A
    letter
    to the
    bishop of LANDAFF
    on the extraordinary avowal of his
    political principles,
    contained in the
    appendix to his late sermon: 
    By A
    republican.

It is nowhere dated, but inasmuch as Bishop Watson’s Sermon, with the Appendix, appeared early in 1793, to that year certainly belongs the composition of the ‘Letter.’  The title-page of the Sermon and Appendix may be here given;

A sermon preached before the stewards of the Westminster dispensary, at their anniversary meeting, Charlotte street chapel, April 1785.

With an appendix, by R. Watson, D.D.  Lord bishop of LANDAFF.

London:  Printed for T. Cadell in the strand; and T. Evans in paternoster row.

1793 [8vo].

In the same year a ‘second edition’ was published, and also separately the Appendix, thus: 

Strictures on the French revolution and the British constitution, as written in 1793 in an appendix to A sermon preached before the stewards of the Westminster dispensary, at their anniversary meeting, Charlotte street chapel, April 1785,

By R. Watson, D.D.  Lord bishop of LANDAFF.

Reprinted at Loughborough, (With his Lordship’s permission) by Adams, Jun. and Recommended by the Loughborough Association For the Support of the Constitution to The Serious Attention of the Public.

Price Twopence, being one third of the original price,

1793 [small 8vo],

The Sermon is a somewhat commonplace dissertation on ’The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor,’ from Proverbs xxii. 2:  ‘The rich and poor meet together, the Lord is the Maker of them all.’  It could not but be most irritating to one such as young Wordsworth—­then in his twenty-third year—­who passionately felt as well with as for the poor of his native country, and that from an intimacy of knowledge and intercourse and sympathy in striking contrast with the serene optimism of the preacher,—­all the more flagrant in that Bishop Watson himself sprang from the very humblest ranks.  But it is on the Appendix this Letter expends its force, and, except from Burke on the opposite side, nothing more forceful, or more