Essays on Life 



the writer, if I am not mistaken, says that 

 "few could know when Lucy ceased to 

 be." " Ceased to be " is a suspiciously eu- 

 phemistic expression, and the words "few 

 could know" are not applicable to the ordi- 

 nary peaceful death of a domestic servant 

 such as Lucy appears to have been. No 

 matter how obscure the deceased, any number 

 of people commonly can know the day and 

 hour of his or her demise, whereas in this case 

 we are expressly told it would be impossible 

 for them to do so. Wordsworth was nothing 

 if not accurate, and would not have said that 

 few could know, but that few actually did 

 know, unless he was aware of circumstances 

 that precluded all but those implicated in the 

 crime of her death from knowing the precise 

 moment of its occurrence. If Lucy was the 

 kind of person not obscurely pourtrayed in 

 the poem ; if Wordsworth had murdered her, 

 either by cutting her throat or smothering 

 her, in concert, perhaps, with his friends 

 Southey and Coleridge; and if he had thus 

 found himself released from an engagement 

 which had become irksome to him, or pos- 



