writings were founded on what was true and spiritual in human nature, I knew the time would come when they must be known, and I never therefore felt his opinion of the slightest value, except in preventing the young of that generation from receiving impressions which might have been of use to them through life.  I say this, I hope not in a boasting spirit, but I am now daily surprised by receiving letters from various places at home and abroad expressive of gratitude to me from persons I never saw or heard of.  As this occurs now, I may fairly conclude that it might have been so when the poems appeared, but for the tyranny exercised over public opinion by the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.’

December 1841.—­Wordsworth and Miss Fenwick spent the shortest day of the year with us; he brought with him his Epitaph on Southey, and as we sat round the fire after dinner, my mother asked him to read it to us, which he did in his usual impressive manner.  He asked our impression of it.  My mother ventured to tell him of one word, or rather two, which she thought might be altered with advantage.  They were these: 

    ’Wide was his range, but ne’er in human breast
    Did private feeling find a holier nest.’

‘Holier nest’ were the words she objected to, as not being a correct union of ideas.  He took the suggestion most kindly, and said it had been much discussed in his own mind and in his family circle, but that he saw the force of what she said, and that he was aware many others would see it also.  He said there was yet time to change it, and that he should consult Judge Coleridge whether the line, as he once had it,

    ‘Did private feeling meet in holier rest,’

would not be more appropriate to the simplicity of an epitaph where you con every word, and where every word is expected to bear an exact meaning.  We all thought this was an improvement.  During tea he talked with great animation of the separation of feeling between the rich and poor in this country; the reason of this he thinks is the greater freedom we enjoy; that the line of demarcation not being so clearly laid down in this country by the law as in others, people fancy they must make it for themselves.  He considers Christianity the only cure for this state of things.  He spoke of his own desire to carry out the feeling of brotherhood with regard to servants, which he all along endeavoured to do.  He doubted whether he might not have had better servants on a different system; but he thought it right to endeavour to inspire your domestics with a feeling of common interest.  My mother said she entirely agreed with him, but she had always found it most difficult.

(III.) LADY RICHARDSON (CONTINUED).

November 1843.—­Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, infinitely lower than the inventive; and he said to-day that if the quantity of time considered in writing critiques on the works of others were given to original composition, of whatever kind it might be, it would be much better employed; it would make a man find out sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely less mischief.  A false or malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of others; a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is quite harmless.