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I trust in God that I shall not want fortitude; but my loss is great and irreparable.

[52] Due to Wordsworth’s father from James, Earl of Lonsdale, at whose death, in 1802, it was paid by his Lordship’s successor, and divided among the five children.

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Many thanks for the offer of your house; but I am not likely to be called to town.  Lady Beaumont gives us hope we may see you next summer:  this would, indeed, be great joy to us all.  My sister thanks Lady B. for her affectionate remembrance of her and her letter, and will write as soon as ever she feels herself able.  Her health, as was to be expected, has suffered much.

Your most affectionate friend,
W. WORDSWORTH.

Again: 

Grasmere, March 12. 1805.

As I have said, your last letter affected me much.  A thousand times have I asked myself, as your tender sympathy led me to do, ’why was he taken away?’ and I have answered the question as you have done.  In fact, there is no other answer which can satisfy and lay the mind at rest.  Why have we a choice, and a will, and a notion of justice and injustice, enabling us to be moral agents?  Why have we sympathies that make the best of us so afraid of inflicting pain and sorrow, which yet we see dealt about so lavishly by the Supreme Governor?  Why should our notions of right towards each other, and to all sentient beings within our influence, differ so widely from what appears to be His notion and rule, if every thing were to end here?  Would it not be blasphemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things, we have more of love in our nature than He has?  The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except upon the supposition of another and a better world, I do not see.  As to my departed brother, who leads our minds at present to these reflections, he walked all his life pure among many impure.  Except a little hastiness of temper, when any thing was done in a clumsy or bungling manner, or when improperly contradicted upon occasions of not much importance, he had not one vice of his profession.  I never heard an oath, or even an indelicate expression or allusion, from him in my life; his modesty was equal to that of the purest woman.  In prudence, in meekness, in self-denial, in fortitude, in just desires and elegant and refined enjoyments, with an entire simplicity of manners, life, and habit, he was all that could be wished for in man; strong in health, and of a noble person, with every hope about him that could render life dear, thinking of, and living only for, others,—­and we see what has been his end!  So good must be better; so high must be destined to be higher.

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