140. ’From Home:’  The Queen:  Review of Poems, &c.

LETTER TO PROFESSOR REED.

Nov. 18. 1844.

MY DEAR MR. REED,

Mrs. Wordsworth and I have been absent from home for a month past, and we deferred acknowledging your acceptable letter till our return.  Among the places to which we went on visits to our friends was Cambridge, where I was happy to learn that great improvement was going on among the young men.  They were become much more regular in their conduct, and attentive to their duties.  Our host was the master of Trinity College, Dr. Whewell, successor to my brother, Dr. Wordsworth, who filled the office for more than twenty years highly to his honour, and resigned before he was disqualified by age, lest, as his years advanced, his judgment might be impaired, and his powers become unfit for the responsibility without his being aware of it.  This, you will agree with me, was a noble example:  may it be followed by others!

On our return home we were detained two hours at Northampton by the vast crowd assembled to greet the Queen on her way to Burleigh House.  Shouts and ringing of bells there were in abundance; but these are things of course.  It did please us, however, greatly to see every village we passed through for the space of twenty-two miles decorated with triumphal arches, and every cottage, however humble, with its little display of laurel boughs and flowers hung from the windows and over the doors.  The people, young and old, were all making it holiday, and the Queen could not but be affected with these universal manifestations of affectionate loyalty.  As I have said, we were detained two hours, and I much regret that it did not strike me at the moment to throw off my feelings in verse, for I had ample time to have done so, and might, perhaps, have contrived to present through some of the authorities the tribute to my Royal Mistress.  How must these words shock your republican ears!  But you are too well acquainted with mankind and their history not to be aware that love of country can clothe itself in many shapes.

I need not say what pleasure it would give us to see you and Mrs. Reed in our beautiful place of abode.

I have no wish to see the review of my poems to which you allude, nor should I read it if it fell in my way.  It is too late in life for me to profit by censure, and I am indifferent to praise merely as such.  Mrs. Wordsworth will be happy to write her opinion of the portrait as you request.

Believe me, my dear Mr. Reed,
Faithfully yours,
WM. WORDSWORTH.[207]

[207] Memoirs, ii. 412-13.

141. The Laureateship:  Contemporaries, &c.:  Tennyson.

LETTER TO PROFESSOR REED.

Rydal Mount, Ambleside, July 1. 1845.

MY DEAR MR. REED,