to the drawing-room, the conversation turned on the
treatment of Wordsworth by the reviews of the day. I had never heard him
open out on it before, and was much struck with the manner in which he
did it; from his present elevation looking calmly back on the past, and
at the same time feeling that an irreparable injury had been done to him
at the time when life and hope were young. As nearly as I can I shall
record his words as they were spoken. He said:

'At the time I resolved to dedicate myself to poetry and separate myself
from the ordinary lucrative professions, it would certainly have been a
great object to me to have reaped the profits I should have done from my
writings but for the stupidity of Mr. Gifford and the impertinence of
Mr. Jeffrey. It would have enabled me to purchase many books which I
could not obtain, and I should have gone to Italy earlier, which I never
could afford to do until I was sixty-five, when Moxon gave me a thousand
pounds for my writings. This was the only kind of injury Mr. Jeffrey did
me, for I immediately perceived that his mind was of that kind that his
individual opinion on poetry was of no consequence to me whatever, that
it was only by the influence his periodical exercised at the time in
preventing my poems being read and sold that he could injure me; for
feeling that my 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: