elf again, after a much severer shock, and
at an age several years more advanced. So that I trust the world and his
friends may be hopeful, with good reason, that the life and faculties of
this man, who has during the last six and twenty years diffused more
innocent pleasure than ever fell to the lot of any human being to do in
his own life-time, may be spared. Voltaire, no doubt, was full as
extensively known, and filled a larger space probably in the eye of
Europe; for he was a great theatrical writer, which Scott has not proved
himself to be, and miscellaneous to that degree, that there was
something for all classes of readers: but the pleasure afforded by his
writings, with the exception of some of his Tragedies and minor Poems,
was not pure, and in this Scott is greatly his superior.

As Dora has told your sister, Sir W. was our guide to Yarrow. The
pleasure of that day induced me to add a third to the two poems upon
Yarrow, 'Yarrow Revisited.' It is in the same measure, and as much in
the same spirit as matter of fact would allow. You are artist enough to
know that it is next to impossible entirely to harmonise things that
rest upon their poetic credibility, and are idealised by distance of
time and space, with those that rest upon the evidence of the hour, and
have about them the thorny points of actual life. I am interrupted by a
stranger, and a gleam of fine weather reminds me also of taking
advantage of it the moment I am at liberty, for we have had a week of
incessant rain.

[Ever faithfully yours,
WM. WORDSWORTH.][119]

[119] _Memoirs_, ii. 241-2. Given completely (instead of the brief
extract) from the original. The autograph, &c. cut away. G.

73. _Tour in Scotland_.

LETTER TO LADY FREDERICK BENTINCK.

Rydal Mount, Nov. 9.

MY DEAR LADY FREDERICK,

* * * * *

You are quite right, dear Lady F., in congratulating me on my late
ramble in Scotland. I set off with a severe inflammation in one of my
eyes, which was removed by being so much in the open air; and for more
than a month I scarcely saw a newspaper, or heard of their contents.
During this time we almost forgot, my daughter and I, the deplorable
state of the country. My spirits rallied, and, with exercise--for I
often walked scarcely less than twenty miles a day--and the employment
of composing verses, amid scenery the most beautiful, and at a seas