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University Press, Cambridge:

Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

AC8 4365 1861

MY HONOURED FRIEND,

The favour I have always experienced from you emboldens me to address you publicly by this name. For more than twenty years I have cherisht the wish of offering some testimony of my gratitude to him by whom my eyes were opened to see and enjoy the world of poetry in nature and in books. In this feeling, he, who shared all my feelings, fully partook. You knew my brother; and though he was less fortunate than I have been, in having fewer opportunities of learning from your living discourse, you could not deny him that esteem and affection, with which all delighted to regard him. Your writings were among those he prized the most and unless this little work had appeared anonymously when it first came out, he would have united. with me in dedicating it to you.

Then too would another name have been associated with yours, the name of one to whom we felt an equal and like obligation, a name which, I trust, will ever be coupled with yours in the admiration and love of Englishmen, the name of Coleridge. You and he

came forward together in a shallow, hard, worldly age,

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an age alien and almost averse from the higher and more strenuous exercises of imagination and thought, -as the purifiers and regenerators of poetry and philosophy. It was a great aim; and greatly have you both wrought for its accomplishment. Many, among those who are now England's best hope and stay, will respond to my thankful acknowledgement of the benefits my heart and mind have received from you both. Many will echo my wish, for the benefit of my country, that your influence and his may be more and more widely diffused. Many will join in my prayer, that health and strength of body and mind may be granted to you, to complete the noble works which you have still in store, so that men may learn more worthily to understand and appreciate what a glorious gift God bestows on a nation when He gives them a poet.

Had this work been dedicated to you then, it might have pleased you more to see your great friend's name beside your own. The proof of my brother's regard too would have endeared the offering. Then, if you will allow me to quote a poem, which, from its faithful expression of fraternal love, has always sounded to me like the voice of my own heart, "There were two springs which bubbled side by side, As if they had been made that they might be Companions for each other." But now for a while that blessed companionship has been interrupted: "One has disappeared: The other, left behind, is flowing still." Yet, small as the tribute.

is, and although it must come before you without these recommendations, may you still accept it in consideration of the reverence which brings it; and may you continue to think with your wonted kindness

Of your affectionate Servant,

JULIUS CHARLES HARE.

HERST MONCEUX, January, 1838.

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