to give a dignity and clearness, a vigour and splendour, and, consequently, a lasting value, to his writings on measures of domestic and foreign policy, qualities that rarely belong to contemporaneous political effusions produced by those engaged in the heat and din of the battle.  This remark is specially applicable to his tract on the Convention of Cintra....  Whatever difference of opinion may prevail concerning the relevance of the great principles enunciated in it to the questions at issue, but one judgment can exist with respect to the importance of those principles, and the vigorous and fervid eloquence with which they are enforced.  If WORDSWORTH had never written a single verse, this Essay alone would be sufficient to place him in the highest rank of English poets....  Enough has been quoted to show that the Essay on the Convention of Cintra was not an ephemeral production, destined to vanish with the occasion which gave it birth.  If this were the case, the labour bestowed upon it was almost abortive.  The author composed the work in the discharge of what he regarded a sacred duty, and for the permanent benefit of society, rather than with a view to any immediate results.’[5] The Bishop adds further these details:  ’He foresaw and predicted that his words would be to the public ear what midnight storms are to men who sleep: 

[5] ‘Memoirs,’ as before, vol. i. pp. 383, 399.

    “I dropp’d my pen, and listen’d to the wind,
    That sang of trees uptorn and vessels tost—­
    A midnight harmony, and wholly lost
    To the general sense of men, by chains confined
    Of business, care, or pleasure, or resign’d
    To timely sleep.  Thought I, the impassion’d strain,
    Which without aid of numbers I sustain,
    Like acceptation from the world will find. 
    Yet some with apprehensive ear shall drink
    A dirge devoutly breath’d o’er sorrows past;
    And to the attendant promise will give heed—­
    The prophecy—­like that of this wild blast,
    Which, while it makes the heart with, sadness shrink,
    Tells also of bright calms that shall succeed."[6]

It is true that some few readers it had on its first appearance; and it is recorded by an ear-witness that Canning said of this pamphlet that he considered it the most eloquent production since the days of Burke;[7] but, by some untoward delays in printing, it was not published till the interest in the question under discussion had almost subsided.  Certain it is, that an edition, consisting only of five hundred copies, was not sold off; that many copies were disposed of by the publishers as waste paper, and went to the trunkmakers; 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; and if it were now reprinted, it would come before the public with almost the unimpaired freshness of a new work.’[8] In agreement with the closing statement, at the sale of the library of Sir James Macintosh a copy fetched (it has been reported) ten guineas.  Curiously enough not a single copy was preserved by the Author himself.  The companion sonnet to the above, ’composed while the author was engaged in writing a tract occasioned by the Convention of Cintra, 1808,’ must also find a place here: