WORDSWORTH'S PROSE WORKS.* Tux publication of these three volumes reminds

us how much remains to be done for the greatest poet of this century. Words-

* The Prow Works of William Wordsworth. For the First Time Collected. with Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. Edited, with Preface, Notes, and Illus- trations, by the Bey. Alexander B. Groeart. 8 yob. London: Moxon and Co.

worth's fame is happily too well established to be affected by the incapacity of biographers or the blunders of editors, but the readers of Wordsworth may not unreasonably complain that during the thirty years and more which have elapsed since his death so little has been done for his memory. And the little that we have is, for the most part, unsatisfactory. The memoirs by the present Bishop of Lincoln have but a slight literary value, and can only partially assist the future biographer. We have no scholarly and library edition of the poems illustrated, as it might be se largely, by the notes left behind him by the poet ; many poems known to be in existence remain still in manuscript, there has been no complete collection of his correspondence, and thus it happens that Wordsworth, whose poetry can never wisely be dissevered from his life, and whose life, to use Milton's words, was itself a great poem, is not even now, although his fame is rapidly on the increase, known and loved as he deserves to be.

Mr. Grosart's pertinent attempt to supply what is lacking deserves the thanks of the reader, but no student of Words- worth will regard it as wholly satisfactory. The arrangement is objectionable ; there are faults of commission for which the editor is responsible, and faults of omission, which may be due in part to the nearest representatives of the poet. It would seem, if we may judge from the preface, that some impediment had prevented, or long delayed, the publication of certain Wordsworthian manu- scripts. The Poetical Works are, as we know, far from complete.

The letters in the Memoirs are, as Mr. Grosart observes, abridged and mutilated, and the places not always marked ; the MSS. by Miss Fenwick, hitherto given with " almost provoking frag- mentariness in the Memoirs," are only now printed for the first time in their integrity ; the delightful Scottish journal of Miss Wordsworth has but lately, after long years of delay, been given to the public ; and with regard to the foreign journals of Mrs. Wordsworth and Miss Wordsworth, the editor, having pointed out Wordsworth's express wish that they should be published, adds significantly, " Surely his words ought to be imperative."

Mr. Grosart observes in his preface that it seems somewhat remarkable that a collection of Wordsworth's prose works should now be made for the first time, "especially in the knowledge of the permanent value which the illustrious author attached to his prose, and that he repeatedly expressed his wish and expectation that it would be thus brought together and published,"—which sounds like another hint from the editor that some indifference or culpable negligence had delayed the work hitherto. Let us see how it has been done at last.

The volumes open with a dedication to the Queen, and a simple poem, never before published, which, in Mr. Grosart's opinion, " must for all time take its place beside the living Laureate's im- perishable verse-tribute " to Her Majesty. The beauty, the tenderness, and the pathos which the editor finds in this poem are not very discernible. The lines are good in sentiment, respectable in versification, but of no high value poetically; we quote the three opening stanzas :—

" Deign, Sovereign Mistress ! to accept a lay, No Laureate offering of elaborate art, But salutation taking its glad way

From deep recesses of a loyal heart.

Queen, Wife, and Mother ! may All-judging Heaven

Shower with a bounteous hand on thee and thine

Felicity that only can be given On earth to goodness blest by grace divine.

Lady! devoutly honoured and beloved Through every realm confided to thy sway,

Mayst thou pursue thy course by God approved, And He will tear.), thy people to obey.'

The first volume commences with a " Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, on the extraordinary avowal of his political principles con- tained in the Appendix to his late Sermon. By a Republican." The Bishop was Watson ; the sermon to which allusion is made appeared in 1793, and Wordsworth's reply was, no doubt, written on its publication, when the poet was in his twenty-third year. It is fervid in eloquence, and not lacking in argument, and is especially interesting as a proof of the young enthusiast's fever- heat, at that time of intense political excitement. Mr. Grosart should have left the title untouched. Why call the treatise, which Wordsworth did not, an " Apology for the French Revolution ? " Far more important and more powerful is Wordsworth's famous essay, "The Convention of Cintra," which may be read with advantage even now, when the "Convention" lies among the dead leaves of history. The poet's indig- nant protest at what he regarded as the desertion of a noble people and a noble cause abounds with high-sounding eloquence, with vehement invective, with impassioned feeling. It is the !Tit of a man who felt what he was writing, and who undertook

the labour, as he himself avows, as a serious duty, that was forced upon him by a perception of justice ; " in a word," he adds, " by that power of conscience, calm or impassioned, to which through- out I have done reverence as the animating spirit of the cause." He has himself referred, in the Fenwick MSS., to his depth of feeling at that period. "Many times," he says, "have I gone from Allan Bank, in Grasmere Vale, where we were then residing, to the top of the Raise-Gap, as it is called, as late as two o'clock in the morning, to meet the carrier bringing the newspaper from Keswick." The style of the treatise shows that Wordsworth must have been a student of Milton's prose, but he avoids the Latinised construction which gives even to Milton's finest passages a formal and stilted appearance. The reader will smile at the Bishop of Lincoln's absurd panegyric, when he observes that this essay alone, if Wordsworth had never written a single verse, " would be sufficient to place him in the highest rank of English poets," and he will be surprised to see that this opinion is endorsed by Mr. Grosart, who ought to know that no prose, however elo- quent, can entitle a man to take high rank amongst poets. Strange to say, Wordsworth never preserved a copy of his treatise, and so little was it valued by the public, that " many copies were dis- posed of by the publishers as waste-paper, and went to the trunk- makers ; and now there is scarcely any volume published in this country which is so difficult to be met with as the tract on the Convention of Cintra." The passage we have quoted is from the Memoirs, and yet despite the Bishop's disproportionate praise of this really noble tractate, it has been virtually hidden from the public until now. "Two Addresses to the Freeholders of West- moreland," 1818, and reprinted by Mr. Grosart, are said to be even rarer and higher-priced than the " Convention of Cintra." These -addresses are followed by a paper with the title, " Of the Catholic Relief Bill, 1829," which appeared in the form of a letter addressed to the Bishop of London. This letter is quoted largely in the Memoirs, but is now given completely from the manuscript itself. It is directed against Roman Catholic Emancipation, and against State pay to the Church of Rome in Ireland. Much of Wordsworth's most significant prose has been always attached to his poetry, and the essays thus published are repro- duced by Mr. Grosart under separate headings. Among the so- called " Ethical " papers, he gives, in his first volume, Words- worth's essays which appear as an Appendix to Poems en- titled " Of legislation for the Poor, the Working-Classes, and the Clergy," about which—as they are, or ought to be, well known—we need say nothing. Then follows a letter to the editor of the Friend, by Professor Wilson, who writes under the nom de plume of " Mathetis," and Wordsworth's reply to it ; and here we may mention Mr. Grosart's opinion that Wordsworth would have written a great deal for Coleridge, had he been en- couraged to do so. Characteristically enough, however, Coleridge wished, in the first place, to " arrange his principles,"—and this arrangement, it is needless to say, was never effected. Some papers on education, extracted from the Memoirs, and a speech on the same subject, for the first time fully reprinted, close the first volume.

The second volume—a precious one for the student of Words- worth—is devoted mainly to literary topics, and contains little that has not appeared in some form or other elsewhere. There are, however, two papers upon epitaphs, in addition to the essay originally published in Coleridge's Friend. They are marked by a profound sympathy with human nature, by great tenderness of feeling, and often by subtlety of thought. Wordsworth points out, by the way, what some readers may have failed to notice, that Pope, whose " sparkling manner had bewitched the men of letters, his contemporaries, and corrupted the judgment of the nation through all ranks of society," has written more epitaphs than any other writer of eminence. He argues that this kind of writing forbids all modes of fiction, except those which the very strength of passion has created, and in Pope's epitaphs he fails to discover this virtue, and devotes two pages to pulling to pieces in sound Wordsworthian style the celebrated lines on Mrs. Corbet. We do not quite agree in his judgment. A few simple words, the expression of deep feeling, form the most suitable epitaph ; but if literary art be permissible in such productions, Pope's art is de- serving of praise. Some of the epitaphs quoted by Wordsworth are appropriate, but we have read many which appear to us more beautiful in thought and more condensed in expression. The following, for example, copied from the walls of one of our cathe- drals, conveys in few words much genuine feeling, and might have been worthily added to those given by Wordsworth :— Pars &name ! macrons alters disco sequi," Longman,. -

• which may be roughly translated as follows :—

" Too much beloved, best half of life farewell!

Go, for God ealls; the other half in pain Shall learn to follow, till Heaven join the twain."

The third volume contains all the notes and illustrations of the poems. They occupy more than two hundred pages, and consist mainly of the MSS. illustrative of the poems, written down to the dictation of Wordsworth by Miss Fenwick. These Notes will be found invaluable, and we hope the day is not far distant when some competent editor will incorporate them in a new edition of the poems. Miss Fenwick was a woman of a generous nature and fine intellect. " Her mind," said Sara Coleridge, " is a noble compound of heart and intelligence, of spiritual feeling and moral strength, and the most perfect feminineness ;" and Mr. Grosart expresses the hope, which will be shared in by his readers, that her Diaries and Correspondence may be published, observing that few or none got so near to Wordsworth or entered so magnetically into his teaching.

It is not the editor's fault that he has been compelled in-many instances to give extracts from letters, which create a sense of incompleteness and dissatisfaction ; but he has erred, we think, in not placing all the private letters together. Some readers will be surprised to learn, considering Wordsworth's dislike to letter- writing, that nearly two hundred pages of Volume III. are devoted to his correspondence. The "Personal Reminiscences" of the poet are somewhat out of place where they stand in this edition of his Prose Works, but their interest is no doubt very great, and we may mention, as of special value, the " Recollections " of Mr. Aubrey de Vere, now first published. From these we learn how little Wordsworth cared for mere fame, how much more anxious he was to benefit his fellow-men than to gain for himself a great reputation. Such a poet must have known well that he had secured a place with the immortals, but a strong sense of duty, not a desire for applause, was the guiding motive of his life. " Once he said to me," writes Mr. De Vere, " It is, indeed, a deep satisfaction to hope and believe that my poetry will be, while it lasts, a help to the cause of virtue and truth, especially among the young. As for myself, it seems now of little moment how long I may be remembered. When a man pushes off in his little boat into the great seas of infinity and eternity, it surely signifies little how long he is kept in sight by watchers from the shore.'"

Mr. De Vere also records the fact that Wordsworth was not sanguine as to the future of English poetry. " He thought there was much to be supplied in other departments of our literature, and especially he desired a really great History of • England ; but he was disposed to regard the roll of English poetry as made up, and as leaving place for little more except what was likely to be eccentric or imitational." Exactly one hundred and seventy years ago, Welsh told the young poet Pope that there was but one way left of excelling in poetry, all the other avenues to fame having been filled up, and he advised him to aim chiefly at correctness. That Pope should believe the state- ment and follow the advice was but natural, but it is passing strange to find Wordsworth, who knew so well the infinity of nature, and therefore of the true aliment of the poet, believing in the decline and fall of English poetry. We close these interesting volumes with regret. They are not books. for casual reading, they are not likely to be read by indifferent readers, but to every one who loves Wordsworth they will prove an in- valuable boon.