A PLEA FOR AUTHORS, MAY 1838. FAILING impartial measure to dispense And social Justice, stript of reverence For natural rights, a mockery and a shame; For Books!" Yes, heartless Ones, or be it proved No public harm that Genius from her course Be turned; and streams of truth dried up, even at their source! A POET TO HIS GRANDCHILD. (Sequel to the foregoing.) "Son of my buried Son, while thus thy hand "Is clasping mine, it saddens me to think "How Want may press thee down, and with thee sink "Thy children left unfit, through vain demand "Of culture, even to feel or understand "My simplest Lay that to their memory May cling;-hard fate! which haply need not be "Did Justice mould the statutes of the Land. "A Book time-cherished and an honoured name * The author of an animated article, printed in the Law Magazine, in BLEST Statesman He, whose Mind's unselfish will Leaves him1 at ease among grand thoughts: whose eye Sees that, apart from magnanimity, Wisdom exists not; nor the humbler skill Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill Its duties;-prompt to move, but firm to wait,- PROTEST AGAINST THE BALLOT.† Comp. 1838. Pub. 1838. Forth rushed from Envy sprung and Self-conceit, favour of the principle of Serjeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill, precedes me in the public expression of this feeling; which had been forced too often upon my own mind, by remembering how few descendants of men, eminent in literature, are even known to exist.-W. W., 1838. The sonnet is not addressed to any grandson of the Poet's.-ED. "All change is perilous, and all chance unsound." -Spenser.-W. W., 1838. + In his notes to the volume of Collected Sonnets (1836), Wordsworth writes:-"Protest against the Ballot.' Having in this notice alluded only in general terms to the mischief which, in my opinion, the Ballot would bring along with it, without especially branding its immoral and antisocial tendency (for which no political advantages, were they a thousand times And through the astonished Island swept in storm, That crossed her way. Now stoops she to entreat Licence to hide at intervals her head VALEDICTORY SONNET. Closing the Volume of Sonnets published in 1838. Comp. 1838. Pub. 1838. SERVING no haughty Muse, my hands have here Both to allure the casual Loiterer, And that, so placed, my Nurslings may requite But metaphor dismissed, and thanks apart, greater than those presumed upon, could be a compensation), I have been impelled to subjoin a reprobation of it upon that score. In no part of my writings have I mentioned the name of any contemporary, that of Buonaparte only excepted, but for the purpose of eulogy; and therefore, as in the concluding verse of what follows, there is a deviation from this rule (for the blank will be easily filled up) I have excluded the sonnet from the body of the collection, and placed it here as a public record of my detestation, both as a man and a citizen, of the proposed contrivance." Then follows the sonnet beginning "Said Secrecy to Cowardice and Fraud." (See p. 32.)-ED Reader, farewell! My last words let them be- 1839. The fourteen sonnets "Upon the Punishment of Death were originally published in the Quarterly Review (in December 1841), in an article on the "Sonnets of William Wordsworth" by Henry (now Sir Henry) Taylor, the author of Philip van Artevelde, and other poems. Towards the close of this article, after reviewing the volume of sonnets published in 1838, Sir Henry adds, "There is a short series written two years ago, which we have been favoured with permission to present to the public for the first time. It was suggested by the recent discussions in Parliament and elsewhere on the subject of the 'Punishment of Death.'" When republishing this and other critical Essays on Poetry, in the collected edition of his works in 1878, Sir Henry omitted the paragraphs relating to these particular sonnets. SUGGESTED BY THE VIEW OF LANCASTER CASTLE (ON THE ROAD FROM THE SOUTH.) THIS Spot-at once unfolding sight so fair Of sea and land, with yon grey towers that still "In the session of 1836, a report by the Commissioners on Criminal Law-of which the second part was on this subject (the Punishment of Death)-was laid before Parliament. In the ensuing session this Might soothe in human breasts the sense of ill, II. t TENDERLY do we feel by Nature's law For worst offenders: though the heart will heave was followed by papers presented to Parliament by her Majesty's command, and consisting of a correspondence between the Commissioners, Lord John Russell, and Lord Denman. Upon the foundation afforded by these documents, the bills of the 17th July 1837-(7th Gul. IV. and 1st Vict. cap. 84 to 89 and 91)-were brought in and passed. These acts removed the punishment of death from about 200 offences, and left it applicable to high treason, -murder and attempts at murder-rape-arson with danger to life-and to piracies, burglaries, and robberies, when aggravated by cruelty and violence." (Sir Henry Taylor, Quarterly Review, Dec. 1841, p. 39.) Some members of the House of Commons-Mr Fitzroy Kelly, Mr Ewart, and others-desired a further limitation of the punishment of death to the crimes of murder and treason only: and the question of the entire abolition of capital punishment being virtually before the country, Wordsworth dealt with it in the following series of sonnets.-ED. * The name given to the spot from which criminals on their way to the Castle of Lancaster first see it.-ED. + "The first sonnet prepares the reader to sympathise with the sufferings of the culprits. The next cautions him as to the limits within which his sympathies are to be restrained." (Sir H. Taylor.)—ED. |