I will take this opportunity of saying, that the newspaper accounts of the loss of the ship are throughout grossly inaccurate.  The chief facts I will state, in a few words, from the deposition at the India House of one of the surviving officers.  She struck at 5 P.M.  Guns were fired immediately, and were continued to be fired.  She was gotten off the rock at half-past seven, but had taken in so much water, in spite of constant pumping, as to be water-logged.  They had, however, hope that she might still be run upon Weymouth Sands, and with this view continued pumping and baling till eleven, when she went down.  The longboat could not be hoisted out, as, had that been done, there would have been no possibility of the ship being run aground.  I have mentioned these things, because the newspaper accounts were such as tended to throw discredit on my brother’s conduct and personal firmness, stating that the ship had struck an hour and a half before guns were fired, and that, in the agony of the moment, the boats had been forgotten to be hoisted out.  We knew well this could not be; but, for the sake of the relatives of the persons lost, it distressed us much that it should have been said.  A few minutes before the ship went down, my brother was seen talking with the first mate, with apparent cheerfulness; and he was standing on the hen-coop, which is the point from which he could overlook the whole ship, the moment she went down, dying, as he had lived, in the very place and point where his duty stationed him.  I must beg your pardon for detaining you so long on this melancholy subject; and yet it is not altogether melancholy, for what nobler spectacle can be contemplated than that of a virtuous man, with a serene countenance, in such an overwhelming situation?  I will here transcribe a passage which I met with the other day in a review; it is from Aristotle’s ’Synopsis of the Virtues and Vices.’[53] ‘It is,’ says he, ’the property of fortitude not to be easily terrified by the dread of things pertaining to death; to possess good confidence in things terrible, and presence of mind in dangers; rather to prefer to be put to death worthily, than to be preserved basely; and to be the cause of victory.  Moreover, it is the property of fortitude to labour and endure, and to make valorous exertion an object of choice.  Further, presence of mind, a well-disposed soul, confidence and boldness are the attendants on fortitude; and, besides these, industry and patience.’  Except in the circumstance of making valorous exertion an ‘object of choice’ (if the philosopher alludes to general habits of character), my brother might have sat for this picture; but he was of a meek and retired nature, loving all quiet things.

[53] Vol. ix. p. 395, ed.  Bekker.  Oxon. 1837.

I remain, dear Sir George,
Your most affectionate friend,
W. WORDSWORTH.

The following, to his friend Southey, was written the morrow after the arrival of the sad tidings: