Page:Poems and extracts - Wordsworth.djvu/13

Rh Lowthers is well known, and need not be described: particulars of the loan by John Wordsworth the elder and the ultimate repayment of the amount to his children form part of every biography of the poet.

Prefixed to this unpublished volume is an original pen-and-ink portrait of Wordsworth which is here reproduced. It is an admirable likeness in profile of the poet, who is pictured crowned with a laurel wreath. It is dated 1839; but the artist's initials are so cunningly woven into monogram as to be undecipherable. Loosely inserted and facing this is a copy of the Richardson engraving of Milton's portrait which gave De Quincey a subject for one of the pleasantest bits of writing in his Lake Poets volume. This engraving of Milton, he says, is 'not only by far the best likeness of Wordsworth, but of Wordsworth in the prime of his powers.' The members of the poet's family were equally impressed with the resemblance. 'In two points only there was a deviation from the rigorous truth of Wordsworth's features—the face was a little too short and too broad, and the eyes were too large. There was also a wreath of laurel about the head, which (as Wordsworth remarked) disturbed the natural expression of the whole picture.'

Probably the artist of the pen-and-ink original before us had this dictum of Wordsworth in his mind, and was accordingly tempted to an endeavour to catch his 'natural expression' as it really would have