The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.Wordsworth, William
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The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes.
Wordsworth, William
English literature -- 19th century
It is nowhere dated, but inasmuch as Bishop WATSON'S Sermon, with the
Appendix, appeared early in 1793, to that year certainly belongs the
composition of the 'Letter.' The title-page of the Sermon and Appendix
may be here given;
A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE STEWARDS OF THE WESTMINSTER DISPENSARY, AT
THEIR ANNIVERSARY MEETING, CHARLOTTE STREET CHAPEL, APRIL 1785.
WITH AN APPENDIX, BY R. WATSON, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF LANDAFF.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. CADELL IN THE STRAND; AND T. EVANS IN PATERNOSTER
ROW.
1793 [8vo].
In the same year a 'second edition' was published, and also separately
the Appendix, thus:
STRICTURES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION, AS
WRITTEN IN 1793 IN AN APPENDIX TO A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE STEWARDS
OF THE WESTMINSTER DISPENSARY, AT THEIR ANNIVERSARY MEETING, CHARLOTTE
STREET CHAPEL, APRIL 1785,
BY R. WATSON, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF LANDAFF.
_Reprinted at Loughborough, (With his Lordship's permission) by Adams,
Jun. and Recommended by the Loughborough Association For the Support of
the Constitution to The Serious Attention of the Public_.
Price Twopence, being one third of the original price,
1793 [small 8vo],
The Sermon is a somewhat commonplace dissertation on 'The Wisdom and
Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor,' from Proverbs xxii.
2: 'The rich and poor meet together, the Lord is the Maker of them all.'
It could not but be most irritating to one such as young
WORDSWORTH--then in his twenty-third year--who passionately felt as well
with as for the poor of his native country, and that from an intimacy of
knowledge and intercourse and sympathy in striking contrast with the
serene optimism of the preacher,--all the more flagrant in that Bishop
Watson himself sprang from the very humblest ranks. But it is on the
Appendix this Letter expends its force, and, except from BURKE on the
opposite side, nothing more forceful, or more effectively argumentative,
or informed with a nobler patriotism, is to be found in the English
language. If it have not the kindling eloquence which is Demosthenic,
and that axiomatic statement of principles which is Baconian, of the
'Convention,' every sentence and epithet pulsates--as its very
life-blood--with a manly scorn of the false, the base, the sordid, the
merely titularly eminent. It may not be assumed that even to old age
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH would have disavowed a syllable of this 'Apology.'
Technically he might not have held to the name 'Republican,' but to the
last his heart was with the oppressed, the suffering, the poor, the
silent. Mr. H. CRABB ROBINSON tells us in his Diary (vol. ii. p. 290, 3d
edition): 'I recollect once hearing Mr. WORDSWORTH say, half in joke,
half in earnest, "I have no respect whatever for Whigs, but I have a
great deal of the Chartist in me;"' and his friend adds: 'To be sure he
has. His earlier poems are full of that intense love of the people, as
such, which becomes Chartism when the attempt is formally made to make
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