P.S.  I hope your health continues good.  I assure you there was no want of interest in your conversation on that or any other account.[140]

[139] Where I then was. A.D.

[140] Memoirs, ii. 281-3.

90. ’Popularity’ of Poetry.

LETTER TO E. MOXON, ESQ.

Lowther Castle, Westmoreland, Aug. 1833. 
MY DEAR MR. MOXON,

* * * * *

There does not appear to be much genuine relish for poetical publications in Cumberland, if I may judge from the fact of not a copy of my poems having been sold there by one of the leading booksellers, though Cumberland is my native county.  Byron and Scott are, I am persuaded, the only popular writers in that line,—­perhaps the word ought rather to be that they are fashionable writers.

My poor sister is something better in health.  Pray remember me very affectionately to Charles Lamb, and to his dear sister, if she be in a state to receive such communications from her friends.  I hope Mr. Rogers is well; give my kindest regards to him also.

Ever, my dear Mr. Moxon,
Faithfully yours,
W. WORDSWORTH.[141]

91. Sonnets, and less-known female Poets:  Hartley Coleridge, &c.

LETTER TO THE REV.  ALEXANDER DYCE. /$ Rydal Mount, Dec. 4. 1833.

MY DEAR SIR, $/

Your elegant volume of Sonnets,[142] which you did me the honour to dedicate to me, was received a few months after the date of the accompanying letter; and the copy for Mr. Southey was forwarded immediately, as you may have learned long ago, by a letter from himself.  Supposing you might not be returned from Scotland, I have deferred offering my thanks for this mark of your attention:  and about the time when I should otherwise probably have written, I was seized with an inflammation in my eyes, from the effects of which I am not yet so far recovered as to make it prudent for me to use them in writing or reading.[143]

[141] Memoirs, ii. 283.

[142] Specimens of English Sonnets.  A.D.

[143] This letter is in the handwriting of Miss D. Wordsworth, but signed by Mr. W. A.D.

The selection of sonnets appears to me to be very judicious.  If I were inclined to make an exception, it would be in the single case of the sonnet of Coleridge upon ‘Schiller,’ which is too much of a rant for my taste.  The one by him upon ‘Linley’s Music’ is much superior in execution; indeed, as a strain of feeling, and for unity of effect, it is very happily done.  I was glad to see Mr. Southey’s ’Sonnet to Winter.’  A lyrical poem of my own, upon the disasters of the French army in Russia, has so striking a resemblance to it, in contemplating winter under two aspects, that, in justice to Mr. Southey, who preceded me, I ought to have acknowledged it in a note; and I shall do so upon some future occasion.