r of me at the London Tavern. "Gentlemen," said
I, and there I stopped; the rest my feelings were under the necessity of
supplying. Mrs. Wordsworth _will/_ go on, kindly haunting us with
visions of seeing the lakes once more, which never can be realized.
Between us there is a great gulf, not of inexplicable moral antipathies
and distances, I hope, as there seemed to be between me and that
gentleman concerned in the stamp-office that I so strangely recoiled
from at Haydon's. I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an
office, I hate all such people,--accountants' deputy accountants. The
mere abstract notion of the East India Company, as long as she is
unseen, is pretty, rather poetical; but as she makes herself manifest by
the persons of such beasts, I loathe and detest her as the scarlet
what-do-you-call-her of Babylon. I thought, after abridging us of all
our red-letter days, they had done their worst; but I was deceived in
the length to which heads of offices, those true liberty-haters, can
go,--they are the tyrants, not Ferdinand, nor Nero. By a decree passed
this week, they have abridged us of the immemorially observed custom of
going at one o'clock of a Saturday,--the little shadow of a holiday left
us. Dear W.W., be thankful for liberty.

[1] John Morgan

LXIV.

TO WORDSWORTH.

May, 1819.

Dear Wordsworth.--I received a copy of "Peter Bell" [1] a week ago, and I
hope the author will not be offended if I say I do not much relish it.
The humor, if it is meant for humor, is forced; and then the
price,--sixpence would have been dear for it. Mind, I do not mean _your_
"Peter Bell," but a "Peter Bell," which preceded it about a week, and is
in every bookseller's shop-window in London, the type and paper nothing
differing from the true one, the preface signed W. W., and the
supplementary preface quoting as the author's words an extract from the
supplementary preface to the "Lyrical Ballads." Is there no law against
these rascals? I would have this Lambert Simnel whipped at the cart's
tail. Who started the spurious "P.B." I have not heard. I should guess,
one of the sneering brothers, the vile Smiths; but I have heard no name
mentioned. "Peter Bell" (not the mock one) is excellent,--for its
matter, I mean. I cannot say the style of it quite satisfies me. It is
too lyrical. The auditors, to whom it is feigned to be told, do not
_arride me_. I had rather it had been told me, the reader, at once.
"Hart-