and Pratt have or may kidnap from their calling into the service of the trade. You must excuse my flippancy, for I am writing I know not what, to escape from myself. Hobhouse is gone to Ireland. Mr. Davies has been here on his way to Harrowgate. You did not know Matthews: he was a man of the most astonishing powers, as he sufficiently proved at Cambridge, by carrying off more prizes and fellowships, against the ablest candidates, than any other graduate on record; but a most decided atheist, indeed noxiously so, for he proclaimed his principles in all societies. I knew him well, and feel a loss not easily to be supplied to myself to Hobhouse never. Let me hear from you, Newstead Abbey, August 22, 1811. You may have heard of the sudden death of my mother, and poor Matthews, which, with that of Wingfield (of which I was not fully aware till just before I left town, and indeed hardly believed it,) has made a sad chasm in my connections. Indeed the blows followed each other so rapidly that I am yet stupid from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh, at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary. I shall now wave the subject,—the dead are at rest, and none but the dead can be so. You will feel for poor Hobhouse,-Matthews was the "god of his idolatry;" and if intellect could exalt a man above his fellows, no one could refuse him preeminence. I knew him most intimately, and valued him 1811.] IRKSOME SOLITUDE. 339 proportionably; but I am recurring-so let us talk of life and the living. If you should feel a disposition to come here, you will find "beef and a sea-coal fire,” and not ungenerous wine. Whether Otway's two other requisites for an Englishman or not, I cannot tell, but probably one of them. Let me know when I may expect you, that I may tell you when I go and when return. I have not yet been to Lancs. Davies has been here, and has invited me to Cambridge for a week in October, so that, peradventure, we may encounter glass to glass. His gaiety (death cannot mar it) has done me service; but, after all, ours was a hollow laughter. You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before. Your anxiety about the critique on **'s book is amusing; as it was anonymous, certes it was of little consequence: I wish it had produced a little more confusion, being a lover of literary malice. Are you doing nothing? writing nothing? printing nothing? why not your Satire on Methodism ? the subject (supposing the public to be blind to merit) would do wonders. Besides, it would be as well for a destined deacon to prove his orthodoxy.-It really would give me pleasure to see you properly appreciated. I say really, as, being an author, my humanity might be suspected. I. Believe me, dear H., yours always. "Give but an Englishman his whore and ease, Venice Preserved, act ii. sc. 3. 1.] WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. 341 APPENDIX I. REVIEW OF WORDSWORTH'S POEMS, (From Monthly Literary Recreations for July, 1807.) THE volumes before us are by the author of Lyric Ballads, a collection which has not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public applause. The characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth's muse are simple and flowing, though occasionally inharmonious verse; strong, and sometimes irresistible appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments. Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the poems possess a native elegance, natural and unaffected, totally devoid of the tinsel embellishments and abstract hyperboles of several contemporary sonneteers. The last sonnet in the first volume, p. 152, is perhaps the best, without any novelty in the sentiments, which we hope are common to every Briton at the present crisis; the force and expression is that of a genuine poet, feeling as he writes : "Another year ! another deadly blow! The song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, the Seven Sisters, the Affliction of Margaret of , pos sess all the beauties, and few of the defects, of the writer: the following lines from the last are in his first style :— "Ah! little doth the young one dream, But do not make her love the less." The pieces least worthy of the author are those entitled "Moods of my own Mind." We certainly wish these "Moods" had been less frequent, or not permitted to occupy a place near works which only make their deformity more obvious; when Mr. W. ceases to please, it is by 66 abandoning" " his mind to the most commonplace ideas, at the same time clothing them in language not simple, but puerile. What will any reader or auditor, out of the nursery, say to such namby-pamby as "Lines written at the Foot of "Brother's Bridge"? "The cock is crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest, Are at work with the strongest ; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising, There are forty feeding like one. Like an army defeated, The snow hath retreated, And now doth fare ill, On the top of the bare hill." "The ploughboy is whooping anon, anon," etc., etc., is in the same exquisite measure. This appears to us neither more nor less than an imitation of such minstrelsy as soothed our cries in the cradle, with the shrill ditty of "Hey de diddle, The cat and the fiddle: The cow jump'd over the moon, The little dog laugh'd to see such sport, |