Wordsworth's Lucy
WilEx people cease to decide political controversy by in- fallible artillery, they need be under no apprehension that subjects of dispute will be wanting. The pen will still be active over such questions as the identity of Mr. W. H., the Casket Letters, or the character of Henry VIII. • One of these questions, which may very possibly di4urb the equanimity of Campbell's Last Man, is that concerning Wordsworth's mysterious Lucy, on which there has been
nearly as much controversy as, according to Chaucer, there has been on predestination, on which was " great disp- utisoun
of an hundred thousand men." There are those who think she was Dorothy, and there are others who, as Byron main- tained of Junius, will have it that she " was really, truly, nobody at all." As for " the banks of Dove," there is an equally wide range of choice ; for there are in England almost as many Doves as there are Dees or Ouses.
What complicates the question is the fact that Wordsworth was one of the most secretive of men. Professor.Garrod has
shown that Matthew Arnold, in publishing his .poems on " Marguerite," deliberately confused their arrangement, lest his readers should suspect too much : and Arnold was open- ness itself compared with Wordsworth.. The man who wrote a poem to his wife which was based on another poem to a Highland girl, whom by the way he had never seen except in a book—such a man was capable de tout when he wished at once to reveal and to conceal a love-episode of hispast life. The personages, the places, the dates would all be changed out of recognition ; and, like the Almighty in Milton, he would " laugh at the quaint opinions wide " uttered by the would-be solvers of his riddle.
.. If anybody can penetrate the darkness, it will be one like Dr. Rendel Harris, whom we have been accustomed to admin• as among the most ingenious of scholars, and to whom we owe some of the most valuable discoveries .of the last fifty years. -To mention but two things out of scores : his edition of the ('odes Bezae and his revelation of the Odes of Solomon are 'enough to earn the gratitude of all Biblical students.
He seeks the scene of Wordsworth's adventure in Wales. and finds the Dove in the-River Dyfi or Dovcy. He thinks he
has hit on • the ruins of the very farmhouse in the Vale of
Clwyd where Lucy dwelt beside the untrodden -ways-. There -are certainly sonic remarkable• coincidences.; and I. think -tliat on the whole,-of-the multitude. of conjectures, this is the most plausible. There are; however, some difficulties. We have, for instance, to reduce the " three years'?, to two. years
and three months ; nor has Dr. Harris, with all his searchings in parish registers, found a death recorded which will satisfy the conditions. None the less, it seems to me that, if Lucy is ever to be found, it will be by following, with Dr. Harris, the wanderings of Wordsworth with Robert Jones in the Vale of
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