author's regardlessness of books, we have the following almost curious extracts: both from letters to Archdeacon Wrangham. "You astonish me with the account of your books; and I should have been still more astonished if you had told me you had read a third (shall I say a tenth part ?) of them. My reading powers were never very good, and now they are much diminished, especially by candle light; and as to buying books, I can affirm that in new books I have not spent five shillings for the last five years, i.e. in Reviews, Magazines, Pamphlets, &c. &c.; so that there would be an end of Mr. Longman, and Mr. Cadell, &c. &c., if nobody had more power, or inclination to buy than myself. And as to old books, my dealings in that way, for want of means, have been very trifling. Nevertheless, small and paltry as my

collection is, I have not read a fifth part of it. I should, however, like to see your army,

'Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,

When Agrican, with all his northern powers,
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell.'

Not that I accuse you of romancing; I verily believe that you have all the books you speak of. Dear Wrangham, are you and I ever like to meet in this world again? Yours is a corner of the earth; mine is not so. I never heard of any body going to Bridlington; but all the world comes to the lakes."

Again, we have in the same year, 1819, a similar confession. "I have so much to do with writing, in the way of labour and profession, that it is difficult to me to conceive how anybody can take up a pen but from constraint. My writing-desk is to me a place of punishment; and, as my penmanship sufficiently testifies, I always bend over it with some degree of impatience. As to my occupations, they look little at the present age; but I live in hope of leaving something behind me that by some minds may be valued.

"I see no new books except by the merest accident. Of course your Poem, which I should have been pleased to read, has not found its way to me. You inquire about old books: you might almost as well have asked for my teeth as for any of mine. The only modern books that I read are those of Travels, or such as relate to matters of fact; and the only modern books that I

care for; but as to old ones, I am like yourself-scarcely anything comes amiss to me. The little time I have to spare-the very little, I may say-all goes that way. If, however, in the line of your profession you want any bulky old Commentaries on the Scriptures (such as not twelve strong men of these degenerate days will venture -I do not say to read, but to lift,) I can, perhaps, as a special favour, accommodate you."

Yet he of course had faith in the power of Great Books, though he no doubt knew that nature was the greatest of all, furnishing from her stores the hard fact of Mathematics and the beautiful dream of Poetry.

We have not anywhere a more remarkable painting of Fact and Fancy in the book of life then in the following Romance of the Stone and the Shell.

"Once in the stillness of a summer's noon,

While I was scated in a rocky cave

By the sea-side, perusing, so it chanced,
The famous history of the errant Knight
Recorded by Cervantes, these same thoughts

Beset me, and to height unusual rose,

While listlessly I sate, and, having closed

The book, had turned my eyes toward the wide sea.

On Poetry and Geometric truth,

And their high privilege of lasting life,
From all internal injury exempt,

I mused; upon these chiefly; and at length,
My senses yielding to the sultry air,

Sleep seized me, and I passed into a dream.
I saw before me stretched a boundless plain
Of sandy wilderness, all black and void,
And as I looked around, distress and fear
Came creeping over me, when at my side,

THE VISION OF THE STONE AND THE SHELL. 157

Close at my side, an uncouth shape appeared
Upon a dromedary, mounted high.

He seemed an Arab, of the Bedouin tribes:
A lance he bore, and underneath one arm
A Stone, and in the opposite hand a Shell
Of a surpassing brightness. At the sight
Much I rejoiced, not doubting but a guide
Was present, one who with unerring skill
Would through the desert lead me; and while yet
I looked and looked, self-questioned what this freight
Which the new-comer carried through the waste
Could mean, the Arab told me that the stone
(To give it in the language of the dream)
Was Euclid's Elements;' and This,' said he,
'Is something of more worth;' and at the word
Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape,
In colour so resplendent, with command

That I should hold it to my ear.
I did so,
And heard that instant in an unknown tongue,
Which yet I understood, articulate sounds,
A loud prophetic blast of harmony;

An Ode, in passion uttered, which foretold
Destruction to the children of the earth

By deluge, now at hand. No sooner ceased
The song, than the Arab with calm look declared
That all would come to pass of which the voice
Had given forewarning, and that he himself
Was going then to bury those two books:
The one that held acquaintance with the stars,
And wedded soul to soul in purest bond
Of reason, undisturbed by space or time;
The other that was a god, yea many gods,
Had voices more than all the winds, with power,
To exhilarate the spirit, and to soothe,
Through every clime, the heart of human kind.
While this was uttering, strange as it may seem,
I wondered not, although I plainly saw

P

158

THE STONE AND THE SHELL.

The one to be a Stone, the other a Shell;

Nor doubted once but that they both were Books,
Having a perfect faith in all that passed.
Far stronger, now, grew the desire I felt
To cleave unto this man; but when I prayed
To share his enterprise, he hurried on
Reckless of me: I followed, not unseen,

For oftentimes he cast a backward look,
Grasping his twofold treasures.-Lance in rest,
He rode, I keeping pace with him; and now
He, to my fancy, had become the knight
Whose tale Cervantes tells; yet not the knight,
But was an Arab of the desert too;

Of these was neither, and was both at once.

His countenance, meanwhile, grew more disturbed;
And, looking backwards, when he looked, mine eyes
Saw, over half the wilderness diffused,

A bed of glittering light; I asked the cause:

'It is,' said he, the waters of the deep

Gathering upon us ;' quickening then the pace

Of the unwieldy creature he bestrode,

He left me: I called after him aloud;

He heeded not; but, with his twofold charge.
Still in his grasp, before me, full in view,
Went hurrying over the illimitable waste,
With the fleet waters of a drowning world
In chase of him; whereat I waked in terror,
And saw the sea before me, and the book,
In which I had been reading, at my side."

But we must hasten forward. Wordsworth was smitten by two great griefs in his life in 1805-he lost his brother, Captain John Wordsworth; he stood high in his brother's esteem and regard. He writes to Sir George Beaumont: "My poor sister, and my wife who loved him almost as much as we did (for he was one of