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appointment of Distributor of Stamps in the County of Westmorland. He was relieved, however, from any active share in the duties of the post, by the services of a young clerk, named John Carter, who for a moderate salary, undertook the labours of the office. The poet's biographer makes grateful mention of the lengthened and faithful services of this official coadjutor, who, besides being well qualified to administer his affairs, was also a judicious corrector of the press, and a sound scholar.

There is a playful passage in De Quincey's 'Selections Grave and Gay', the harmony of which is, perhaps, marred by a slight undertone of envy, in which he notices the singular good fortune of Wordsworth in all points of worldly prosperity, and referring to the crisis when he had to determine the future colour of his life, he goes on to say, 'Memorable it is that exactly in those critical moments when some decisive steps had first become necessary, there happened the first instance of Wordsworth's good luck, and equally memorable that at measured intervals throughout the long sequel of his life since then, a regular succession of similar, but superior, windfalls have fallen in, to sustain his expenditure, in exact concurrence with the growing claims upon his purse. A more fortunate man, I believe, does not exist than Wordsworth. The aid which now dropped from heaven, as it were, to enable him to range at will in paths of his own choosing, and

"Finally array

His temples with the Muses' diadem",

came in the shape of a bequest from Raisley Calvert, a young man of good family, in Cumberland, who died about this time of pulmonary consumption. The sum

left by Raisley Calvert was £900; and it was laid out in an annuity. This was the basis of Wordsworth's prosperity in life; and upon this he has built up, by a series of accessions, in which each step, taken separately for itself, seems perfectly natural, whilst the total result has undoubtedly something wonderful about it, the present goodly edifice of his fortunes. Next in the series came Lord Lonsdale's repayment of his predecessor's debt. Upon that, probably, it was that Wordsworth felt himself entitled to marry.

'Then, I believe, came some fortune with Miss Hutchinson; then — that is, fourthly, some worthy uncle of the same lady was pleased to betake himself to a better world, leaving to various nieces, and especially to Mrs. Wordsworth, something or other, I forget what, but it was expressed by thousands of pounds.

'At this moment Wordsworth's family had begun to increase, and the worthy old uncle, like everybody else in Wordsworth's case, finding his property very clearly "wanted", felt how very indelicate it would look for him to stay any longer in this world; and so off he moved. But Wordsworth's family and the wants of that family still continued to increase; and the next person - viz., the fifth, who stood in the way, and must therefore have considered himself rapidly growing into a nuisance was the stamp-distributor for the county of Westmorland. About March, 1814, I think it was, that this very comfortable situation was wanted. Probably it took a month for the news to reach him; because in April, and not before, feeling that he had received a proper notice to quit, he, good man (this stamp-distributor) like all the rest, distributed himself and his office into two different places—the latter

* 1813.

*

falling of course, into the hands of Wordsworth. This office, which it was Wordsworth's pleasure to speak of as 'a little one', yielded, I believe, somewhere about £500 a-year. Gradually even that, with all other sources of income became insufficient; which ought not to surprise anybody; for a son at Oxford, as a gentlemen commoner, would spend, at the least, £300 per annum, and there were other children.

'Still, it is wrong to say that it had become insufficient; as usual, it had not come to that; but on the first symptoms arising that it soon would come to that, somebody, of course, had notice to consider himself a sort of nuisance elect; - in this case it was the distributor of stamps for the County of Cumberland. His district was absurdly large, and what so reasonable as that he should submit to a Polish partition of his profits - no, not Polish; for, on reflection, such a partition neither was nor could be attempted, with regard to an actual incumbent. But then, since people had such consideration for him as not to re-model the office, so long as he lived, on the other hand, the least he could do for "people" in return Iso as to show his sense of this consideration - was not to trespass on so much goodness longer than necessary.

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'Accordingly, here as in all cases before, the Deus ex machina, who invariably interfered when any nodus arose in Wordsworth's affairs, such as could be considered vindice dignus, caused the distributor to be gone into a region where no stamps are wanted, about the very month, or so, when an additional £400 per annum became desirable. This, or perhaps more, was understood to have been added, by the new arrangement, to the Westmorland distributorship.

'Thus I have traced Wordsworth's ascent through

its several steps and stages, to what, for his moderate desires and habits so philosophic, may be fairly considered opulence. And it must rejoice every man who joins in the public homage now rendered to his powers, to hear with respect to one so lavishly endowed by nature, that he has not been neglected by fortune; that he has never had the finer edge of his sensibilities dulled by the sad anxieties, the degrading fears, the miserable dependencies of debt; that he has been blessed with competency even when poorest; has had hope and cheerful prospects in reversion through every stage of his life; that at all times he has been liberated from reasonable anxieties about the final interests of his children; that at all times he has been blessed with leisure, the very amplest that ever man enjoyed, for intellectual pursuits the most delightful; yes, that even as regards those delicate and coy pursuits, he has possessed in combination, all the conditions for their most perfect culture—the leisure, the ease, the solitude, the society, the domestic peace, the local scenery — Paradise for his eye, in Miltonic beauty, lying outside his windows; Paradise for his heart, in the perpetual happiness of his own fireside; and, finally, when increasing years might be supposed to demand something more of modern luxuries, and expanding intercourse with society, something more of refined elegancies, that his means, still keeping pace in almost arithmetical ratio with his wants, had shed the graces of art upon the failing powers of nature, had stripped infirmity of discomfort, and (so far as the necessities of things will allow) had placed the final stages of life,— by means of many compensations, by universal praise, by plaudits reverberated from senates, benedictions wherever his poems have penetrated, honour, troops

of friends in short, by all that miraculous prosperity can do to evade the primal decrees of nature - had placed the final stages upon a level with the first.

'But now, reverting to the subject of Wordsworth's prosperity, I have numbered up six separate stages of good luck-six instances of pecuniary showers emptying themselves into his very bosom, at the very moments when they began to be needed. Whether there were any seventh I do not know; but confident I feel that, had a seventh been required by circumstances, a seventh would have happened.

'So true it is, that still as Wordsworth needed a place or a fortune, the owner of that place, or fortune, was immediately summoned to surrender it so certainly was this impressed upon my belief, as one of the blind necessities making up the prosperity and fixed destiny of Wordsworth, that, for myself, had I happened to know of any peculiar adaptation in an estate or office of mine to an existing need of Wordsworth's, forthwith, and with the speed of a man running for his life, I would have laid it down at his feet, "Take it ", I should have said; Take it, or in three weeks I shall be a dead man ""

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'Well, let me pause: I think the reader is likely by this time to have a slight notion of my notion of Wordsworth's inevitable prosperity, and the sort of lien that he had upon the incomes of other men who happened to stand in his way'.

How acceptable this addition to his income proved may be gathered from the poet's own statement that his literary employments were, at this time, bringing no remuneration nor promising any. Undauntedly, however, he persevered, though uncheered by the popular voice, the favour of the critic, or the hope of gain:

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