’Milton’s Sonnets (transcribe all this for John, as said by me to him) I think manly and dignified compositions, distinguished by simplicity and unity of object and aim, and undisfigured by false or vicious ornaments.  They are in several places incorrect, and sometimes uncouth in language, and, perhaps, in some, inharmonious; yet, upon the whole, I think the music exceedingly well suited to its end, that is, it has an energetic and varied flow of sound crowding into narrow room more of the combined effect of rhyme and blank verse than can be done by any other kind of verse I know.  The Sonnets of Milton which I like best are that to Cyriack Skinner; on his Blindness; Captain or Colonel; Massacre of Piedmont; Cromwell, except two last lines; Fairfax, &c.’[51]

[51] Memoirs, i. 287.

29. Death of Captain John Wordsworth.

LETTER TO SIR GEORGE H. BEAUMONT, BART.

Grasmere, Feb. 11. 1805.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

The public papers will already have broken the shock which the sight of this letter will give you:  you will have learned by them the loss of the Earl of Abergavenny East-Indiaman, and, along with her, of a great proportion of the crew,—­that of her captain, our brother, and a most beloved brother he was.  This calamitous news we received at 2 o’clock to-day, and I write to you from a house of mourning.  My poor sister, and my wife who loved him almost as we did (for he was one of the most amiable of men), are in miserable affliction, which I do all in my power to alleviate; but Heaven knows I want consolation myself.  I can say nothing higher of my ever-dear brother, than that he was worthy of his sister, who is now weeping beside me, and of the friendship of Coleridge; meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, and a poet in every thing but words.

Alas! what is human life!  This present moment, I thought, this morning, would have been devoted to the pleasing employment of writing a letter to amuse you in your confinement.  I had singled out several little fragments (descriptions merely), which I purposed to have transcribed from my poems, thinking that the perusal of them might give you a few minutes’ gratification; and now I am called to this melancholy office.

I shall never forget your goodness in writing so long and interesting a letter to me under such circumstances.  This letter also arrived by the same post which brought the unhappy tidings of my brother’s death, so that they were both put into my hands at the same moment....

Your affectionate friend,
W. WORDSWORTH.

I shall do all in my power to sustain my sister under her sorrow, which is, and long will be, bitter and poignant.  We did not love him as a brother merely, but as a man of original mind, and an honour to all about him.  Oh! dear friend, forgive me for talking thus.  We have had no tidings of Coleridge.  I tremble for the moment when he is to hear of my brother’s death; it will distress him to the heart,—­and his poor body cannot bear sorrow.  He loved my brother, and he knows how we at Grasmere loved him.