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Wordsworth and de Quincey in Westmorland Politics, 1818

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John Edwin Wells
John Edwin Wells*
Affiliation:
New London, Connecticut
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Extract

The following pages communicate certain features of the Westmorland Parliamentary campaign of 1818; the text of two articles by William Wordsworth apparently not hitherto reprinted; a number of facts regarding the publication of Wordsworth's Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmorland; the readings of a broadside printing of a portion of Two Addresses; the variants of the several texts of Two Addresses; the text of a pamphlet by Thomas De Quincey never reprinted, of which but one extant copy has been reported hitherto; the text of eight letters, of which only a few slight extracts have been published, addressed by De Quincey to Wordsworth, dealing with the campaign, revealing his labors on the pamphlet and other political pieces, and applying for the editorship of the Westmorland Gazette; and materials exhibiting more definitely the relations between De Quincey and Wordsworth in the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1940 , pp. 1080 - 1128
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1940

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References

1 No attempt is made here to discuss or to evaluate Wordsworth's political views and pronouncements. For such one may read Professor Dicey's The Statesmanship of Wordsworth (Oxford, 1917), and notably Miss Batho's admirable The Later Wordsworth (Cambridge, 1933). On Wordsworth and De Quincey in 1818, and the Westmorland Gazette, see A. B. Grosart, The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (London, 1876), i; Wm. Knight, The Life of William Wordsworth, (Edinburgh, 1889), ii, 293–296; Charles Pollitt, De Quincey's Editorship of the Westmorland Gazette (Kendal and London, 1890); A. H. Japp, Thomas De Quincey, His Life and Writings (London 1890), chapters xiii and xv; Wm. Knight, The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (London, 1896), ii (referred to as Knight); Wm. Knight, Letters of the Wordsworth Family (Boston and London, 1907); G. McL. Harper, William Wordsworth (New York, 1916), ii, 287–292; E. de Selincourt, Dorothy Wordsworth, A Biography (Oxford, 1933), chapter xvi; H. A. Eaton, Thomas De Quincey (New York, 1936), pp. 234–239; E. de Selincourt, Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, The Middle Years (Oxford, 1937), ii (referred to as de Selincourt, Letters); A. L. Strout, Notes and Queries, clxxiv, 381–383, 398–401, 423 (May 28, June 4 and 11, 1938).

2 Apparently recently made editor.

3 As we shall see (Notes 75, 81), in his public address at Kendal on March 23 Brougham featured prominently a distortion of Wordsworth's remarks on the poverty of Westmorland, and satirically dwelt on the holding of “sinecures” by the Lowthers and Wordsworth; and in his dinner speech on that day he played upon the poet's characterisation of Lonsdale as “one who understands mankind, and knows the heights and levels of human nature, but which the course of the streams of social action is determined.” See Two Addresses, Knight's edn, paragraphs 3 and 4. Through the influence of Lonsdale Wordsworth had been appointed Distributor of Stamps for the County of Westmorland in March, 1813, and, following the practice of his predecessor, had been administering the office through a clerk (see de Selincourt, Letters, No. 478).

4 Chronicle for July 11, 1818.

5 Printed, A. L. Strout, Notes and Queries, clxxiv, 398. This is the document to which in his Letters iii and vi printed in the present article we find De Quincey preparing replies.

6 de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 604, 605.

7 de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 602, 604; and Dorothy Wordsworth (Oxford, 1933), p. 306.

8 There is no evidence that Wordsworth's sentiments and his expression of them in this campaign and those of 1820 and 1826 were not sincerely based on the principles and convictions that he professed, or that he was influenced unduly by the favor of Lord Lonsdale or by the likelihood that an election of new Parliamentary representatives would affect his tenure as Distributor of Stamps, the appointment to which he had received through Lonsdale's influence. That the poet was not unwilling to engage in “practical” politics is indicated by his letter to Lonsdale on December 8, 1818, announcing his purchase of a small piece of property, and division and sale of smaller freeholds from it to sound Lowtherites, so creating four or five votes for the cause. On February 12 he had proposed to Lonsdale a similar enterprise to forestall anticipated action by supporters of Brougham. See de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 601, 613. See E. C. Batho, The Later Wordsworth (Cambridge, 1903), p. 59.—For Wordsworth's earlier and later estimates of Brougham, see de Selincourt, Letter 551, and Grosart, Prose Works, i, xx, and iii, 504.

9 On April 11 De Quincey gathered from Jackson (see his Letter vii printed hereafter) that Wordsworth had been offered the editorship of the projected Westmorland Gazette.

10 de Selincourt, Letters, No. 604.

11 See the present article, Notes 34, 96, 146.

12 See present article, Section I.

13 The poet and Dorothy Wordsworth were careless in dating correspondence. The first of the “two letters” is dated February 16 in the Chronicle.

14 Knight, Letters of the Wordsworth Family (Boston and London, 1907), ii, 111; de Selincourt, Letters, No. 601.

15 Life of Wordsworth (Edinburgh, 1889), ii, 295.

16 The issue of the fourteenth had printed on its first page, columns 1 and 2, the first instalment of Wordsworth's Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmorland. On page 3 “The Editor avails himself of the opportunity given him by some of the observations contained in the temperate and able address signed ‘A Freeholder,‘ in the first page, to state his determination, in the discharge of his duty to the public, to observe a strict neutrality between the two contending parties in the county and without favour or affection to give admission to those writers only on both sides, who confine themselves to the laws of honourable warfare.” He reprobates gross personalities, apologises for one objectionable paragraph inadvertently let stand in an earlier issue, and promises greater vigilance in the future.

17 The reference is to the long account in the issue of the fourteenth of the progress of the Lowthers to Kendal on the eleventh, and the turbulent disposition of the populace, “which was supposed to be considerably aggravated by inflammatory Hand bills, and large Placards, dispersed and exhibited amongst them,” and which manifested itself finally in a pelting of the procession with stones and mud, and the breaking of nearly all the windows of the Commercial and White Hart inns, the headquarters of the Lowthers. The account directs to another part of the paper containing an address from a gentleman severely injured “certainly well calculated to cause remorse in the mind of the brutal assailant.” After a statement that the friends of Brougham vainly did their best to prevail on the mob to disperse, occurs the passage objected to by Wordsworth: “Without adverting more particularly to the cause which may be thought to have produced the events now stated, without presuming to determine whether the riotous conduct of the people is to be attributed to, what have been termed, inflammatory handbills and placards, or to the liquor given to them the night preceding and on the morning of the eventful day; we feel anxious . . . that good order not be again thus wantonly outraged, and we are happy to hear that all the respectable inhabitants of the town have come forward as special constables, to assist the Magistrates in checking and bringing to punishment every disturber of the public peace. . . .” The account concludes with a soundly reasoned “address from one of Mr. Brougham's friends,” pointing out the unfairness of riotous behavior and its injury to what it assumes to support. In the Chronicle's “adverting” not “particularly to the cause” and “without presuming to determine . . .” Wordsworth had seen suggestion of the Brougham faction's claims that the Lowthers themselves, to arouse sympathy, had instigated the “Riots.” See the end of De Quincey's Letter viii.

18 See Wordsworth's Two Addresses and Patriot-broadside section (Knight's text, pp. 318–319, and cp. Knight, p. 292) on talent.

19 Orton is three miles north of Tebay and about nine miles southwest of Appleby, the county town. The Rev. Robert Milner, of Orton, and Mary Wordsworth's kinsman the Rev. Mr. Monkhouse, of Morland, were members of the Lowther Committee.

20 Dorothy Wordsworth wrote Mrs. Clarkson on September 18, 1818, “Coll Lowther and his wife, Lady Ellinor, called on Tuesday. He is a fine brave Fellow and has seen much of active service abroad. He is painfully shy. The first time he spoke to Mary and me he seemed quite daunted—like a Rustic from one of our mountain vales, but on Tuesday we thought that he had gained courage during the late struggle for his shyness seemed to be much worn off.” de Selincourt, Letters, No. 609.

21 In the St. John-Victor Emanuel Collection at Cornell University is a copy with three slight corrections said to be in the author's handwriting—page 13 last word, for men read man; page 64 next to last line, for and Taxes, read and,; page 72, last line, Country has the r struck through. I am obliged to Dr. L. N. Broughton for this information. A copy of the pamphlet was sold at the American Art Association-Anderson Galleries, April 1, 1931, for $500. A copy was sold at Sotheby's, August 4, 1939, for £25. On the margin of the Yale copy, page 13, “man” is written.

22 A. B. Grosart, The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (London, 1876), i, 211–257; William Knight, The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (London, 1896), ii, 279–332.

23 See Letter vi of the series by De Quincey printed in the present article; and see de Selincourt, Letters, No. 608.

24 Letters of the Wordsworth Family (Boston and London, 1907), ii, 112.

25 Letters, No. 602.

26 Notes and Queries, clxxiv, 382 (May 28, 1938).

27 On the poet's and Dorothy's often inaccurate dating, see Note 13 on the letter to Lonsdale dated February 12, 1818.

28 Knight's text is used as a basis for collation because it seems likely to be more accessible than Grosart's. The references are to page and line of Knight.

29 The two first sentences here, ending “pledge for his conduct,” were (the first somewhat rearranged) incorporated into the pamphlet a little preceding (i.e., as at Knight 310.12–28) the opening of the pamphlet's reprinting of the Patriot-broadside matter.—To this list of variants of the broadside add: 314.14 own hand-writing, / 316.29 ruled in substance, / 318.8 Review, No. 11.

30 See my Story of Wordsworth's “Cintra,” SP xviii, 15–76.

31 This Address in the pamphlet is dated February 24; the Patriot and the broadside sections of it are dated February 28.

32 The second Address is almost four times as long as the first.

33 That he cancelled some of what he wrote is indicated by several clauses in the Patriot section, not in the pamphlet: “I shall not enter further into particulars—it was done, but my pen has been struck through the passages, because time. . . .” Cp. Knight, p. 319, line 5.

34 de Selincourt, Letters, No. 608. Did he compose and print any such articles? Perhaps he gave up the idea. It may seem more likely that some of the later political articles in the Patriot or in the Westmorland Gazette are by him. As has been indicated, the strife over Brougham continued in the papers through, and long after, De Quincey's editorship. See Notes 96, 146.

35 See Robinson's Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, edited by M. Sadler, 3d edn. (London and New York, 1872), i, 377; and Edith J. Morley, Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers (London, 1938), i, 272.

36 I am grateful to Mr. Charles Nowell, Librarian of the Reference Library of the Central Library, Manchester, for having made for me in 1937 a photostat of this article.

37 Notes and Queries, 11 ser. 3.102, col. 2.

38 Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, 2 ser. 32.30–33.

39 Thomas De Quincey, A Biography (New York, 1936), p. 235.

40 Hullet, dialect form of howlet, “owlet.” The Churchman opines that Two Addresses is “‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’—this folio it was once said was the production of the Captain of the Colliers, but he would not take to it, and deserves credit for that—if he had favoured us with any thing, it probably would have been in a plain way, but the compositions of his friend Bombastes Furioso are too political and high flown for our grey coat noddles to comprehend the meaning of them (if any they have), and therefore all his labours will, I fear, as to any effect they can make upon us, be ‘labour in vain.’ ‘Close Comments’ by an angry Giant, far exceed in scurrility all that has been printed or published on this or any other like occasion.—All who intend to vote for or think well of Mr. Brougham are in his sapient judgment, without the least reserve, called as he does Mr. B.—‘Sansculottes and Jacobins.’—I believe it is the first time an Englishman has been called a Sansculotte, and no one but a Giant in his three league boots dare have offered so gross and low an insult. If he ever saw a Sansculotte in this County, it must have been in one of his ‘midnight rambles’—when he has taken a sheep for a man. It seems Giants are troubled with short memories, as well as some parsons, or the commenting Giant would have recollected, that at a time when Jacobins and fiery ones too existed in this County, he was very active in propagating Jacobinical doctrines as he now calls them.—If nettles had been in season it might have been supposed he had fallen into a bed of them, for never was Giant so sore and irritable.” The “midnight rambles” and the play on his diminutive stature show that De Quincey's authorship of Close Comments had been detected.

41 Not a speech at Appleby, as Axon and Eaton assume.

42 See Note 50.

43 de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 604 and 605.

44 See his Letter vi and Note 133.

45 See Note 3, with its passage from the dinner speech, and Note 55. According to the Patriot, Brougham farther introduced Wordsworth into his dinner speech: “A writer to whose productions he had alluded in a former part of the day, had said that Lord Lonsdale ‘is acquainted with the heights and levels of human nature.’ [Two Addresses, Knight, p. 284, line 12] Now really this is so strange, so absurd, that had he not known the writer by other means, he should not have been at a moment's loss in discovering him; and he would ask whether such nonsense was not rather calculated to promote any other cause than that which it was designed to support? Thus it was to have impudent advocates!” And Brougham concluded his dinner speech, and what he characterized as a “field day,” with “By this conduct, the Lowther party seemed to act on the plan of the ‘heights and levels’ writer; but the sentiment he was about to quote this time was written in poetry, and as long as this writer confined himself to poetry, he (Mr. B.) could always read his productions with pleasure, for he was a real admirer of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry;—the sentiment was this:

'For why? Because the good old rule
Sufficeth them; the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.' (A laugh.)“

46 See Note 76.

47 See de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 604 and 605, especially pages 814–815; also Notes hereafter on passages in the Patriot not in the Chronicle.

48 This firm printed Two Addresses and the broadside from the first address; and they became the printers of the Westmorland Gazette, which bears their imprint on its first issue, that for May 23, 1818.

49 Close Comments is a reply to Brougham based chiefly on the account in the Kendal Chronicle for March 28 of his progress from Burton to Kendal on March 23 and the incidents and speeches at Kendal.

50 The Chronicle states that the speech lasted “for an hour.” De Quincey here borrows from the Patriot of March 28: “During the whole of this harangue the snow shower continued without intermission.”

51 Chronicle report: “. . . a long, and impressive and eloquent speech, which was received with reiterated applause and gave universal satisfaction. Immediately after the conclusion . . . the numerous assemblage of men, women, and children dispersed. . . .” The opponents insisted that but few freeholder-voters and few “gentlemen” were present or favored Brougham's candidacy (see Close Comments, p. 7 foot-note, and the “mob' on its pages 12, 13, 15, 16; and De Quincey's Letter vi ¶7, ”the Rabble who constituted his audiences“).

52 Alludes to Brougham's attribution to Wordsworth of the pseudonymous Chronicle and Patriot sections of Two Addresses (see Notes 72, 75, 81).

53 Cp. Close Comments, p. 7, point “3d,” and p. 10, point “6th”; and De Quincey's Letter iv ¶1.

54 Chronicle report: “I know full well that the language I have averted to is none of his; he has better sense, and more just feelings than to employ it—but his volunteer parasites, and his hired agents have freely used it, and in them, considering what they are themselves, and who their patrons are, that language becomes ridiculous without ceasing to be insolent and offensive.” “. . . the tribe of unknown or secret agents, who surround our local Chief Magistrate . . . whose proceedings it would be a degradation to watch. . . .”

55 In his dinner speech the same day Brougham introduced this current charge (see Notes 56, 62, 63, 75, 85), between his attacks there on Wordsworth and his Chronicle section of Two Addresses (see Notes 45, 62). Wordsworth had implied the charge in his Patriot and broadside sections (see Note 63), and connected Thanet with it in other portions (Knight, pp. 307, 324) of Two Addresses published about April 6.

56 Chronicle report: “I bid you look to my public conduct and upon the honesty of that. . . . That is my treasure—that is my castle. It is more impregnable than what the Lord Lieutenant [Lonsdale] has lately named for the first time Lowther Castle—nay if he were master of all the real castles in the Country—if like the High Sheriff [Thanet], he bore sway over all the great baronial residences of the North—I should point here (striking his breast). . . and dread no comparison that can be made between us. . . present fitness becomes the question. . . .” See Notes 62, 75. In 1808 Lonsdale had begun the building of his imposing Lowther Castle near the remains of the ancient Brougham Castle.

57 Brougham was posing, and was being played up, as a “native son” of Westmorland, and he was linking his name and that of Brougham Castle. See De Quincey's Letter viii, point “III,” and Dorothy Wordsworth's of March 30 or 29 (deSehncourt, Letters, No. 605).

58 See Note 62.

59 See Close Comments, p. 4, and Note 54.

60 Chronicle report preceding the “better sense” and “just feelings” passage: “Had I his possessions, aye, or the tenth part of them, I never would allow a son of mine to take eleven or twelve hundred pounds a year from the public.”

61 On this passage see De Quincey's Letter vi.

62 Chronicle report: “In vain they affect to describe it as an attempt to set up the Thanet against the Lowther family.—I know my Lord Thanet well, and in the same proportion I esteem him highly—and assert that the undisputed possession of twenty counties could not bribe him to practice those arts by which such family influence is commonly assured.” See Note 56.

63 Chronicle report: “. . . I tell him, or his indiscreet tools, that he does a far more ridiculous thing in daring me to contrast, than I should do in disputing his vaunted station in the County. . . .” “And who are they that presume to taunt us with inferiority of wealth? Let them at least keep their hands out of our pockets, and we shall be nothing the poorer! (Loud and continued shouts).—Was any insolence ever seen so unbearable as this purse pride displayed in the face of day by tax-gatherers and sinecure placemen—in the cause of those whose purses are filled by public money.” The allusions are to Wordsworth (see Note 81) and other Lowther “sinecurists,” and to the beginning and the end of the Patriot-broadside sections from Two Addresses, which suggested that for “some sinister purpose” outsiders (Thanet et al.) “dip their hands into their pockets” to pay Brougham's campaign expenses, and stated “Mr. Brougham's independence is a dark dependence, which no one understands” (Knight, pp. 312–313, 319).

64 Lord Thanet. See Note 56.

65 Lord Thanet. See Notes 56, 62.

66 Thomas Wybergh (see Close Comments, p. 13), chairman of the February 5 meeting at Appleby nominating Brougham. He spoke at the Kendal dinner on March 23. Into a public address at Appleby this “prophane old man,” “at a time of life when he ought to be preparing for Eternity,” turned a parody of Scripture expression against “the Parsons,” and brought upon himself a torrent of indignant attacks; e.g., in the Patriot for March 14 and 21, and a broadside reprint of the latter piece.

67 Apparently “the other Individual.”

68 See Close Comments, p. 1, and p. 10, point “6th”; De Quincey's Letters iv and v.

* The reader is to be informed, that in villages unfurnished with a Market-Cross, and generally throughout the dales of Westmorland—in default of a tub, or other customary accomodation for itinerant orators—Mr. Brougham harangued his audience from the dickey of a carriage. [Brougham journeyed from Burton in a snow-storm, seated on the dickey or box of his carriage, and entered Kendal so seated—according to the Chronicle report.]

to take away honor: his own laurels are yet to be earned; and by more [Page 9]

69 Wordsworth “I sing, ‘fit audience let me find though few’,” Recluse quoted in Preface to 1814 Excursion, 1888 Recluse p. 51; Paradise Lost vii 30, “Still govern thou my song, / Urania, and fit audience find, though few.”

70 See Close Comments ¶1, and Note 51.

71 See Note 75.

72 Next after the attack on Wordworth quoted in Note 81, the Chronicle reports Brougham: “This small County is now distinguishing herself for the very peculiar virtues which mark the glory and have established the pre-eminence of England among the other Nations—shewing, like her, the mighty soul in a little body—we may truly exclaim with our immortal Poet (you will comprehend I do not mean the one engaged in this contest, but Shakespeare) that she might achieve the highest things ‘Were all her sons but kind and natural’.” Dorothy Wordsworth wrote on March 24 that the preceding allusion to Wordsworth was effective with none but “the Faction” at Brougham's elbow: “However not daunted by this rebuff he turned to the subject again. ‘In the words of our immortal Poet—you are not to suppose I mean that poet of whom I have spoken before (pointing towards the Windermere road), no, in the words of our immortal poet‘—and here, poor man, his memory failed him, and he blundered out some garbled lines which I could not hear distinctly—no doubt they had been intended for the words of Shakespear—but enough of this.” The passage is from the Chorus to Act 2 of Henry the Fifth. Perhaps Dorothy's indignation impaired her hearing. The Patriot reports merely: “I do not mean the poet that I spoke of just now (a laugh)—that she had unnatural children.” Brougham's quoting of Shakespeare here was in De Quincey's mind earlier (Close Comments, p. 5 footnote).

73 The Patriot reports the expression, “the scribblers employed in this election.”

74 See Notes S3, 68; and see the application of this to the criticism of Wordsworth's poems, De Quincey's Letter iv.

75 Chronicle report: “The principal literary advocate is a worthy gentleman with a good place in the revenue department, of whose writings I wish to say nothing but that his readers (I speak of his prose and politics) have harder work of it than he has—without being quite so well rewarded for their pains.—He has begun the use of personalities on the opposite side, and has never yet been imitated on ours; for which I do not blame him further, than to charge him with an over zeal in his patron's cause, and perhaps a little ignorance in worldly matters.—Another tax-gatherer is canvassing. . . .” On this passage Dorothy Wordsworth wrote Sara Hutchinson on March 24, “It fell a dead weight upon the ears of all except the Faction at his elbow” (de Selincourt, Letters, No. 604). The Patriot reports Brougham here: “Our enemies are resorting to all sorts of means to carry their point; they abuse and misrepresent us; they descend to the lowest scurrility, and asperse private character. I do not accuse the Lowthers themselves of doing this. . . . It is their agents that I allude to, who skulk in the dark and are afraid to come forward. They write under all sorts of signatures. . . . These contemptible beings I will not attempt to describe. . . . One of their most active writers has brought it as a serious charge against me, that I am not worthy of your confidence because my income is small—because my possessions are not equal to the Lowthers'. Now I happen to know who this writer is, and, on inquiry, I find that the whole, or nearly the whole, of his income is a sinecure, which he holds though the favour of the Lord Lieutenant. . . . The same writer in one of his articles [see Note 81]—I don't mean his poetry but his prose, and they have tight work of it who read it—has said that Westmorland is small, poor, and barren, and therefore the present Members are its fittest representatives.” See Two Addresses ¶4, and Wordsworth's Chronicle section: “. . . it covers no very large space in the map; the soil is in general barren, the country poor accordingly. . . .”

76 The Chronicle report was prepared or edited by Brougham or someone in his confidence—cp. Note 81, especially on “submit.”

77 Made by Wordsworth, as the next Notes show.

78 To this charge (Wordsworth Two Addresses, Knight, pp. 284 ¶2, 312 ¶3, and the Chronicle, Patriot, and broadside printings) Brougham opposed remarks quoted in Notes 56, 63, 75.

79 See Close Comments, p. 8 footnote.

80 This “Sanscullotterie” gave De Quincey much concern (see Letters v and vi; also his critic, Note 40).

81 The Patriot report (see Note 75) shows Brougham was here actually meeting observations by Wordsworth. The Chronicle reports next after Brougham's remarks on Wordsworth quoted in Note 75: “Near akin to this [Brougham's deficiency in property], is their cry, that Westmorland is too small to be treated as a County. This little County, gentlemen, displays at the present moment. . . a struggle . . . against long continued oppression. I care not for the name, if we must call it oppression, say, domination, dictation, overgrown influence—in short, undue power, too long held, too fast clung to,—By what word soever the thing is described, its nature is hateful, and Englishmen are not so made as long to ‘submit’ to it.” As the “submit” in quotation-marks shows (see Note 76), Brougham was here hitting at Wordsworth's extended objections (Two Addresses &para 2, and his Chronicle section of the same) to the phrasing of the Resolutions of the Brougham meeting at Appleby, February 5, and the poet's repeated emphasis in italics on the word “submit.” The Chronicle has next the quoting from Henry the Fifth (see Note 72).

82 See Note 51.

83 See Note 86.

84 The “hoary Parodist of Scripture”; see Note 66.

85 Chronicle report: “The senseless cry of Jacobinism has been raised against us—I can hardly tell the sense which this worn out term of politial abuse is intended to convey.—But if by Jacobin is meant one hostile to the English Constitution as established in Church and State—one who desires its overthrow, and would replace it with a new and untried form of Government—I must say, distinctly that the title belongs not to me, and that I wish not for the support of any one, who claims it as his own.” This passage concludes with that in Note 54. Next follows: “We are charged with a conspiracy against the great landed proprietors.” This opens a brief passage that turns “conspiracy” against the great proprietors, and that concludes with the passage in Note 86. In his Chronicle and Patriot sections of Two Addresses, Wordsworth had implied a conspiracy with outside parties (see Knight, pp. 281, 282, 313; also 324 ¶2; and Notes 55, 63.

86 Chronicle report: “. . . they have themselves to blame, if from the conflict thus forced upon you, they shall retreat despoiled of that legitimate authority, which, if exercised within any reasonable limits, never would have been disputed or grudged—I know of no other conspiracy against the Great—I am aware of no other risk to property. I wish rank and property to have due influence, . . .”

87 Thomas De Quincey, A Biography (New York, 1936), pp. 234 ff.

88 Perhaps a letter is missing between Letters ii and iii; see Letters ii ¶2, ii ¶¶1,2, and the P.S. of iv.

89 See Letter vii, last long paragraph.

90 See my Story of Wordsworth's “Cintra,” SP, xviiii, 15–76. See also my article in LTLS, 1932, p. 815.

91 See De Quincey's Estrangement from Wordsworth, Masson's edn of Works (Edinburgh, 1890), iii, 197.

92 See Note 157 on Letter vii; and de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 514, 515, 516, and 519 at page 637; my article, “De Quincey and ‘The Prelude’ in 1839,” PQ, Autumn, 1940; A. H. Japp, De Quincey Memorials (London, 1891), ii, 109.

93 M. L. Armitt, Rydal (Kendal, 1916), p. 679.

94 See de Selincourt, Letters, No. 584; E. J. Morley, Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers (London, 1938), pp. 194–196.

95 Except at intervals, De Quincey had dwelt at Dove Cottage since 1809. Yet his present and recent isolation, not only from the Wordsworths but also from personages prominent in the neighborhood, is indicated by a number of assertions in the letters that he had never met, and had little or no knowledge of, the men whom he was dealing with in the letters and the articles he was writing or had in contemplation. See Letter vi especially.

96 Charles Pollitt, De Quincey's Editorship of the Westmorland Gazette (Kendal and London, 1890); H. A. Eaton, De Quincey (New York, 1936), p. 244; A. L. Strout, Notes and Queries, cxxxiv, 382, 400. See Notes 34, 146.

97 Gazette for September 12, October 17, 24, and 31, 1818, and February 6 and September 25, 1819. See also Pollitt, op. cit., pp. 25, 46; Strout, Notes and Quaries, clxxiv, 423.

98 de Selincourt, Letters, No. 623.

99 On both sides of one leaf; no superscription. All these letters are in De Quincey's hand. On several the dates have been written by someone else. The dates here printed are De Quincey's own.

100 William Jackson, curate at Grasmere, married De Quincey; his father, Thomas Jackson, the rector, dwelt at Harry Place, Langdale. See M. L. Armitt, The Church at Grasmere (Kendal, 1912), pp. 170 ff.

101 In 1800, for the heroine of The Pet Lamb Wordsworth borrowed the name of Barbara Lewthwaite, one of two beautiful children of the neighborhood. Barbara was living at Ambleside in 1843 (see Fenwick note). She was in domestic service at Dove Cottage after the dismissal of mischief-making Mary Dawson in 1813.

102 Wordsworth had been since March, 1813, Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland. Though not on the election committee, he was highly influential with the Lowther interests.

103 Perhaps a letter is missing between Letters i and iii. See Note 114.

104 There were a number of Wilsons in the Lake District. Three of them were active for the Lowthers in 1818, and welcomed them into Kendal on February 11, the day of the “Riots.” One thinks here of John Wilson (“Christopher North”) of Elleray, who—though he was at this time in Edinburgh—had been intimate with De Quincey in the period just preceding. Since 1815 the Wordsworths had been strongly disapproving of the convivial sessions attributed to the two—possibly the “subject” of the poet's communication through Irving. Irving appears in De Quincey's Letter iv.

105 Inn at Grasmere, still in operation.

106 Covers two pages of a folded sheet; page 4 blank; page 3, seal and superscription “William Wordsworth—Esqr / Rydal Mount.”

107 Close Comments.

108 As had been the Patriot instalment of Two Addresses.

109 Letter iii, of Thursday, April 2, sends “the remainder of my Comments.”

110 Not in Close Comments as printed. “While he continues a Member for a close Borough,” Wordsworth Two Addresses, Knight's text p. 320.

111 John Simpson, De Quincey's father-in-law, occupied Nab Cottage on the Grasmere road less than a mile from Rydal Mount. From the Nab on February 15, 1817, De Quincey married Margaret Simpson, who stayed there in several periods before their removal to Edinburgh; but the house has its chief attraction from Hartley Coleridge's long habitation of it. On Simpson and the De Quinceys and Nab Cottage, see Miss M. L. Armitt, Rydal (Kendal, 1916), pp. 675 ff. De Quincey's daughter contradicted the common assumption of the inferiority of Simpson's attainments and general constitution; see Japp, Thomas De Quincey; His Life and Writings (London, 1890), p. 144.

112 Covers one side of leaf; reverse, “William Wordsworth Esqr. / Mr. Cookson's /Kendal.” The Cooksons of Kendal, intimate friends of the Wordsworth family, were not of the Cooksons relatives of the Wordsworths. Dorothy stayed with them during Brougham's visit to Kendal on March 23.

113 On Clarkson's letter in support of Brougham published in the Chronicle for March 28, see Section I of the present article and de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 604 and 605. Professor Strout has printed the letter in Notes and Queries, clxxiv, 398. On De Quincey's “short answer,” see Letter vi end.

114 Perhaps a letter is missing between Letter iii and Letter ii; see Letter ii ¶ 1 end, Letter iv P.S. at top, and Letter i ¶2.

115 Perhaps between the two first paragraphs of page 11 of Close Comments.

116 Close Comments, p. 7 footnote.

117 On two sides of one leaf; superscription on the middle section of the reverse.

118 For this and the variations suggested, Close Comments ¶2 has: “Mr. B., the Senator, speaks—as Mr. B., the anonymous trader in Reviews, writes.” See also Close Comments, p. 7, point “3d,” and p. 10, point “6th,” and Letter v.

119 See Letter i ¶2.

120 The authorship is still in dispute. See S. T. Coleridge, Biographie, Literaria (London, 1817), ii, 298; J. D. Campbell, Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge (London, 1893), p. 603; E. H. Coleridge, Letters of S. T. Coleridge (Boston and New York, 1895), p. 669; A. R. Waller and A. Glover, Collected Works of William Hazlitt (London, 1902–06), x, 411; E. H. Coleridge, edn Christabel (London, 1907), pp. 44, 49, 54, 67, 76; P. P. Howe, Life of William Hazlitt (New York, 1922), pp. 202, 435, revised 1928, pp. 202, 439; P. L. Carver, JEGP, xxix (1930), 562 ff.; E. L. Griggs, Unpublished Letters of S. T. Coleridge, (New Haven, 1933), ii, 196 n; E. K. Chambers, S. T. Coleridge (Oxford, 1938), pp. 295 ff. (see RES, xv, 368); E. L. Griggs, in Wordsworth and Coleridge (Princeton, 1939), p. 173; A. L. Nethercut, The Road to Tryermaine (Chicago, 1939), pp. 19, 28, 217.

121 Cp. “Miss Wordsworth's Report,” Letter vi, point “I,” and Note on it.

122 As at Kendal on March 23. See Section iv of the present article.

123 On one side of one leaf; reverse blank; probably enclosed with the proof.

124 Close Comments, “is involved.”

125 That is, from the Patriot or broadside section of Two Addresses (see Knight, pp. 317–318).

126 “Col. Pol.,” see Letter vi, P.S. 2.

127 Close Comments, p. 12, “Sanscullolterie”; see Letter vi, point “III”.

128 Written small on four quarto pages, superscribed “William Wordsworth Esqr. / Rydal Mount.” The writing, small as if by calculation to get all onto one sheet; the space at the head of page 1, filled with the long P.S.; and the nature of some changes—all suggest that this is a second draft.

129 The second “Friend to Truth” letter by Wordsworth in the Chronicle for February 21. Especially if this De Quincey letter is a second draft, the passage on Colonel Lowther in its last long paragraph may be taken from manuscript of the defense that De Quincey was working on.

130 See Note 126.

131 So Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmorland was being circulated by April 7.

132 Two Addresses, Knight's text, p. 325.

133 The Close Comments sentence on Althorpe is in parentheses; it omits all this matter. The Chronicle did not report a passage on the Leather-Tax in Brougham's speech at Kendal; but the Patriot did report it. De Quincey's “ludicrous impression . . . from Miss Wordsworth's Report” shows that he did get matter from Dorothy orally or from some of the written accounts (possibly the very long report she had sent to Rydal) on which she was occupied during the days next following the speech (see de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 604 and 605). Cp. the assumption of Dorothy's participation in the alterations in Close Comments, Letter iv, ¶ 1 end, and cp. Letter vii, sentence 1.

134 The pamphlet reads, “consciousness.”

135 See Letter v, point “4,” and Close Comments, p. 12, Note 80.

136 Not preserved in the pamphlet.

137 Letter v, point “4.”

138 The pamphlet omits this and what next follows here.

139 April 7, Letter v; probably in the margin of the proof.

140 Here ends the Wednesday part of this letter; see the final “N.B.”

141 Not in Two Addresses; perhaps in a communication replying to one of the preceding letters by De Quincey. For Wordsworth on Brougham's ability and character, see Knight's text of Two Addresses, pp. 318–319. De Quincey's lack of acquaintance with men and conditions in the county is indicated repeatedly in this letter (see Note 95).

142 Edward Hasell, of Dalemain, welcomed the Lowthers into Kendal on February 11, the day of the “Riots,” and was one of their most prominent supporters.

143 On Wybergh see Close Comments, p. 7, and Note 66. The Kendal dinner is that of March 23.

144 See Note 20.

145 Henry Curwen was a supporter of Brougham; he was prominent at the Kendal dinner of March 23.

146 See Letter iii top. Whether De Quincey wrote and sent the “short answer,” and whether it was printed, are questions hard to decide. Perhaps it is the article signed “X” in the first issue of the Gazette, that for May 23. A number of replies to Clarkson, and counter-replies, and sur-replies, were published in the papers—among them the long “Philadelphus” article (May 30) against Clarkson, and the defense of “Philadelphus” in a series of lengthy articles by “Philadelphus Alter” in the Gazette under De Quincey's editorship. Careful reading of the “Philadelphus” piece supports Professor Strout's conclusion (Notes and Queries, clxxiv 400) that the ascription of it to Wordsworth (originating with Charles Pollitt) must be incorrect. Philadelphus's careful justification of his pseudonymity (see Letter iv end), his intimations of association with Wordsworth, and his statement that he did not know Clarkson, fit De Quincey—but the style of the article seems not appropriate for him. Possibly De Quincey wrote the “Philadelphus Alter” articles. See Notes 34, 96.

147 See Letter viii, point “V,” and see Note 114.

148 See Note 140.

149 Covers two and a half pages; lower half of second leaf cut off.

150 See Note 133.

151 Letter vi, last long paragraph.

152 In printing Close Comments; cp. Letter viii, point “II.”

153 See Letter i.

154 The Westmorland Gazette and Kendal Advertiser, whose first issue was for May 23. De Quincey succeeded the first editor on July 11, and supervised the issues from July 18, 1818, into November, 1819.

155 In 1812 and 1813, and perhaps in 1815, he had kept some terms in the Middle Temple.

156 As editor of the Gazette De Quincey had ample opportunity to practise the sentiments here expressed. His net salary was a guinea a week. The observations by critics on the non-political contents of the paper during his editorship apparently do not adequately recognize that the Gazelle was established largely as a vehicle for Lowther political expression in the 1818 campaign and the later contests promised by Brougham if he failed in his first.

157 At the opening of 1815, on his way to the Lakes from London, where he had been concerned with the printing of Wordsworth's Poems of 1815, De Quincey visited his mother at Westhay, near Wrington, Somerset. At that time the Wordsworths were diligently soliciting from acquaintances purchases of copies of the Excursion of 1814 and favorable reviews of that volume, in an effort to improve the poet's reputation. To Daniel Stuart, owner of the Courier, Wordsworth then appealed regarding De Quincey: “He is preparing a short series of Letters, to be addressed to the Editor of some periodical Publication, say of The Courier; upon the subject of the stupidities, the ignorance, and the dishonesties of The Edinburgh Review; and principally as it relates to myself, whom, perhaps you know, the Editor has long honoured with his abuse.” Dorothy wrote Mrs. Clarkson in April, 1815, that expectation of such articles by De Quincey was hopeless, “he is eaten up with the spirit of procrastination.” See de Selincourt, Letters, Nos. 514, 515, 516, 519, 523, 526, especially pages 628, 630, 637, 655, 665; E. J. Morley, op. cit., p. 161; and my article cited in Note 92, above.

158 Fills the two sides of one leaf; no superscription.

159 Close Comments.

160 See Note 57.

161 Letter vi, next to last paragraph.

162 The so-styled attacks on the Lowthers at Kendal on February 11. See Section i of the present article.

163 See Close Comments, p. 13.

164 See introductions to Sections ii and iii of the present article.

165 Two Addresses (?), Knight's text, pp. 325, 326–327.