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, 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 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 seated in a rocky cave By the sea-side, perusing, so it chanced, 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, I mused; upon these chiefly; and at length, THE VISION OF THE STONE AND THE SHELL. 157 Close at my side, an uncouth shape appeared He seemed an Arab, of the Bedouin tribes: A loud prophetic blast of harmony; By deluge, now at hand. No sooner ceased P The one to be a Stone, the other a Shell; Nor doubted once but that they both were Books, Of these was neither, and was both at once. His countenance, meanwhile, grew more disturbed; A bed of glittering light; I asked the cause: 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 DEATH OF CAPTAIN WORDSWORTH. 159 the most amiable of men) are in miserable affliction, which I do all in my power to alleviate; but heaven knows, I want consolation myself, I can say nothing higher of my ever dear brother, than that he was worthy of his sister who is now weeping beside me, and of the friendship of Coleridge; meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, and a Poet in every thing but words." Some of the passages from Wordsworth's letters at this time and in connection with this event greatly interest us, they show how capable he was of acute sorrow and suffering; the following is very interesting. "As I have said, your last letter affected me much. A thousand times I have asked myself, why was he taken away? and I have answered the question as you have done. In fact, there is no other answer which can satisfy and lay the mind at rest. Why have we a choice and a will, and a notion of justice and injustice, enabling us to be moral agents? Why have we sympathies that make the best of us so afraid of inflicting pain and sorrow, which yet we see dealt about so lavishly by the supreme governor? Why should our notions of right towards each other and to all sentient beings within our influence differ so widely from what appears to be his notion and rule, if every thing were to end here? Would it not be blasphemy to say that upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great cause and ruler of things we have more of love in our nature than he has. The thought is monstrous, and yet how to get rid of it, except upon the |