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St James' Place - appreciation of Blakesley's commemoration sermon and his letter on the Ecclesiastical Commission, Wordsworth has started for Italy

Harnham, Monument Green, Weybridge. - Thanks Trevelyan [for help with construing a line of Italian, see 3/97]: D'Annunzio says the quotation is from Leonardo [da Vinci]. Has been trying to find 'headers' for his lectures, and asks if Trevelyan has any suggestions. Has been reading 'about Bellincion Berti's braces' in Dante ["La Divina Commedia"]. It would be very good of Trevelyan to ask S., who is currently in Guernsey, and not rich. Is staying in Weybridge for a couple of months, and parodies Wordsworth, "Strange Fits of Passion" [perhaps to express exasperation over work on "A Room With A View"].

Harnham, Monument Green, Weybridge; addressed to Trevelyan c/o Mrs Pepper, Seatoller, Borrowdale, Keswick. - A pastiche of Wordsworth's "A slumber did my spirit seal", referring to 'Miss Bartlett' [from "A Room With A View"].

Embossed notepaper: The Club House, St. Andrews.- Acknowledges contribution of a guinea towards bust of Wordsworth. Will be at Braemar for two months. Wishes to publish Houghton’s delightful speech and would be glad of any other contribution.

Is very glad that Trevelyan and Bessie rate the book ["Maurice"?] so highly. Wishes they could talk it over together, as he will not now see them for a long time. Asks him to return the manuscript to Florence Barger in Edinburgh. Presumes the Trevelyans have let their house; the Darlings have asked him to find them one.

C/o Mrs Read, Grasmere. - He and his mother are enjoying their holiday in the Lakes, despite the rain; likes Grasmere more than Windermere and the 'associations are just right'. 'Billy here' [William Wordsworth] is 'in proportion], unlike 'Billy of Normandy' [William the Conqueror] and 'he of Stratford' [Shakespeare]. Much enjoyed visiting Dove Cottage, although not the portraits of [Thomas and Matthew] Arnold next to Coleridge's. Are going for a drive round Thirlmere, then on to the Patterdale Hotel Ullswater tomorrow. Asks where Joanna's Rock [as referred to in Wordsworth's "To Joanna"] is.

8, Grosvenor Crescent, S.W. - Glad to hear that Bessie is 'driving about' and safe. Interested by what Robert tells him from Miss Forster's letters. The review in the "Times" on [Georg] Brandes was very good; praises Brandes's judgement of poetry; thinks it was he who observed that 'Wordsworth might have been a parson, or Shelley an agitator, but that Keats could not have been any thing but a poet'. He himself tends to take the favourable 'Continental view' of Byron. Liked the "Times" article on Robert very much. Countess [Elizabeth von] Arnim took tea with them yesterday: a 'plump, merry, rather common ladylike woman'; her husband is the son of the 'celebrated Count [Harry von] Arnheim whom Bismarck ruined'. She and Miss [Ethel] Sidgwick are his 'favourite contemporary novelists'.

Both dated Novr. 7th 1844, Trin. Lodge, Cambridge.

Embossed notepaper: Edgecliffe, St. Andrews, N.B.- Will send proof of Houghton’s address for Wordsworth Society Transactions; Houghton may correct shorthand report taken at his house on 8 July. Promised subscriptions to bust of Wordsworth and prize at Hawkshead Grammar School may be sent to himself or George Wilson. ‘Next year will be our last’.

"Another reading of the above important lines" - the poem beginning 'A birch of elegant & graceful form'.

Presumably JCH will soon be travelling to William Wordsworth's neighbourhood: 'I want especially to request you to lose no time in making the acquaintance of Frederic Myers my brother in law. He is married to Mrs Whewell's sister Susan and lives at Keswick, the minister of a church which the Marshalls have built there. He is a thoroughly excellent person, a worthy friend of Wordsworth and Arnold [Matthew Arnold]. He has written a book about the church, of which the spirit is admirable, and of which I think you would like the views, as they are very nearly those of Arnold'. WW was as delighted with the Life of Arnold as JCH was.

Edinburgh - Mr and Mrs Forbes have just returned from an enjoyable visit to Cumberland and Westmoreland. At Ambleside they were 'kindly entertained by Mr and Mrs Wordsworth'. Also in the neighbourhood, amongst others, was Miss Martineau, and Archbishop Whately who was visiting the Arnolds [Matthew Arnold].

48 letters to W. H. Thompson dated 1831-1866, and 1 letter addressed to [John] Allen dated 24 Aug. 1840. Names mentioned in the accompanying calendar of the letters include Henry Alford; John Allen; Robert Leslie Ellis; Edward FitzGerald; Arthur Hallam; Walter Savage Landor; Samuel Laurence; Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton; Stephen Spring Rice; Sir Henry Taylor; Robert John Tennant; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Charles Tennyson [later Turner]; and William Wordsworth. Spedding also refers to his work on Francis Bacon.
With a further 35 letters to William Aldis Wright and William George Clark, dated 1862-1881. Letters to William George Clark date from 1862 to 1864 and relate to collations of Shakespeare's plays. Letters from 1881 to William Aldis Wright relate to Frederick James Furnivall, with copies of Spedding's letters to Furnivall, and one letter from Furnivall to Spedding dated 26 Feb. 1881. Accompanied by a mechanical copy of the Northumberland Manuscript.

[Tom] Paynter has informed WW that HJR has 'a curiosity to know whether you have puzzled me about Pope & Poetry. You would have the less merit in doing so as I have completely puzzled myself. I have vacillated among systems of criticism till I am rather giddy - and seem to myself to be advancing fast to that glorious state of poetical scepticism in which no one principle of criticism is more certain than its opposite: and this by arguments wh., according to Hume's admirable definition of scepticism, admit of no answer and produce no conviction. At present however I have not time to reason or even to doubt upon such matters: instead of the "feast" & the "flow" of poetical analysis to which your letter tempted me, I must pick the dry bones and swill the watery soup wh. are the preparatory diet of the gymnasium here. - I hope you will allow this - viz the having you, myself, the college examination, and very possibly truth also for antagonists, - to be a satisfactory reason for not attempting sooner or for not attempting at all to defend the opinions that you attribute to me. However that you may not consider me as absolutely one of the ungodly and those that perish, or, what is much worse, live & do not admire good poetry - that you may not fancy me fallen away from a state of poetical grace beyond even the saving influence of Wordsworth - I must disclaim some of the opinions you give me - a sceptic may deny though he may not assert - though he is very likely to be troubled with doubts whether denial be not a species of assertion. I do not, then, make Pope my idol. I should not rejoice to see his style restored. I do not perceive in him or from him the love of nature. I do not even insist upon his being called a poet. It is sufficient for me, who would not break the king's peace for a definition, that I receive from his writing pleasure greater & of a different kind from that wh. I should receive from similar writings in prose. - You may certainly analyse the pleasure his pieces give into many elements wh. are not generally understood to be poetical elements; wit for instance, wh. all the world can understand & delight in at all times wh. is more than you can say for feeling of any kind. - He is moreover invariably alive to the ridicule wh. in polished society lies in wait for bursts of feeling wh. are not selon les regles - but everyman - except Adam before the creation of Eve - has had his feelings and the manifestation of them in some measure regulated by regard for the opinions & views of others and then come the sceptic's questions how far? - where to stop & why? - But as for defining poetry or analysing the feelings which it puts in action - explaining what it is or may be or ought to be what is its origin its laws and its end - cela me passe. I have been much delighted by several critical works but convinced by none - the negative part of most systems seems good. A little while back I was in great transports with Schlegel - if you have not read the book I think you will find it will repay you for the perusal. Hare [Julius Hare] considers it as the ideal of criticism. Even if you do not believe it, wh. I think you will in a great measure, you will allow it to be fine writing - a little German or so but still fine. - But as Cicero's interlocutor says of Plato, when I laid down the book I could not recall the conviction. In fact I think you will find when you examine, that most of the good criticism you see produces its effect rather as eloquence than as philosophy - rather excites poetical emotions than analyses them. I was much astonished to find that Coleridge takes his critical ground so low. - It is not so much the absolute extent of his disapprobation of Wordsworth wh. made me consider it as indicating a revolution in Lake criticism, as the principles on wh. he founds it - and those are obviously such that they will irresistibly extend themselves much further than he has carried them - his critique on the daffodils for instance might serve as a model for similar strictures on all Wordsworth's Wordsworthian poems. It pleases me to find that it is in consequence of his theory that Wordsworth is got wrong - what has a poet to do with a theory? - let him mind his business or it will be worse for him. As for Coleridge he has almost too metaphysical a head to be a good poet - a man who is always looking for symptoms in himself will not often be healthful - a man who studies all the motions of all his limbs will not probably be graceful - and a man who is everlastingly watching the operations of his own mind & imagination is not likely to think or to feel truly. - By this time you will begin to suspect that the tendency of all this profound reasoning is to prove my right to be inconsistent. I hope I have fully established that, and that [therefore], if you think it inconsistent to admire both Wordsworth and Pope, you will do me the favour to believe that it may nevertheless be my case: nay, more, that I may admire one or the other, or neither, according to the state of the barometer'. Deighton [Cambridge printer] expects them to pay for the carriage of the Lacroix [Silvestre F. Lacroix] paper to him. If HJR comes to Cambridge would he be interested in resuming the plan [presumably to translate Lacroix].

Embossed notepaper: Edgecliff, St Andrews, N.B. - As to Houghton presiding on 8 July in place of Lord Selborne: does Lord Redesdale agree to their using the Committee Room at the House of Lords as arranged; has not requested papers as there were too many at Lambeth last year; hopes Houghton might deliver some recollections of Wordsworth, as he did of Coleridge at Westminster Abbey; can Houghton prevail upon Lord Coleridge to contribute his long-promised piece.

What are HJR's movements? WW has 'just got through a new book of your friend Coleridge's, his Biographia Literaria which I suppose you have seen. It contains an account of himself wh. in many places is amusing enough; but it appears to me to be of considerable consequence from the critical parts of it which will I think completely change the state of the question about the "Lake school." For to my great astonishment I find it full of good sense and fair rational criticism; and containing a condemnation of all those parts of Wordsworth [William Wordsworth] both of his theory and of his practice to wh. I should object. Denying his whole theory about poetical diction; and the resemblance of poetry to real life and low life; and blaming almost all those poems wh. he has written upon his theory. Condemning his prosaic style, his peculiarities his mystical and inflated language and wonderments about the most everyday things, his matter-of-factness, his attachment to pedlars, his deification of children; and in short everything or almost everything that other people have made a pretence of laughing at the whole he takes out and laughs at by itself. - Now it may be very true that all this makes but a very small part of the whole but nevertheless it always appeared to me so woven and matted with the rest as to give a tinge to the entire mass - it was in consequence of that, that I never entirely got over the repulsion I felt to Wordsworth - for there were so many passages obviously favourites of the poet where I could not feel any sympathy with him that I could not but doubt whether I had really any sympathy with him where I appeared to have. Even yet I much doubt whether Wordsworth would allow that man to understand his poems who talks of them as Coleridge does. If it be so the whole imaginary fabric of a new school of poetry wh. seemed as if it were to be built up to the skies and to the borders of the universe, far out-topping the town of Babel, turns out to be nothing but a little furbishing and beautification (as the churchwardens call it) of the parish church. Just getting rid of stale epithets and stale personifications and one or two other errors that had crept in and all our poets of reputation will turn out to be good poets. I am glad of it because I had much rather have my objects of admiration increased than diminished'. However as with most systems, the negative part of Coleridge's system is 'true or verisimillimum - as for the positive part we are all abroad again - his poetics I think are false - and as for his metaphysics they are as before - muddy with their own turbulence - I can make nothing of them. But how the man who wrote the critique on Wordsworth could write Christabel I cannot conceive. If I were to judge from this book I should take Coleridge's talent to lie in wit more than in poetry - his similes and metaphors are delightfully lively - he puts me in mind of Pope more than any other writer. Upon the strength of Coleridge's knowledge of Wordsworth's meaning I have sent for Ws poems'.

Three poems signed W.R.H., "Farewell Verses to Mr Wordsworth on leaving Rydal Mount, in 1830", "To the Infant Wyndham, son of the Earl of Dunraven", and "A Prayer".

WW is sorry he is late executing JCH's request: 'Some days elapsed before I got Bonney's life [Henry Kaye Bonney, Life of Jeremy Taylor, 1815], and again before I could arrange with Scholefield [James Scholefield] to see the Register, so that I did not examine it till this morning'. Scholefield claimed Bonney had made all the researches which were likely to be of use. WW gives his findings concerning Taylor. Now is a good time for JCH to visit: 'Your Wordsworth [William Wordsworth] is here at present on a visit to his brother'. By all accounts 'he is very much like other people - which, in spite of your doctrine that such matters are always exactly as they ought to be, I maintain to be a most unaccountable phenomenon, and an absurd want of violation of common rules'.

Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Hopes Elizabeth is 'getting on with the Quest' [for a new governess]; wonders whether the two candidates Annie says she has suggested will be suitable. Hughie has been 'very ill'; Lady Bell is also ill with shingles, so they are 'a sick household'; does not know whether the elder children have gone to Cambo this week as planned. The lambs here are 'charming' and Julian would love them. Sir George is well, though '"up & down"', probably due to 'anxiety & excitement' [over the war]. Have just had an interesting letter from Lord Reay, who is good at keeping up correspondence with his friends here and in America. Is reading a 'long but interesting' life of Wordworth by [George Maclean] Harper; asks if Bob has seen it.

Union Society, Cambridge. - Is sending the books. They talk here of 'nothing but the School board now': McT[aggart] is 'Rileyite of course', but Sanger and Dickinson are opposed to him. Is going to the [Harrow] 'Old Boy's' on 1 December, and asks if Bob will also be there; also asks what there will be to see in London around the 12th, and whether Bob will be at Wallington at all this vacation. Is appreciating Wordsworth for the first time, in Matthew Arnold's selection, the only way he has found so far of 'getting at him through the mass of rubbish with which he surrounded his throne'.

Reminds Julian to send a copy of the 'last "Ray" [school magazine?] to Auntie Mien [Röntgen]. Apologises for not writing about the Lake Hunt sooner, but has been very busy. The day before, uncle Charles drove him and Molly to visit Wordsworth's Dove Cottage at Grasmere; Charles had a bad knee, and 'could hardly walk, much less hunt'. He himself was a hare on the first day, and was 'not caught till 4.30'; the next day he chased the 'youngest and fastest hare, down a dreadful scree', then when searching for him in some rocks 'heard Molly shouting a long way off' and saw another hare in the valley being chased by uncle George, whom he cut off and enabled George to catch. Was 'so tired and stiff' next day that he accepted an offer to be driven to Leeds to catch an express train home. Saw the Sangers, who were visiting but have now left; Dorothy Archibald 'who used to be Mrs Reece' is staying. Matthews has taken away the wireless as it was not working, but says he can re-install it any time next week. Elizabeth and 'cousin Littie' are going to visit Julian and stay with the [Sturge] Moores; if he himself comes it will just be for the day. The cuckoos are still singing, but are 'usually out of tune'; the azaleas are at their best. C[lifford] A[llen]'s architect brother [Godfrey] has been to visit; thinks Julian would like him, so perhaps they will get him to visit again when Julian is here. He 'looks after St Paul's [Cathedral, London] and says they are probably going to do the wrong thing about it'.

The Master of Trinity has died and Christopher Wordsworth is favourite to replace him: 'If this turn out so, he shall invite his brother here [William Wordsworth] and you shall come and meet him and we will be the most practical and psychological college in the universe - though certainly some of us are bad materials for such an edifice'. WW is glad to see JCH in print [JCH's translation of 'Sintram', 1820] but hopes he doesn't get stuck as simply a translator of 'German novels for the conversion of the heathen - your preface I perceive abuses unfortunate people who are puzzled with the connexion between the mind and the soul as I used to be and who try by anatomizing to discover the way in which the flesh and muscles of the moral man act upon the 'wordy skeleton' of reason'.

Printed notepaper: University, St Andrews, N.B.]. - Thanks Houghton for copy of Wordsworth's 'The Eagle and the Dove'; would like to borrow the book [A. F. Rio's *La Petite Chouannerie...']

Temple. - Surprised and delighted by Houghton's dedication of the Monographs to him. Charles Lamb told Wordsworth 'he preferred the dedication of one of his poems to any other part of the book'; Venables will relish the whole.