‘Wordsworth. He is going to let us see what a primrose is when it is more than a yellow primrose by the river’s brim and at the cottage door, when it is in a spring bonnet. Why did Wordsworth not give the last important position? It must have existed in his day, though crewel work had not yet been revived. At present, I am certain our principal considerations in reference to primroses, are how they will look on the borders of table-covers, or on the pockets and bibs of aprons.’ ‘Speak for yourself, Louisa,’ said Catherine, roused to indignation as her cousin had meant her to be. ‘Some of us have still the grace to think of primroses wet with dew, beneath green hedgerows, under April skies. But I wish he had not chosen Wordsworth; I think he is a mistake.’ ‘The greatest mistake possible, my dear.’ Mrs. Hilliard confirmed the opinion with alacrity. ‘Quite an anachronism. He ought to have been a typical burgher, like those Flemish cloth-workers in the middle ages.’ Catherine stared for a second with wide-open blue eyes. ‘Oh!’ she drew a long breath; ‘I did not mean Oliver Constable, I was speaking of Wordsworth. Of course he wrote some very beautiful things,’ she continued gravely. ‘Surely his greatest opponent would not willingly lose his ’Ode to Immortality.’ ‘I cannot dignify myself by calling myself a poet’s greatest opponent, I am such a mere mortal. And I confess I never read the ode; the less loss to me, that I am sure I should not understand a word of it,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, with undisturbed complacency, as she helped herself to grapes. Catherine was not listening. She was getting more and more into the habit of not attending to a great deal of the conversation around her, and looking as if she were speaking to invisible hearers. ‘I could never speak of Wordsworth as Macaulay and Madame Bunsen wrote,’ she went on in answer to her own thoughts, as if they had been audible remarks. ‘Indeed, I cannot forgive them for it.’ ‘Catherine, have you forgotten your catechism?’ remonstrated Mrs. Hilliard; ‘and I dare say poor Macaulay and Madame Bunsen did not understand Wordsworth any more than I should have done.’ Catherine paid no heed to the interruption, and showed that spoken soliloquy is still natural to some people. ‘Yet I believe there is a great deal of truth in the criticism that Wordsworth sacrificed his powers to an intellectual hobby, and brought down poetry to tedious, if rather fine prose, by insisting on idealising the tritest, most wretchedly dull subjects, though I suppose he would have said nothing is either trite or dull when rightly looked at. Upon the whole I prefer Crabbe. There was method in his madness. He was more dramatic, if he idealised less.’ ‘I wish there was method in your madness, and that you idealised less. Do you hear, Catherine? Will you have grapes?’ ‘Yes, thanks. I am going to take back my word, Louisa; I should like to hear Oliver Constable’s lecture.’