Affectionately and sincerely yours,
W. WORDSWORTH.[57]

[56] Lockhart’s Life, iii. 45-6.

[57] Memoirs, i. 385-6.

33. The War in Spain:  Benefactors of Mankind, &c.

TO THE SAME.

Grasmere, Dec. 3. 1808.

MY DEAR WRANGHAM,

On the other side you have the prospectus of a weekly essay intended to be published by your friend Coleridge.

* * * * *

Your Sermon did not reach me till the night before last; we have all read it, and are much pleased with it.  Upon the whole, I like it better than the last:  it must have been heard with great interest.  I differ, however, from you in a few particulars. 1st.  The Spaniards ’devoting themselves for an imprisoned Bourbon, or the crumbling relics of the Inquisition.’  This is very fair for pointing a sentence, but it is not the truth.  They have told us over and over again, that they are fighting against a foreign tyrant, who has dealt with them most perfidiously and inhumanly, who must hate them for their worth, and on account of the injuries they have received from him, and whom they must hate accordingly; against a ruler over whom they could have no control, and for one whom they have told us they will establish as a sovereign of a free people, and therefore must he himself be a limited monarch.  You will permit me to make to you this representation for its truth’s sake, and because it gives me an opportunity of letting out a secret, viz. that I myself am very deep in this subject, and about to publish upon it, first, I believe, in a newspaper, for the sake of immediate and wide circulation; and next, the same matter in a separate pamphlet, under the title of ’The Convention of Cintra brought to the test of principles, and the people of Great Britain vindicated from the charge of having prejudged it.’  You will wonder to hear me talk of principles when I have told you that I also do not go along with you in your sentiments respecting the Roman Catholic question.  I confess I am not prepared to see the Roman Catholic religion as the Established Church of Ireland; and how that can be consistently refused to them, if other things are granted on the plea of their being the majority, I do not see.  Certainly this demand will follow, and how would it be answered?

There is yet another circumstance in which I differ from you.  If Dr. Bell’s plan of education be of that importance which it appears to be of, it cannot be a matter of indifference whether he or Lancaster have a rightful claim to the invention.  For Heaven’s sake let all benefactors of their species have the honour due to them.  Virgil gives a high place in Elysium to the improvers of life, and it is neither the least philosophical or least poetical passage of the Aeneid.[58] These points of difference being stated, I may say that in other things I greatly approve both of the matter and manner of your Sermon.