WM. WORDSWORTH.[132]

85. _The Works of James Shirley_.

LETTER TO THE REV. ALEXANDER DYCE.

Rydal Mount, March 20. 1833.

MY DEAR SIR,
I have to thank you for the very valuable present of
Shirley's works, just received. The preface is all that I have
yet had time to read. It pleased me to find that you sympathised
with me in admiration of the passage from the Duchess
of Newcastle's poetry; and you will be gratified to be told that
I have the opinion you have expressed of that cold and false-hearted
Frenchified coxcomb, Horace Walpole.

Poor Shirley! what a melancholy end was his! and then to be so treated
by Dryden! One would almost suspect some private cause of dislike, such
as is said to, have influenced Swift in regard to Dryden himself.

[132] _Memoirs_, ii. 274-5.

Shirley's death reminded me of a sad close of the life of a literary
person, Sanderson by name, in the neighbouring county of Cumberland. He
lived in a cottage by himself, though a man of some landed estate. His
cottage, from want of care on his part, took fire in the night. The
neighbours were alarmed; they ran to his rescue; he escaped, dreadfully
burned, from the flames, and lay down (he was in his seventieth year)
much exhausted under a tree, a few yards from the door. His friends, in
the meanwhile, endeavoured to save what they could of his property from
the flames. He inquired most anxiously after a box in which his
manuscripts and published pieces had been deposited with a view to a
publication of a laboriously-corrected edition; and, upon being told
that the box was consumed, he expired in a few minutes, saying, or
rather sighing out the words, 'Then I do not wish to live.' Poor man!
though the circulation of his works had not extended beyond a circle of
fifty miles' diameter, perhaps, at furthest, he was most anxious to
survive in the memory of the few who were likely to hear of him.

The publishing trade, I understand, continues to be much depressed, and
authors are driven to solicit or invite subscriptions, as being in many
cases the only means for giving their works to the world.

I am always pleased to hear from you; and believe me,

My dear Sir,

Faithfully your obliged friend,
WM. WORDSWORTH.[133]

86. _Literary Criticism and News: Men of Science, &c._

LETTER TO PROFESSOR HAMILTON, OF DUBLIN.

Rydal Mount, May 8. 1833.