By accident, I learned lately that you had made a Book of Extracts, which I had long wished for opportunity and industry to execute myself.  I am happy it has fallen into so much better hands.  I allude to your Selections from the Poetry of English Ladies.  I had only a glance at your work; but I will take this opportunity of saying, that should a second edition be called for, I should be pleased with the honour of being consulted by you about it.  There is one poetess to whose writings I am especially partial, the Countess of Winchelsea.  I have perused her poems frequently, and should be happy to name such passages as I think most characteristic of her genius, and most fit to be selected.

I know not what to say about my intended edition of a portion of Thomson.  There appears to be some indelicacy in one poet treating another in that way.  The example is not good, though I think there are few to whom the process might be more advantageously applied than to Thomson.  Yet, so sensible am I of the objection, that I should not have entertained the thought, but for the expectation held out to me by an acquaintance, that valuable materials for a new Life of Thomson might be procured.  In this I was disappointed.

With much respect, I remain, dear Sir,
Sincerely yours,
WM. WORDSWORTH.[103]

[103] Memoirs, ii. 219-220.

65. Of Lady Winchelsea, Tickell, &c.:  Sonnets, &c.

LETTER TO REV.  ALEXANDER DYCE.

Rydal Mount, Kendal, May 10. 1830.

MY DEAR SIR,

My last was, for want of room, concluded so abruptly, that I avail myself of an opportunity of sending you a few additional words free of postage, upon the same subject.

I observed that Lady Winchelsea was unfortunate in her models—­Pindarics and Fables; nor does it appear from her Aristomenes that she would have been more successful than her contemporaries, if she had cultivated tragedy.  She had sensibility sufficient for the tender parts of dramatic writing, but in the stormy and tumultuous she would probably have failed altogether.  She seems to have made it a moral and religious duty to control her feelings lest they should mislead her.  Of love, as a passion, she is afraid, no doubt from a conscious inability to soften it down into friendship.  I have often applied two lines of her drama (p. 318) to her affections: 

                         ’Love’s soft bands,
    His gentle cords of hyacinths and roses,
    Wove in the dewy Spring when storms are silent.’

By the by, in the next page are two impassioned lines spoken to a person fainting: 

    ’Then let me hug and press thee into life,
    And lend thee motion from my beating heart.’