IN WORDSWORTH'S FOOTSTEPS.* THESE papers, rescued from some of the

less prominent periodicals, make a pleasant volume, though their connection with Wordsworth is sometimes a rather slender thread. It is a thread on which Mr. Malleson has contrived to hang some charming landscape-pictures ; but the devout Wordsworthian may not unnaturally resent the frequent relegation of his master to a somewhat dim and distant background, in which the figure of the poet is like the figure of Charles II. in David Con's signboard. You had to look carefully for Charles among the oak-leaves—which was quite as it ought to be—and you have often got to look very carefully indeed for Words- worth in Mr. Malleson's " Wordsworth Studies," which is not quite as it ought to be. Thus, in one chapter we find con- siderable space occupied by an eloquent eulogium upon the late Lord Frederick Cavendish. With everything that Mr. Malleson says about that honoured martyr we heartily agree ; but the relation of the deceased nobleman to Wordsworth may at first sight appear slightly obscure, not to say circuitous. It may, however, be briefly indicated thus : the Duke of Devonshire owns Bolton Hall ; Bolton Hall is situated on the banks of the Wharfe; and the neighbourhood of that river is the scene of " The White Doe of Rylstone," a poem in which Wordsworth handles rather clumsily the metrical vehicle previously popularised by Scott, and by Scott borrowed from its one perfect master, Coleridge. As to the charms of Wharfedale itself, we share to the full Mr. Malleson's enthu- siasm ; but their strictly Wordsworthian interest may easily be exaggerated. Poems like " The Force of Prayer " and the story of "The White Doe" are perhaps hardly in themselves sufficient cause for associating their author very closely with the locality described, a locality of which his own knowledge was at least comparatively casual. Had he been as intimate with the Wharfe as with the Stock or Pelter Beck, would he have written this stanza?—

" The Boy is in the arms of Wharfe,

And strangled by a merciless force ; For never more was young Homily seen Till he rose a lifeless corse."

It is asserted—with what truth we cannot from personal observation say, but we were assured of the fact by an old native of that particular part of the dale—that a body drowned at the Strid does not rise at all, but is carried into

one of the unexplored whirlpools in the mysterious depths of the rock-caverns which undermine both banks of the stream thereabouts, and is in all likelihood never seen again. Had Wordsworth heard of this, his attention could hardly have failed to be fascinated, and his imagination stimulated, by the impressively strange and weird horribleness of such a fate.

• Holiday Studies of Wordsworth. By the Bey. F. A. Malleson, M.A. London : Cassell and Co., Limited.

Mr. Malleson's archaeological notes of Wharfedale are picturesque, though he perhaps relies rather more implicitly on Whitaker's Craven than is always safe. To our mind,. quite the most charming portion of his book is the chapter about the Duddon, notwithstanding that the discursiveness which he permits himself is about as apparent here as any- where,—not the least interesting portions of the paper being those treating of just that lower reach of the Duddon with which Wordsworth's sonnets have nothing to do. Higher up stream, however, the air is full of Wordsworthian echoes, and at Seathwaite Mr. Malleson himself has in years past talked with those who could still remember the Rev. Robert Walker, " Wonderful Walker :"—

" A pastor such as Chaucer's verse portrays,

Such as the heaven-taught skill of Herbert drew, And tender Goldsmith crowned with deathless praise."

We take the liberty of slightly condensing Mr. Malleson's account of this worthy, from which, however, we are loth to- omit any characteristic detail : -

"When he accepted (in 1735) the living of Seathwaite, a•

year, a cottage, and an acre of glebe, with £40 by his excellent

wife, were all he had to live upon He brought up a. family of eleven children, educated them wholly himself, with his child-parishioners, in the humble little chapel, sitting within the- altar-rails, and using the communion-table as his desk. While he

taught he was spinning at his wheel He made no charge for teaching, and only received occasionally grateful and sub- stantial acknowledgments from his parishioners. He did all their legal work, such as making wills, drawing up leases, agreements, and so forth. He performed all kinds of husbandry, including-

sheep-shearing, cutting and drying peat receiving in. recompense, perhaps, a quarter of a sheep or a fleece in a year

—perhaps less The g High-enders' from Troutal or Cockley Beck always came to church whenever it was pos-

sible and for all those distant wayfarers he always

had basins of broth prepared, and took no pay Those were pre-teetotal days, and he lost neither dignity nor character by brewing a pure light ale, which he gave in strict moderation for a small payment to wayfarers passing up- or down that long and lonely valley, on a stone seat on the other side of the road before the parsonage, adding bread and cheese_

free of charge He always wore a long blue gown made of wool spun by his own hand, and confined round the waist with a leathern strap. Wooden clogs he wore, as a matter of course. All the large and accumulating store of family linen was of their- own spinning, the stray tufts of wool being constantly picked off the brambles and hedges, wherever they found them, to be carded and spun."

At his death, Walker was able to leave his children 22,000„ the savings of a long life of toil and thrift. "It is remark- able," says Mr. Malleson, " that he was never known as The Wonderful' in his lifetime, nor for long after, until Canon

Parkinson seems to have invented or discovered the epithet.' For our own part, we incline to think it would have been still more remarkable if Walker had been known by such an_ appellation during his lifetime, for nothing could be less characteristic of the true Cumberland dalesman, with his almost morbid dread of exaggeration and avoidance of superla- tives, than a disposition to bestow extravagantly admiring epithets upon even the most exalted virtue. Walker's really grand merits would be taken very much as matters of course by the sturdily uneffusive folk amongst whom he preached and taught and laboured, and he himself would never dream that there could be any occasion for " wonder " in his own simple devotion to duty and unweariable love of work.

Mr. Malleson somewhat curiously attributes Wordsworth's inaccuracy in speaking of the Plain of Dunnerdale, " where of plane country there is none whatever," to the poet's "customary bold defiance of the realistic school." We do not commonly associate the idea of such " defiance" with Wordsworth, but. this correction of the poet's topography may be taken as. authoritative, seeing that the region in question is part of Mr. Malleson's own parish. In this matter, he is no doubt as right as he is certainly wrong in saying that Words- worth's religious faith was never at any time " in danger of being loosed from its moorings." We know quite well that at one period of his early life his faith was distinctly in such danger, and that his sister's influence operated. powerfully in rescuing him from an unmistakable, though.

temporary, lapse into very well-defined scepticism. We do. not always find Mr. Malleson accurate in his citations from Wordsworth, and it is hard to forgive him for misquoting,

most ruinously, one of the poet's supremely famous lines.. One might suppose that it would be no easy matter, in quoting a solitary line of verse, to commit four several and distinct.

errors, without utterly masking the identity of the original text; yet Mr. Malleson achieves this feat in transforming- " The light that never was, on sea or land,"

into—

"The light that never shone o'er land or sea."

(We are counting as one error the infidelity to Wordsworth's punctuation.) Misquotation is a very widespread literary sin, as every minutely careful reader of poetry knows, to his frequent irritation ; but we think this is about the worst instance of it that has ever come under our notice,—utterly abolishing and destroying, as it does, the whole magic of the phrases which it so perversely misrepresents. Wordsworth's fondness for eliminating all suggestion of what is merely accidental or relative by means of a peculiarly abstract and unqualified use of the verb to be, as in- " Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired," Or in— "The sleep that is amongst the lonely hills,"

is well known; and we even find him altering- " The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea,"

to-

" The gentleness of heaven is on the sea."

Of this peculiarity (verging at times upon mannerism), "the light that never was" is the most memorable and splendid instance. But the glamour of the line is focussed in that mysterious never was, and it is a case in which the difference between one simple monosyllable and another, is emphatically the difference between the highest sublimity and the flattest commonplace.

Mr. Malleson is elsewhere not guiltless of slight verbal inaccuracies ; but these are minor matters, in no way impairing the real value of a book which, though it makes no very solid addition to expressly Wordsworthian lore, is attractive both for its wholesome enthusiasm, and for the spirit of kindly and broad humanity which is felt in every page.