ges in her poetry is the close of the
lines upon 'Life,' written, I believe, when she was not less than eighty
years of age:

'Life, we have been long together,' &c.[104]

You have given a specimen of that ever-to-be-pitied victim of Swift,
'Vanessa.' I have somewhere a short piece of hers upon her passion for
Swift, which well deserves to be added. But I am becoming tedious, which
you will ascribe to a well-meant endeavour to make you some return for
your obliging attentions.

I remain, dear Sir, faithfully yours,
WM. WORDSWORTH.[105]

[104] It was on hearing these lines repeated by his friend, Mr. H.C.
Robinson, that Wordsworth exclaimed, 'Well! I am not given to envy other
people their good things; but I _do_ wish I had written _that_.' He much
admired Mrs. Barbauld's Essays, and sent a copy of them, with a
laudatory letter upon them, to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[105] _Memoirs_, ii. 220-22.

66. _Hamilton's 'Spirit of Beauty:' Verbal Criticism: Female Authorship:
Words_.

Where there is so much sincerity of feeling in a matter so dignified as
the renunciation of poetry for science, one feels that an apology is
necessary for verbal criticism. I will therefore content myself with
observing that 'joying' for joy or joyance is not to my taste. Indeed I
object to such liberties upon principle. We should soon have no language
at all if the unscrupulous coinage of the present day were allowed to
pass, and become a precedent for the future. One of the first duties of
a Writer is to ask himself whether his thought, feeling, or image cannot
be expressed by existing words or phrases, before he goes about creating
new terms, even when they are justified by the analogies of the
language. 'The cataract's steep flow' is both harsh and inaccurate:
'thou hast seen me bend over the cataract' would express one idea in
simplicity and all that was required. Had it been necessary to be more
particular, 'steep flow' are not the words that ought to have been used.
I remember Campbell says in a composition that is overrun with faulty
language, 'And dark as winter was the _flow_ of Iser rolling rapidly;'
that is, 'flowing rapidly.' The expression ought to have been 'stream'
or 'current...' These may appear to you frigid criticisms, but depend
upon it no writings will live in which these rules are disregarded....

Female authorship is to be shunned as bringing in its train more and