458. Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death,[XX.]

Of these Sonnets the author thus wrote to John Peace, Esq., Bristol: 

Rydal Mount, Feb. 23. 1842.

MY DEAR SIR,

I was truly pleased with the receipt of the letter which you were put upon writing by the perusal of my ‘Penal Sonnets’ in the Quarterly Review.  Being much engaged at present, I might have deferred making my acknowledgments for this and other favours (particularly your ‘Descant’) if I had not had a special occasion for addressing you at this moment.  A Bristol lady has kindly undertaken to be the bearer of the walking-stick which I spoke to you of some time since.  It was cut from a holly-tree planted in our garden by my own hand.

* * * * *

Your ‘Descant’ amused me, but I must protest against your system, which would discard punctuation to the extent you propose.  It would, I think, destroy the harmony of blank verse when skilfully written.  What would become of the pauses at the third syllable followed by an and, or any such word, without the rest which a comma, when consistent with the sense, calls upon the reader to make, and which being made, he starts with the weak syllable that follows, as from the beginning of a verse?  I am sure Milton would have supported me in this opinion.  Thomson wrote his blank verse before his ear was formed as it was when he wrote the ‘Castle of Indolence,’ and some of his short rhyme poems.  It was, therefore, rather hard in you to select him as an instance of punctuation abused.  I am glad that you concur in my view on the Punishment of Death.  An outcry, as I expected, has been raised against me by weak-minded humanitarians.  What do you think of one person having opened a battery of nineteen fourteen-pounders upon me, i.e. nineteen sonnets, in which he gives himself credit for having blown me and my system to atoms?  Another sonneteer has had a solitary shot at me from Ireland.

Ever faithfully yours,
W. WORDSWORTH.[8]

[8] Memoirs, ii. pp. 386-7.

* * * * *

XX.  MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

459. Epistle to Sir G. H. Beaumont, Bart.[1.]

From the South-west Coast of Cumberland,—­1811.  This poem opened, when first written, with a paragraph that has been transferred as an introduction to the first series of my ‘Scotch Memorials.’  The journey, of which the first part is here described, was from Grasmere to Bootle, on the south-west coast of Cumberland, the whole along mountain-roads, through a beautiful country, and we had fine weather.  The verses end with our breakfast at the Head of Yewdale, in a yeoman’s house, which, like all the other property in that sequestered vale, has passed, or is passing, into the hands of Mr. James Marshall, of Monk Coniston, in Mr. Knott’s, the late owner’s