of an author a chance to enjoy him in peace. Wordsworth is now, for example, the cherished friend of a tranquil and happy band, who read him placidly in green meadows or by their own firesides, and forbear to trouble themselves about the obstinate blindness of the disaffected. But there was a time when battles royal were fought over his fame, owing principally, if not altogether, to the insulting pretensions of his followers. It was then considered a correct and seemly thing to vaunt his peculiar merits, as if they reflected a shadowy grandeur upon all who praised them, very much in the spirit of the little Australian boy who said to Mr. Froude, "Don't you think the harbor of Sydney does us great credit?" To which the historian's characteristic reply was, "It does, my dear, if you made it." Apart from the prolonged and pointless discussion of Wordsworth's admirable moral qualities, "as though he had been the candidate for a bishopric," there was always a delicately implied claim on the part of his worshipers that they possessed finer perceptions than their neighbors, that they were in some incomprehensible way open to influences
