If you do find the paper I was invited to write upon Wordsworth[88], you will see to which class of your admiring or abhorring friends I belong. Perhaps you will cry out quickly, 'To the blind admirers, certes.' And I have a high admiration of Wordsworth. His spirit has worked a good work, and has freed into the capacity of work other noble spirits. He took the initiative in a great poetic movement, and is not only to be praised for what he has done, but for what he has helped his age to do. For the rest, Byron has more passion and intensity, Shelley more fancy and music, Coleridge could see further into the unseen, and not one of those poets has insulted his own genius by the production of whole poems, such as I could name of Wordsworth's, the vulgarity of which is childish, and the childishness vulgar. Still, the wings of his genius are wide enough to cast a shadow over its feet, and our gratitude should be stronger than our critical acumen. Yes, I _will_ be a blind admirer of Wordsworth's. I _will_ shut my eyes and be blind. Better so, than see too well for the thankfulness which is his due from me.... Yes, I mean to print as much as I can find and make room for, 'Brown Rosary' and all. I am glad you liked 'Napoleon,'[89] but I shall be more glad if you decide when you see this new book that I have made some general progress in strength and expression. Sometimes I rise into hoping that I may have done so, or may do so still more. The poet's work is no light work. His wheat will not grow without labour any more than other kinds of wheat, and the sweat of the spirit's brow is wrung by a yet harder necessity. And, thinking so, I am inclined to a little regret that you should have hastened your book even for the sake of a sentiment. Now you will be angry with me.... There are certain difficulties in the way of the critic unprofessional, as I know by experience. Our most sweet voices are scarcely admissible among the most sour ones of the regular brotherhood.... Harriet Martineau is quite well,'trudging miles together in the snow,' when the snow was, and in great spirits. Wordsworth is to be in London in the spring. Tennyson is dancing the polka and smoking cloud upon cloud at Cheltenham. Robert Browning is meditating a new poem, and an excursion on the Continent. Miss Mitford came to spend a day with me some ten days ago; sprinkled, as to the soul, with meadow dews. Am I at the end of my account? I think so. Did you read 'Blackwood'? and in that case have you had deep delight in an exquisite paper by the Opium-eater, which my heart trembled through from end to end? What a poet that man is! how he vivifies words, or deepens them, and gives them profound significance.... I understand that poor Hood is supposed to be dying, really dying, at last. Sydney Smith's last laugh mixes with his, or nearly so. But Hood had a deeper heart, in one sense, than Sydney Smith, and is the material of a greater man.