t34 
NATURE NOTES. 
A BOOK ABOUT WORDSWORTH * 
It is difficult to say why this book has reached a second edition, except by 
calling to mind Carlyle’s saying, that the population of England is so many 
million people “mostly fools.” It would not be easy to find, on its own lines, a 
more worthless, a less critical book. 
If Mr. Sutherland can go wrong in a fact he does so. This is not an easy feat, 
as the facts of the book are mainly taken from other people who have verified 
them ; but errors remain, even in a second edition, which five minutes’ care would 
have removed. For instance, we find “ Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire” (p. 34). 
Crewkerne is in Somerset. On p. 103 we are told that John Wordsworth was 
buried at “ Wythe, near Weymouth.” There is no such place ; the ship was lost 
off, and the body was interred at, Wyke. There are plenty of others, but they lie 
on the borderland between critical judgment and fact. 
The general style of the book may be described as provincial, or even parochial. 
MTiat has struck the author, at once assumes a prominence little less than ludicrous 
in the eyes of those who have seen or read more. Mr. Sutherland quotes with 
approval the pretty lines “ She was a phantom of delight,” introducing them with 
these amazing words : “ A beautiful tribute — to our mind the highest ever paid to 
woman — was rendered by the poet to this sterling lady in these immortal stanzas.” 
One would think the man had never even heard of Dante and Beatrice, to say 
nothing of the Blessed Virgin and St. Lucy, whose praises are sung in the Divina 
Com/nedia. There was, too, a lady named Laura, immortalized by Petrarch ; 
and “ a fair vestal throned in the west ” had lines unlikely to die addressed 
to her by one William Shakspere. But these gentlemen and ladies lived beyond 
the bounds of Mr. .Sutherland’s parish. 
In the same foolish vein of provincial brag we are told of Ryd.al Mount : 
“ This beautiful residence, next to .Shakespeare’s the most celebrated from a 
poetical standpoint in the world, which has since become immortalised.” Yet 
a house in Florence bears the inscription : “ Here the divine poet was born.” 
Milton’s cottage at Chalfont St. Giles’s is not unknown to fame ; nor Pope’s 
Villa at Twickenham ; nor Newstead Abbey. It is not we who make comparisons, 
nor do we disparage a great poet, as Wordsworth surely was ; but when one in 
the attitude and tone of a young man from Birmingham pours forth these idle 
sayings, irritation cannot but call to mind that other roofs have sheltered other 
poets — and greater. 
In the same way we hear that Mr. Irving is “the greatest of living actors ” — 
possibly, but we should like to know if Mr. Sutherland is acquainted with the 
French and German stages ; that Mrs. Sigourney is “ the most charming of 
American poetesses ; ” and almost every one, even Mr. IMatthew Arnold, who 
has taken Mr. Sutherland’s fancy, is belittled by excessive laudation. We say 
not a word of his criticism, because all that is of merit is borrowed from other 
people, and their judgments, as quoted, generally contradict the author’s own, so 
that he has to “ hedge,” and endeavour to say that black and white are, after all, 
very much the same. 
The book is larded with most inapt quotations. He says of Southey : “ Death 
came with friendly care ” — when all the world is at once reminded that the words 
were written on the death of an infant ; and of Wordsworth, “ God’s finger touched 
him and he slept,” without knowing, apparently, that the “ touch of God’s finger” 
is an almost technical phrase applicable to the mode of Hallam’s death, and not in 
any degree to that of Wordsworth. But the worst quotations in the volume are 
those from Holy Scripture. We have seen nothing like them since the “State 
Services” happily disappeared from the Book of Common Prayer. In the Service 
for the Death of Charles I. a cento of quotations from all parts of the Bible 
were diverted from their original meaning to the king, who was spoken of as 
though he were Christ Himself. “ O my soul, come not into their councils, for in 
their anger they slew a Man.” Mr. Sutherland places Wordsworth on the same 
‘ William Wordsworth: The Story of his Life, with critical remarks on his Writings. By 
James Middleton Sutherland. Second edition, revised and enlarged. London: Elliot Stock, 1892. 
