WM. WORDSWORTH.[107]

68. _Summer: Mr. Quillinan: Draining, &c._

LETTER TO G. HUNTLY GORDON, ESQ.

Rydal Mount, April 6. 1830.

MY DEAR MR. GORDON,

You are kind in noticing with thanks my rambling notes.[108]

We have had here a few days of delicious summer weather.

[107] _Memoirs_, ii. 223.

[108] On a proposed tour.

It appeared with the suddenness of a pantomimic trick, stayed longer
than we had a right to expect, and was as rapidly succeeded by high
wind, bitter cold, and winter snow, over hill and dale.

I am not surprised that you are so well pleased with Mr. Quillinan. The
more you see of him the better you will like him. You ask what are my
employments. According to Dr. Johnson they are such as entitle me to
high commendation, for I am not only making two blades of grass grow
where only one grew before, but a dozen. In plain language, I am
draining a bit of spungy ground.[109] In the field where this goes on I
am making a green terrace that commands a beautiful view of our two
lakes, Rydal and Windermere, and more than two miles of intervening vale
with the stream visible by glimpses flowing through it. I shall have
great pleasure in showing you this among the other returns which I hope
one day to make for your kindness.

Adieu, yours,
W.W.[110]

69. _Works of Webster, &c.: Elder Poets: Dr. Darwin: 'Excursion:'
Collins, &c._

LETTER TO REV. ALEXANDER DYCE.

[No date, but Postmark, 1830.]

I am truly obliged, my dear Sir, by your valuable present of Webster's
Dramatic Works and the 'Specimens.'[111] Your publisher was right in
insisting upon the whole of Webster, otherwise the book might have been
superseded, either by an entire edition separately given to the world,
or in some _corpus_ of the dramatic writers. The poetic genius of
England, with the exception of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Pope,
and a very few more, is to be sought in her drama. How it grieves one
that there is so little probability of those valuable authors being read
except by the curious! I questioned my friend Charles Lamb whether it
would answer for some person of real taste to undertake abridging the
plays that are not likely to be read as wholes, and telling such parts
of the story in brief abstract as were ill managed in the drama. He
thought it would not. I, however, am inclined to think it would.

[109] In the field to the S.W. below