I was lately a few days with Mr. Rogers, at Broadstairs, and also with the Archbishop of Canterbury, at Addington Park; they were both well, and I was happy to see the Archbishop much stronger than his slender and almost feeble appearance would lead one to expect.  We walked up and down in the park for three hours one day, and nearly four the next, without his seeming to be the least fatigued.  I mention this as we must all feel the value of his life in this state of public affairs.

The cholera prevented us getting as far as Naples, which was the only disappointment we met with.  As a man of letters I have to regret that this most interesting tour was not made by me earlier in life, as I might have turned the notices it has supplied me with to more account than I now expect to do.  With respectful remembrances to Lady Lonsdale, and to your Lordship, in which Mrs. W. unites,

I remain, my dear Lord, faithfully,
Your much obliged servant,
WM. WORDSWORTH,[158]

[157] Memoirs, ii. 347-8.

[158] Ibid. ii. 349.

103. Of Bentley and Akenside.

LETTER TO THE REV.  ALEXANDER DYCE.

Dec. 23. 1837.

MY DEAR SIR,

I have just received your valuable present of Bentley’s works, for which accept my cordial thanks, as also for the leaf to be added to Akenside.

Is it recorded in your Memoir of Akenside,—­for I have not leisure nor eyesight at present to look,—­that he was fond of sitting in St. James’s Park with his eyes upon Westminster Abbey?  This, I am sure, I have either read or heard of him; and I imagine that it was from Mr. Rogers.  I am not unfrequently a visitor on Hampstead Heath, and seldom pass by the entrance of Mr. Dyson’s villa on Goulder’s Hill, close by, without thinking of the pleasure which Akenside often had there.

I cannot call to mind a reason why you should not think some passages in ‘The Power of Sound’ equal to anything I have produced.  When first printed in the ‘Yarrow Revisited,’ I placed it at the end of the volume, and, in the last edition of my Poems, at the close of the Poems of Imagination, indicating thereby my own opinion of it.

How much do I regret that I have neither learning nor eyesight thoroughly to enjoy Bentley’s masterly ’Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris’!  Many years ago I read the work with infinite pleasure.  As far as I know, or rather am able to judge, it is without a rival in that department of literature; a work of which the English nation may be proud as long as acute intellect, and vigorous powers, and profound scholarship shall be esteemed in the world.

Let me again repeat my regret that in passing to and from Scotland you have never found it convenient to visit this part of the country.  I should be delighted to see you, and I am sure Mr. Southey would be the same:  and in his house you would find an inexhaustible collection of books, many curious no doubt; but his classical library is much the least valuable part of it.  The death of his excellent wife was a deliverance for herself and the whole family, so great had been her sufferings of mind and body.