30 MAY 1914, Page 14

TWO QUOTATIONS. [To THE EDITOR 07 THE "SPECTATOR."] ,.SIR, —Mrs. Russell

Barrington, in her recently published Life of Walter Bagehot, prints (twice over, pp. 25 and 103) an extract from a letter written by Bagehot in early life, in which he quotes "some beautiful lines of Wordsworth "Yet why repine we, created as we are for joy and rest, To find them only in the bosom of eternal things?"

Can you or any of your readers say in what poem of Wordsworth this passage occurs, and in what metre it is supposed to be written ? It looks like blank verse, somewhat dislocated. I should also be grateful for information as to the source of the following (p. 207 of the same book) " 0 what a wilderness were this sad world, If man were always man and never child!"