Page:Poems and extracts - Wordsworth.djvu/14

Rh been under a laurel crown. Or was it rather a friendly prophecy of the Laureateship which was to come to him in 1843?

The volume consists of ninety-two pages, thirty-two of which, it will be seen, are devoted to the Winchelsea extracts; those following being occupied by poems by various other writers. The contents are of interest as indicating Wordsworth's preferences among poems having direct dealing with natural objects and the charms of solitude.

Readers desiring further acquaintance with Lady Winchelsea will find something to their taste in the volume by Mr. Edmund Gosse to which we have referred. Wordsworth, some dozen years after compiling this Anthology, wrote to his friend Alexander Dyce, the editor of Shakespeare, a letter of Winchelsea criticism, in which he says: 'Her style in rhyme is often admirable, chaste, tender, and vigorous; and entirely free from sparkle, antithesis, and that over-culture which reminds one by its broad glare, its stiffness and heaviness, of the double daisies of the garden, compared with their modest and sensitive kindred of the fields.'

J. ROGERS REES.