With scantiest knowledge, master of all truth These barren rocks, your stern inheritance; TO B. R. HAYDON RYDAL MOUNT, 7th April, 1817. The miscreant,1 Hazlitt, continues, I have heard, his abuse of Southey, Coleridge and myself in the Examiner, I hope that you do not associate with the fellow; he is not 1 From some of Wordsworth's anecdotes, recorded in Haydon's Journal, it appears that Hazlitt had scandalized the neighborhood at Ambleside by his nocturnal rambles and their consequences, to Wordsworth's great disgust. Hazlitt had praised "The Excursion" and resented the fact that Wordsworth took no notice of it. a proper person to be admitted into respectable society, being the most perverse and malevolent creature that ill-luck has ever thrown in my way. Avoid him, he is a and this I understand is the general opinion where he is known in London. Perhaps some of Southey's friends may think that his tranquillity is disturbed by the late and present attacks upon him not a jot. Bating inward sorrow for the loss of his only son, he is cheerful as a lark and happy as the day. Prosperous in his literary undertakings, admired by his friends, in good health, and honoured by a large portion of the public, busily employed from morning to night, and capable, from his talents, of punishing those who act unjustly towards him, what cause has he to be disturbed? I left him the other day preparing a rod for Mr Wm. Smith. Pray let me hear from you, and believe me, my dear Sir, with great regard and high respect, Most truly yours, WM. WORDSWORTH. TO B. R. HAYDON RYDAL MOUNT, 16th January, 1820. Now that you have recovered your eyes, paint, and leave writing to the dunces and malignants with which London swarms. You have taken too much trouble about them. How is Keats? he is a youth of promise, too great for the sorry company he keeps. Do you skate? We have charming diversion in that way about our lakes. I wish you were here to partake of it. The splendour of the snow-clad mountains, by moonlight in particular, is most charming, and the softness of the shadows surpasses anything you can imagine; this when the moon is at a particular point of elevation. I never saw anything so exquisite, though I believe Titian has, and so, therefore, perhaps may you. TO JAMES LOSH RYDAL MOUNT, Dec. 4, 1821. .. I should think that I had lived to little purpose if my notions on the subject of government had undergone no modification. My youth must, in that case, have been without enthusiasm, and my manhood endued with small capability of profiting by reflection. If I were addressing those who have dealt so liberally with the words renegade, apostate, etc., I should retort the charge upon them, and say, you have been deluded by places and persons, while I have stuck to principles. I abandoned France, and her rulers, when they abandoned the struggle for liberty, gave themselves up to tyranny, and endeavoured to enslave the world. I disapproved of the war against France at its commencement, thinking—which was perhaps an error — that it might have been avoided; but after Buonaparte had violated the independence of Switzerland, my heart turned against him, and against the nation that could submit to be the instrument of such an outrage. Here it was that I parted, in feeling, from the Whigs, and to a certain degree united with their adversaries, who were free from the delusion (such as I must ever regard it) of Mr Fox and his party that a safe and honourable peace was practicable with the French nation, and that an ambitious conqueror like Buonaparte could be softened down into a commercial rival. TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR RYDAL MOUNT, near AMBLESIDE, September 3d, 1821. I feel myself much honoured by the present of your book of Latin poems, and it arrived at a time when I had the use of my eyes for reading, and with great pleasure did I employ them in the perusal of the dissertation annexed to your poems, which I read several times; but the poems themselves I have not been able to look into, for I was seized with a fit of composition at that time, and deferred the pleasure to which your poems invited me till I could give them an undivided attention. . . . We live here somewhat singularly circumstanced-in solitude during nearly nine months of the year, and for the rest in a round of engagements. I have nobody near me who reads Latin, so that I can only speak of your essay from recollection. You will not perhaps be surprised when I state that I differ from you in opinion as to the propriety of the Latin language being employed by moderns for works of taste and imagination. Miserable would have been the lot of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch if they had preferred the Latin to their mother tongue (there is, bythe-by, a Latin translation of Dante which you do not seem to know), and what could Milton, who was surely no mean master of the Latin tongue, have made of his Paradise Lost, had that vehicle been employed instead of the language of the Thames and Severn! Should we even admit that all modern dialects are comparatively changeable, and therefore limited in their efficacy, may not the sentiment which Milton so pleasingly expresses, when he says he is content to be read in his native isle only, be extended to durability; and is it not more desirable to be read with affection and pride, and familiarly for five hundred years, by all orders of minds, and all ranks of people, in your native tongue, than only by a few scattered scholars for the space of three thousand? Had your idylliums been in English, I should long ere this have been as well acquainted with them as with your Gebir, and with your other poems. I met with a hundred things in your " Dissertation " that fell in with my own judgments, but there are many opinions which I should like to talk over with you. Several of the separate remarks, upon Virgil in particular, though perfectly just, would perhaps have been better placed in notes or an appendix; they are details that obstruct the view of the whole. Are you not also penuri ous in your praise of Gray? The fragment at the commencement of his fourth book, in which he laments the death of West, in cadence and sentiment, touches me in a manner for whieh I am grateful. The first book also of the same poems appears to me as well executed as anything of that kind is likely to be. Is there not a speech of Solon to which the concluding couplet of Gray's sonnet bears a more pointed resemblance than to any of the |