Part 127 (1/2)

153. _Hopefulness_.

Writing to a friend at a time of public excitement, he thus speaks: 'After all (as an excellent Bishop of the Scotch Church said to a friendly correspondent of mine), ”Be of good heart; the affairs of the world will be conducted as heretofore,--by the foolishness of man and the wisdom of G.o.d.”'[224]

[223] _Memoirs_, ii. 502-3.

[224] _Ibid._ ii. 503.

III. CONVERSATIONS AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF WORDSWORTH.

(_a_) FROM 'SATYRANE'S LETTERS:' KLOPSTOCK.

(_b_) PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE HON. MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

(_c_) RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR IN ITALY, BY H.C. ROBINSON.

(_d_) REMINISCENCES OF LADY RICHARDSON AND MRS. DAVY.

(_e_) CONVERSATIONS AND REMINISCENCES RECORDED BY THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN.

(_f_) REMINISCENCES OF REV. R.P. GRAVES, M.A., DUBLIN.

(_g_) ON DEATH OF COLERIDGE.

(_h_) FURTHER REMINISCENCES AND MEMORABILIA, BY REV. R.P. GRAVES, M.A., DUBLIN, NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

(_i_) AN AMERICAN'S REMINISCENCES.

(_j_) RECOLLECTIONS OF AUBREY DE VERE, ESQ., NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

(_k_) FROM 'RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF Sh.e.l.lEY AND BYRON,' BY E.J. TRELAWNY, ESQ.

(_l_) FROM LETTERS OF PROFESSOR TAYLER (1872).

(_m_) ANECDOTE OF CRABBE, FROM DIARY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

(_n_) WORDSWORTH'S LATER OPINION OF LORD BROUGHAM.

NOTE.

On these 'Personal Reminiscences' see the Preface in Vol. I. G.

(_a_) KLOPSTOCK: NOTES OF HIS CONVERSATION.

From 'Satyrane's Letters' (_Biographia Literaria_, vol. ii. pp. 228-254, ed. 1847).

Ratzeburg.

No little fish thrown back again into the water, no fly unimprisoned from a child's hand, could more buoyantly enjoy its element, than I this clean and peaceful house, with this lovely view of the town, groves, and lake of Ratzeburg, from the window at which I am writing. My spirits certainly, and my health I fancied, were beginning to sink under the noise, dirt, and unwholesome air of our Hamburg hotel. I left it on Sunday, Sept. 23rd. with a letter of introduction from the poet Klopstock, to the _Amtmann_ of Ratzeburg. The _Amtmann_ received me with kindness, and introduced me to the worthy pastor, who agreed to board and lodge me for any length of time not less than a month. The vehicle, in which I took my place, was considerably larger than an English stage-coach, to which it bore much the same proportion and rude resemblance, that an elephant's ear does to the human. Its top was composed of naked boards of different colours, and seeming to have been parts of different wainscots. Instead of windows there were leathern curtains with a little eye of gla.s.s in each: they perfectly answered the purpose of keeping out the prospect and letting in the cold. I could observe little, therefore, but the inns and farm-houses at which we stopped. They were all alike, except in size: one great room, like a barn, with a hay-loft over it, the straw and hay dangling in tufts through the boards which formed the ceiling of the room, and the floor of the loft. From this room, which is paved like a street, sometimes one, sometimes two smaller ones, are enclosed at one end. These are commonly floored. In the large room the cattle, pigs, poultry, men, women, and children, live in amicable community: yet there was an appearance of cleanliness and rustic comfort. One of these houses I measured. It was an hundred feet in length. The apartments were taken off from one corner. Between these and the stalls there was a small inters.p.a.ce, and here the breadth was forty-eight feet, but thirty-two where the stalls were; of course, the stalls were on each side eight feet in depth. The faces of the cows &c. were turned towards the room; indeed they were in it, so that they had at least the comfort of seeing each other's faces. Stall-feeding is universal in this part of Germany, a practice concerning which the agriculturist and the poet are likely to entertain opposite opinions--or at least, to have very different feelings. The wood-work of these buildings on the outside is left unplastered, as in old houses among us, and, being painted red and green, it cuts and tesselates the buildings very gaily. From within three miles of Hamburg almost to Molln, which is thirty miles from it, the country, as far as I could see it was a dead flat, only varied by woods. At Molln it became more beautiful. I observed a small lake nearly surrounded with groves, and a palace in view belonging to the King of Great Britain, and inhabited by the Inspector of the Forests. We were nearly the same time in travelling the thirty-five miles from Hamburg to Ratzeburg, as we had been in going from London to Yarmouth, one hundred and twenty-six miles.

The lake of Ratzeburg runs from south to north, about nine miles in length, and varying in breadth from three miles to half a mile. About a mile from the southernmost point it is divided into two, of course very unequal, parts by an island, which, being connected by a bridge and a narrow slip of land with the one sh.o.r.e, and by another bridge of immense length with the other sh.o.r.e, forms a complete isthmus. On this island the town of Ratzeburg is built. The pastor's house or vicarage, together with the _Amtmann's, Amtsschreiber's_, and the church, stands near the summit of a hill, which slopes down to the slip of land and the little bridge, from which, through a superb military gate, you step into the island-town of Ratzeburg. This again is itself a little hill, by ascending and descending which, you arrive at the long bridge, and so to the other sh.o.r.e. The water to the south of the town is called the Little Lake, which however almost engrosses the beauties of the whole: the sh.o.r.es being just often enough green and bare to give the proper effect to the magnificent groves which occupy the greater part of their circ.u.mference. From the turnings, windings, and indentations of the sh.o.r.e, the views vary almost every ten steps, and the whole has a sort of majestic beauty, a feminine grandeur. At the north of the Great Lake, and peeping over it, I see the seven church towers of Lubec, at the distance of twelve or thirteen miles, yet as distinctly as if they were not three. The only defect in the view is, that Ratzeburg is built entirely of red bricks, and all the houses roofed with red tiles. To the eye, therefore, it presents a clump of brick-dust red. Yet this evening, Oct. 10th. twenty minutes past five, I saw the town perfectly beautiful, and the whole softened down into _complete keeping_, if I may borrow a term from the painters. The sky over Ratzeburg and all the east was a pure evening blue, while over the west it was covered with light sandy clouds. Hence a deep red light spread over the whole prospect, in undisturbed harmony with the red town, the brown-red woods, and the yellow-red reeds on the skirts of the lake. Two or three boats, with single persons paddling them, floated up and down in the rich light, which not only was itself in harmony with all, but brought all into harmony.