Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries
William Wordsworth to Samuel Rogers, 29 September 1808
‘Grasmere: Sept. 29, 1808.
‘My dear Sir,—I am greatly obliged to you for
your kind exertions in favour of our Grasmere Orphans, and for your own
contribution. It will give you pleasure to hear that there is the best prospect
of the children being greatly benefited in every respect by the sum which has
been raised, amounting to nearly 500l. They are placed
in three different houses in the Vale of Grasmere, and are treated with great
tenderness. They will be carefully taught to read and write, and, when they are
of a proper age, care will be taken to put them forward in life in the most
advisable manner.
‘The bill you sent me—31l.
8s.—I have already paid into the hands of the
Secretary.
‘I was glad to hear that our friend Sharp was so much benefited in his health by
his late visit to our beautiful country. We passed one pleasant day together,
but we were unlucky, upon the whole, in not seeing ![]()
| WORDSWORTH ON CRABBE'S APOTHECARY | 49 |
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much of each other, as a more than
usual part of his time was spent about Keswick and Ulswater. I am happy to find
that we coincide in opinion about Crabbe’s verses, for poetry in no sense can they be
called. Sharp is also of the same opinion. I remember that
I mentioned in my last that there was nothing in the last publication so good
as the description of the parish workhouse, apothecary, &c. This is true,
and it is no less true that the passage which I commended is of no great merit,
because the description, at the best of no high order, is, in the instance of
the apothecary, inconsistent—that is, false. It no doubt sometimes
happens, but, as far as my experience goes, very rarely, that country
practitioners neglect and brutally treat their patients; but what kind of men
are they who do so?—not apothecaries like
Crabbe’s professional, pragmatical coxcombs,
“all pride, generally neat, business, bustle, and
conceit”—no, but drunken reprobates, frequenters of boxing-matches,
cock-fightings, and horse-races. These are the men who are hard-hearted with
their patients, but any man who attaches so much importance to his profession
as to have strongly caught, in his dress and manner, the outward formalities of
it may easily indeed be much occupied with himself, but he will not behave
towards his “victims,” as Mr. Crabbe calls
them, in the manner he has chosen to describe. After all, if the picture were
true to nature, what claim would it have to be called poetry? At the best, it
is the meanest kind of satire, except the merely personal. The sum of all is,
that nineteen out of twenty of Crabbe’s pictures are
mere matters of fact, with which the Muses have just about as ![]()
| 50 | ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES | |
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much to do as they have with a collection of medical reports or of law
cases.
‘How comes it that you never favour these mountains
with a visit? You ask how I have been employed. You do me too much honour, and
I wish I could reply to the question with any satisfaction. I have written
since I saw you about 500 lines of my long Poem, which is all I have done. What
are you doing? My wife and sister desire to be remembered by you, and believe
me, my dear sir,
‘With great truth, yours,
‘We are here all in a rage about the Convention in
Portugal. If Sir Hew were to show
his face among us, or that other doughty knight, Sir Arthur, the very boys would hiss them out of the
Vale.’
George Crabbe (1754-1832)
English poet renowned for his couplet verse and gloomy depictions of country persons and
places; author of the
The Village (1783),
The
Parish Register (1807),
The Borough (1810), and
Tales of the Hall (1819).
Richard Sharp [Conversation Sharp] (1759-1835)
English merchant, Whig MP, and member of the Holland House set; he published
Letters and Essays in Poetry and Prose (1834).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
