Now I think of it, Frost’s Lives of Eminent Christians was very like Lucy.  The one resided at Dovedale in Derbyshire, the other in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury.  I admit that I do not see the resemblance here at this moment, but if I try to develop my perception I shall doubtless ere long find a marvellously striking one.  In other respects, however, than mere local habitat the likeness is obvious.  Lucy was not particularly attractive either inside or out—­no more was Frost’s Lives of Eminent Christians; there were few to praise her, and of those few still fewer could bring themselves to like her; indeed, Wordsworth himself seems to have been the only person who thought much about her one way or the other.  In like manner, I believe I was the only reader who thought much one way or the other about Frost’s Lives of Eminent Christians, but this in itself was one of the attractions of the book; and as for the grief we respectively felt and feel, I believe my own to be as deep as Wordsworth’s, if not more so.

I said above, “as Wordsworth is generally supposed to have felt”; for anyone imbued with the spirit of modern science will read Wordsworth’s poem with different eyes from those of a mere literary critic.  He will note that Wordsworth is most careful not to explain the nature of the difference which the death of Lucy will occasion to him.  He tells us that there will be a difference; but there the matter ends.  The superficial reader takes it that he was very sorry she was dead; it is, of course, possible that he may have actually been so, but he has not said this.  On the contrary, he has hinted plainly that she was ugly, and generally disliked; she was only like a violet when she was half-hidden from the view, and only fair as a star when there were so few stars out that it was practically impossible to make an invidious comparison.  If there were as many as even two stars the likeness was felt to be at an end.  If Wordsworth had imprudently promised to marry this young person during a time when he had been unusually long in keeping to good resolutions, and had afterwards seen someone whom he liked better, then Lucy’s death would undoubtedly have made a considerable difference to him, and this is all that he has ever said that it would do.  What right have we to put glosses upon the masterly reticence of a poet, and credit him with feelings possibly the very reverse of those he actually entertained?

Sometimes, indeed, I have been inclined to think that a mystery is being hinted at more dark than any critic has suspected.  I do not happen to possess a copy of the poem, but the writer, if I am not mistaken, says that “few could know when Lucy ceased to be.”  “Ceased to be” is a suspiciously euphemistic expression, and the words “few could know” are not applicable to the ordinary peaceful death of a domestic servant such as Lucy appears to have been.  No matter how obscure the deceased, any number of people commonly can know the day and