The Prose Works of William Wordsworth. William Wordsworth

of WORDSWORTH'S Prose embraces this opportunity of settling the controversy beyond appeal, by giving a letter which Mr. BROWNING has done him the honour to write for publication. It is as follows:

       '19 Warwick-crescent,

       W. Feb. 24, '75.

      DEAR MR. GROSART,

      I have been asked the question you now address me with, and as duly answered it, I can't remember how many times: there is no sort of objection to one more assurance, or rather confession, on my part, that I did in my hasty youth presume to use the great and venerated personality of WORDSWORTH as a sort of painter's model; one from which this or the other particular feature may be selected and turned to account: had I intended more, above all, such a boldness as portraying the entire man, I should not have talked about "handfuls of silver and bits of ribbon". These never influenced the change of politics in the great poet; whose defection, nevertheless, accompanied as it was by a regular face about of his special party, was to my juvenile apprehension, and even mature consideration, an event to deplore. But just as in the tapestry on my wall I can recognise figures which have struck out a fancy, on occasion, that though truly enough thus derived, yet would be preposterous as a copy, so, though I dare not deny the original of my little poem, I altogether refuse to have it considered as the "very effigies" of such a moral and intellectual superiority.

      Faithfully yours,

       ROBERT BROWNING.'

      The Editor cannot close this Preface without expressing his sense of the greatness of the trust confided to him, and the personal benefit it has been to himself to have been brought so near to WILLIAM WORDSWORTH as he has been in working on this collection of his Prose. He felt almost awed as he handled the great and good man's MSS., and found himself behind the screen (as it were), seeing what he had seen, touching what he had touched, knowing what he had known, feeling what he had felt. Reverence, even veneration is an empty word to utter the emotion excited in such communion; these certainly, but something tenderer and more human were in head and heart. It was a grand, high-thoughted, pure-lived, unique course that was run in those sequestered vales. The closer one gets to the man, the greater he proves, the truer, the simpler; and it is a benediction to the race, amid so many fragmentary and jagged and imperfect lives, to have one so rounded and completed, so august and so genuine:

      'Summon Detraction to object the worst

       That may be told, and utter all it can;

       It cannot find a blemish to be enforced

       Against him, other than he was a man,

       And built of flesh and blood, and did live here,

       Within the region of infirmity;

       Where all perfections never did appear

       To meet in any one so really,

       But that his frailty ever did bewray

       Unto the world that he was set in clay.'

      (Funeral Panegyric on the Earl of Devonshire, by Samuel Daniel.)

      ALEXANDER B. GROSART.

      Park View, Blackburn, Lancashire.

      NOTE.—It is perhaps right to mention, for Editor and present Printers' sake, that WORDSWORTH'S own capitals, italics, punctuation, and other somewhat antique characteristics, have been faithfully reproduced. At the dates, capitals, italics, and punctuation were more abundant than at present. G.

I. POLITICAL.

       Table of Contents

I. APOLOGY FOR THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 1793.

       Table of Contents

      NOTE.For an account of the manuscript of this 'Apology,' and details on other points, see Preface in the present volume. G.

      

      MY LORD,

      Reputation may not improperly be termed the moral life of man. Alluding to our natural existence, Addison, in a sublime allegory well known to your Lordship, has represented us as crossing an immense bridge, from whose surface from a variety of causes we disappear one after another, and are seen no more. Every one who enters upon public life has such a bridge to pass. Some slip through at the very commencement of their career from thoughtlessness, others pursue their course a little longer, till, misled by the phantoms of avarice and ambition, they fall victims to their delusion. Your Lordship was either seen, or supposed to be seen, continuing your way for a long time unseduced and undismayed; but those who now look for you will look in vain, and it is feared you have at last fallen, through one of the numerous trap-doors, into the tide of contempt, to be swept down to the ocean of oblivion.

      It is not my intention to be illiberal; these latter expressions have been forced from me by indignation. Your Lordship has given a proof that even religious controversy may be conducted without asperity; I hope I shall profit by your example. At the same time, with a spirit which you may not approve—for it is a republican spirit—I shall not preclude myself from any truths, however severe, which I may think beneficial to the cause which I have undertaken to defend. You will not, then, be surprised when I inform you that it is only the name of its author which has induced me to notice an Appendix to a Sermon which you have lately given to the world, with a hope that it may have some effect in calming a perturbation which, you say, has been excited in the minds of the lower orders of the community. While, with a servility which has prejudiced many people against religion itself, the ministers of the Church of England have appeared as writers upon public measures only to be the advocates of slavery civil and religious, your Lordship stood almost alone as the defender of truth and political charity. The names of levelling prelate, bishop of the Dissenters, which were intended as a dishonour to your character, were looked upon by your friends—perhaps by yourself—as an acknowledgment of your possessing an enlarged and philosophical mind; and like the generals in a neighbouring country, if it had been equally becoming your profession, you might have adopted, as an honourable title, a denomination intended as a stigma.

      On opening your Appendix, your admirers will naturally expect to find an impartial statement of the grievances which harass this Nation, and a sagacious inquiry into the proper modes of redress. They will be disappointed. Sensible how large a portion of mankind receive opinions upon authority, I am apprehensive lest the doctrines which they will there find should derive a weight from your name to which they are by no means intrinsically entitled. I will therefore examine what you have advanced, from a hope of being able to do away any impression left on the minds of such as may be liable to confound with argument a strong prepossession for your Lordship's talents, experience, and virtues.

      Before I take notice of what you appear to have laid down as principles, it may not be improper to advert to some incidental opinions found at the commencement of your political confession of faith.

      At a period big with the fate of the human race I am sorry that you attach so much importance to the personal sufferings of the late royal martyr, and that an anxiety for the issue of the present convulsions should not have prevented you from joining in the idle cry of modish lamentation which has resounded from the Court to the cottage. You wish it to be supposed you are one of those who are unpersuaded of the guilt of Louis XVI. If you had attended to the history of the French Revolution as minutely as its importance demands, so far from stopping to bewail his death, you would rather have regretted that the blind fondness of his people had placed a human being in that monstrous situation which rendered him unaccountable before a human tribunal. A bishop, a man of philosophy and humanity[15] as distinguished as your Lordship, declared at the opening of the National Convention—and twenty-five millions of men were convinced of the truth of the assertion—that