Wordsworth's Last Days

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23429, 19 August 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

Wordsworth's Last Days

By J.H.H

MOST of us are familiar, j more or less, with Wordsworth as a poet: we may know something of his intimacy with Coleridge, and- its bearing on the poetry of each: of his sister Dorothy «'c may have gleaned some pleasing fact mingled, with pity for the tragedy of htr last days; and we may even have read of the journeyings to France and of the inner history of Annette Vallon. But for most of us the poet's life ends, to all intents and purposes, with what has been described as his "literary death" in the early twenties of the century, and we are inclined to class this -period as closing the great romantic movement he did so much to adorn. That he became Poet Laureate at the ago of 73 seems to us almost an insult. In point, of fact history has treated Wordsworth in much the same unkind

way as it did Queen Elizabeth—each, through no personal' fault, suffered from a kind of anti-climax through the lapse of time. In the case of the former, Fredenka Beattv lias done her best to remedy this defect: she tells with peat minuteness of detail the story of the

Indian Summer of a Great Poet

last decade. The poet's life, his family, ins friends, all pass iu review; and more than l.'loO references —a list filling some forty pages —are made to memoirs, diaries, and correspondence, published and unpublished. In these figuro many notable people, from poor Mary Lamb who, in one of her lucid moments "received us with _ composure." to John Ihiskin, who in his youth had referred to the well-loved Lakes as "vile hits of woodland and pools of dirty water," and who was, therefore, refused admittance to Kydal Mount. . But Wordsworth's greatest friendships were reserved for such comparatively unknown people as Henry Crabb Robinson, Edward Quilliman and Isabella Fenwick; and it is in the intimacies of his connection with those three 1 ,, as well as with the younger generation of Coleridges, Hartley and Sara, that wo find the kindly old man at his best. He was. in fact, by this time an "institution," and as such was revered by manv who knew nothing of poetry; but to the last ho was both stately and genial, of immense activity, and with a groat love for his self-chosen retirement. His wonderful capacity for friendship, too, extended not only to those of his own age, but even to many of a generation that knew him only for what he was, not for what lie had been. "William Wordsworth of R.vdal Mount," by Frederika Beatty. (J. M. Dent and Sons.)