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 196 INTRODUCTION

seized every opportunity to dine and spend an evening with them, occasionally staying all night. They lived alone in unostentatious comfort, with only one servant ; and it was touching to see how soon this one became deeply attached to the slowly aging couple. I do not think a change of servants was made more than two or three times in the whole period ; and the last faithful soul, Annie Kelleher by name (I believe she will be only glad to be so remembered here), who had almost ruined her own health by her long devotion, was valued at her worth by both John and Belinda, and left with an ample life-annuity at the latter's death.

Nothing could better interpret the pervading spirit of the Dennis street home and its occupants than Wordsworth's protest against the conventionality and commercialism of the age, a protest which is set to the same key as what some took to be Randall's "pessimism." Pessimism his phi- losophy never was, but rather satirism of the present for not being the ideal future. His ideal too often took the form of a stinging satire of the actual, but by no means always or even prevailingly. These noble sonnets of Wordsworth are quite in Randall's vein : —

O Friend ! I know not which way I must look

For comfort, being as I am opprest,

To think that now our Life is only drest

For show, mean handiwork of craftsman, cook,

Or groom ! We must run glittering like a brook

In the open sunshine, or we are unblest ;

The wealthiest man among us is the best ;

No grandeur now in nature or in book

Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,

This is idolatry, and these we adore ;

Plain living and high thinking are no more ;

The homely beauty of the good old cause

Is gone ; our peace, our fearful innocence,

And pure religion breathing household laws.

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