Letitia Landon and Romantic Hellenism

Author(s): Noah Comet

Source: The Wordsworth Circle , Spring, 2006, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Spring, 2006), pp. 76-80
Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24044133

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 10Bolton Comey, Curiosities of Literature . . . Illustrated by Bolton
Corney, Esq (nd) 85; "D'Israeli's Commentaries," New Monthly Maga
zine 23 (Nov 1828): 439.
11 Walter Scott, Waverley Novels, 25 vols, Centenary Edition
(1870-71) 14:478 (Note C to Fortunes of Nigel)
12For the debate over James, Linda Levy Peck Ed., The Mental
World of the Jacobean Court ( 1991 ) ; Alan Stewart, The Cradle King: A Life
of James VI and I (2003); Michael B. Young, James VI and I and the
History of Homosexuality (2000).

Letitia Landon and Romantic Hellenism

Noah Comet
University of California, Los Angeles

"Wordsworth is a poet that even Plato might have admitted lenism was hesitant and introspective, uneasy with th
into his republic. He is the most passionless of writers. Like Greece it promoted. In an exemplary poem, "The
the noblest creations of Grecian sculpture, the divinity is lian Fountain," she at first invokes the topoi of Roma
shown by divine repose" (Landon, Letters, 145). lenism, and then dismisses them as disingenuous, ou
themes. She manipulates Hellenist themes in order to dis
In this excerpt from a letter, Letitia Landon compli- turb the narrative from which she derived them, and in
ments Wordsworth by rephrasing his own concept of poetry Thessalian Fountain" she takes issue with the sexual p
as "emotion recollected in tranquility." Although the senti- of neoclassicism in particular. Challenging Hellen
ment is familiar, she places Wordsworth in an unconven- masculine movement, unsympathetic to women, t
tional context, the discourse of Romantic Hellenism, along demonstrates how women writers could engage with an
with Plato and the Apollo Belvedere. An ambitious footnote dermine it as an authoritative frame of reference, and
to the quotation might name some of the preeminent Ger- thetic response to history,
man Hellenists of the eighteenth century. For instance, "di
vine repose" echoes Johann Winckelmann's observations on Landon's critique of Hellenism from a femini
the sedate emotionality of Grecian art,1 while merging of spective extended the contemporary cultural revi
statuary with philosophy and poetry recalls A.W. Schlegel's glish Romantic Hellenism was a "primitivist ficti
lectures on Greek drama and sculpture. These authors make disregarded the "authentic native classical history" of
strange companions for Wordsworth, who seldom expressed Britain (Gaull 16; 17). The circulation of Hellenist them
an interest in Greek subject-matter or aesthetics. For the crit- any number of aesthetic genres (architecture, cookery
ical discussion of Romantic Hellenism, the quote reveals furnishings, etc) signaled not the invasion of a ver
more about Landon than Wordsworth. Greek culture, but rather the evasion of a British imperial
tory—a history written by the Roman conquerors, not the na
Like Mary Robinson, Landon cultivated a lyrical per- tive Britons. If Romande artists groaned under
sona on the model of Sappho, through which she fed the hegemonic weight of the Greek legacy, still, this w
public's appetite for tragic femininity. Like Lucy Aikin, she imposed burden, one of their own invention, and one
developed a keen understanding of ancient history, espe- freed them from a confrontation with the remn
cially the social history of women. And like Felicia Hemans, darker classical past that was literally at their feet (Ga
her contemporary, she distrusted the martial values pro- The result was a Hellenism with little historical or textua
moted in the Greek and Roman classics that she read in sis, creatively and materially dependent on the forc
translation. These similarities notwithstanding, Landon's dernity its proponents claimed to circumvent. "
Hellenism differed from that of Robinson, Aikin, and He- Thessalian Fountain" participates in a stigmatizing
mans, in its variety and reflexivity. Her collected works in- nism: in a candid but subversive expression of its trop
clude more than thirty poems involving ancient Greek don reproaches the idea of ancient Greece as nothin
mythology, literature, or history. These poems cover a range than modern intellectual property,
of topics and attitudes, from the anxieties of motherhood
during the Persian War ("Eucles Announcing the Victory at Landon included "The Thessalian Fountain" in
Marathon"), to a rallying cry for modern Greek liberation cal Sketches, a collection of poems depicting scen
("Greek Song"). Throughout this diverse collection, most of Greek and Roman myth and history. The collection wa
which appeared under the signature "L.E.L." in the 1830s, a part of her 1835 volume, The Vow of the Peacock, a ret
Landon maintained an interest in both the Hellenist aes- poetry after a spell of novel-writing. Though not a
thetic, and the work of cultural memory it entailed. Her Hel- cial success by her own standards, the volume won f

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reviews: one reviewer in particular praised Landon's poems lar ambiguity one step further with her "fountain," a word
as evidence that poetry might still hold its place in a world of that can refer to either a natural or an artificial pond. Other
"pseudo-Utilitarians" (Sypher, Vow 12). Appropriately, "The details in the poem suggest that the fountain is natural, but
Thessalian Fountain" is a meditation on poetic faith and the she never resolves this tension between authentic and syn
need for indulgent fantasies—-just the sort of thing to combat thetic, a tension central to nineteenth-century Hellenism it
Utilitarian dogma, like Thomas Love Peacock's assertion that self (Gaull, 16).
the modern poet was degraded and irrelevant, caught up in
"obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions" ( The Four Landon describes the fountain and its environs in a se
dges of Poetry 20). Whereas Percy Shelley (whose own Helle- ries of incomplete thoughts and subordinate clauses that fol
nism adhered to a textual tradition beyond the grasp of most low a desultory logic:
of his contemporaries) refuted Peacock by granting the poet
prophetic, legislative pretensions, Landon insists on the A small clear fountain, with green willow trees
value of "obsolete customs" in their own right. Girdling it round, there is one single spot
Where you may sit and rest, its only bank;
As a rule, Landon's Hellenist poems self-destruct: the Elsewhere the willows grow so thick together:
poetic voices that arrange her mythological tableaux and And it were like a sin to crush that bed
landscapes yield to the futility of memory. In "Ithaca," the Of pale and delicate narcissus flowers,
description of Ulysses' homecoming gives way to "vain and Bending so languidly, as still they found
cold invention" (37); in "The Banquet of Aspasia and Peri- In the pure wave a love and destiny;
çles," the "fair visions" of the courtesan and her maidens de- But here the moss is soft, and when the wind
part "like a poet's dream" (78-79). The idea of Greece serves Has been felt even through the forest screen,—
as a reminder that modernity is divorced from the past, from For round, like guardians to the willows, stand
the classical world it can only yearn to know (or, in reality, Oaks large and old, tall firs, dark beach, and elms
create). "The Thessalian Fountain" follows this scheme of Rich with the yellow wealth that April brings,—
temporal irony, though, uncharacteristically, the scenery she A shower of rose-leaves makes it like a bed
describes does not have a definite source in classical litera- Whereon a nymph might sleep, when, with her arm
ture. The region of Thessaly (the Vale of Tempe) is real Shining like snow amid her raven hair,
enough, associated with the story of Phoebus and Daphne, She dreamt of the sweet song wherewith the faun
and a site of legendary natural beauty that Landon might Had lulled her, and awakening from her rest
have encountered in Spenser's Prothalamion, or Dryden's When through the leaves an amorous sunbeam stole
translation of Ovid.2 However, the fountain, nymph, and And kissed her eyes; the fountain were a bath
faun are creations all her own. Neoclassical poets associated For her to lave her ivory feet, and cool
the topos of the fountain with inspiration, but unlike Heli- The crimson beauty of her sleep-warm cheek,
con, Pieria, or Hippocrene (allusions favored among Pope, And bind her ruffled curls in the blue mirror
Gray, and the male Romantic poets) Landon's Thessalian Of the transparent waters. (1-24)
fountain does not correspond to an ancient tradition.
Through the vagueness of this mythical scene, and the pro- In its unexceptional smallness and clearness, the fountain ap
vocative placement of the fountain within the schematic lay- pears less remarkable than what it reflects, the flowers and
out of her poem, Landon forgoes a direct thematic the nymph binding her hair in its mirror surface: rather
engagement with the idea of Greece, offering instead a com- than a thing to see, the fountain is a thing to see oneself in.
mentary on Hellenist tropes and the problems they raise. Whatever inherency the fountain lacks, however, it compen
sates with preciousness—so much so, that it compels the
The first twenty-four lines of "The Thessalian Foun- speaker to address the reader with solicitude: "there is one
tain" consist of one long sentence in blank verse, in which single spot / Where you may sit and rest." As curator of the
the speaker generates the ideas that she will disavow in the fountain, the speaker has many accomplices: protective wil
condusion. These opening lines present a natural scene, set, low trees girdle the fountain defensively, in most places grow
according to the title, in Thessaly. But, then, is the poem set ing "so thick together" as to be impenetrable. Of the few
in Thessaly? Though Landon makes many botanical refer- accessible areas, one hosts the "pale and delicate narcissus
ences in the poem, none of them pinpoints southern Europe flowers," too fragile to disturb. These flowers, which, like
exclusively. The fountain may be Thessalian in quality, not their mythological namesake, find a "love and destiny" in
location: it is "The Thessalian Fountain," not "The Fountain their reflection, have an innocence and integrity that "it were
in Thessaly." The title of the poem blurs the distinction be- like a sin to crush." The message is clear: look, but do not
tween Greek and Hellenist. Scholars of Romantic Hellenism touch. Landon keeps her spectator at a prudent distance,
are accustomed to such conflations of the historical and aes- imposing limits on perspective and interaction,
thetic. As David Ferris notes in Silent Urns, Keats's urn is
"Grecian," hence antiquity is "an adjectival, rather than a sub- The fountain, like Keats's "still unravish'd" urn, re
stantial, presence in the poem" (68). Landon takes this titu- mains virginal, but whereas Keats celebrates this stasis as the

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achievement of aesthetic immortality in spousal terms (the 17). The literal-minded "diaphanous" poetry of Walter Sav
urn is the "bride of quietness"), Landon ascribes it to a mas- age Landor's Hellenics (1847) presents a case in point:
culine protectionism. When her addressee heeds the warn- Landor's Hellenism conveyed erudition, rather than en
ings of the speaker and the sheltering trees, viewing the chantment, and an interest in Greek form, rather than Helle
fountain from the authorized vantage, he or she will com- nist themes. Such academic Hellenism earned little public
mune with the mythical past, for the sanctioned spot is where interest.4 At the start of this waning trend, Landon's speaker
"a nymph might sleep," seduced by a faun. The conscien- laments the passing of an age: "these days / Of visible poetry
tious viewer is privy to a scene like J.W. Waterhouse's 1893 have long been past!" (24-25). She interrupts the fantasy of
painting, "A Naiad": a dark-haired, ivory-skinned girl, bathing the previous twenty-four lines, and compared with the mean
in a forest pond. The fountain presents an erotic glimpse of dering syntax of the beginning, her conclusion is straightfor
the classical past, but only to the carefully situated voyeur. ward and sober:

Landon casts the idea of Greece in a feminine role, a But these days
fountain preserved by a jealous obsession with chastity. Al- Of visible poetry have long been past!—
though her nymph's snowy-white skin invokes the marble No fear that the young hunter may profane
sculptures of Winckelmann's ekphrastic essays, her fountain The haunt of some immortal; but there still—
is a mirror, a setting for self-reflection, not ekphrasis. Lan- For the heart clings to old idolatry,
don describes a tentative scene, liable to vanish when the ob- If not with true belief, with tenderness,—
server moves because she recognizes the relevance of the Lingers a spirit in the woods and flowers
observer: the Hellenist idea of Greece is ephemeral and too Which ha[s] a Grecian memory,—-some tale
rarefied to withstand objective scrutiny. By implication, all Of olden love or grief linked with their bloom,
ekphrasis is reflective, a form of displaced introspection. Seem[s] beautiful beyond all other ones.
Landon anticipates Walter Pater's assertion in The Renaissance The marble pillars are laid in the dust,
(1873), that the first step toward seeing "the object as in itself The golden shrine and its perfume are gone;
it really is," is to establish "what effect [. . .] it really produces But there are natural temples still for those
on me" (xix-xx). By challenging an uncritical impulse to re- Eternal though dethroned Deities,
cycle Romantic notions of classical Greek beauty, she calls at- Where from green altars flowers send up their incense:
tention to the precariousness of such notions: an observer This fount is one of them. . . (24-39)
who stands in the space endorsed by the ideologues of En
glish Hellenism will see the pale nymph in the mirror. But Long after the age of Greece, the flourishing age of Greece
move just a little, and the reflection changes. worship has passed away. Landon's young hunter, fearing to
"profane / The haunt of some immortal," recalls the young
While she looks skeptically at Romantic Hellenism, Keats, prefacing his Endymion with some trepidation, lest he
Landon nevertheless deems the idea of Greece a necessary belatedly dull the brightness of Greece. Landon, on the
fiction—a "supreme fiction."3 Hellenism was a foundational other hand, acquiesces in the remoteness of the past. For
myth upon which English culture had come to depend, an her, Greece exists in the post mortem realm of memory, and
avoidance of less desirable histories, and a Zeitgeist that com- despite new attempts at ancient storytelling, it defies resur
pelled aesthetic revaluations and ideological and physical rection: "The marble pillars are laid in the dust, / The
warfare in the name of restoring cultural integrity to modern golden shrine and its perfume are gone."
Greece. However, when Landon composed the poem in
1835, these wars were over. The exigencies of Philhellenism For Landon, the monumentality of Greece has decom
had subsided in 1832, when Greece officially declared sover- posed. Its symbols dissolve with time, remaining only as col
eignty at a convention in London, a city now swept up in do- lective memory, mapped onto a realm more organic than
mestic reform. Writers and artists continued to shape and be statuesque, "a spirit in the woods and flowers / Which ha[s] a
shaped by the idea of Greece throughout the nineteenth cen- Grecian memory." Again, Landon invites a distinction be
tury, well after the arrival in England of F.A. Wolf s "Homeric tween the substantive (the Greek) and the adjectival (the
Question," but by the 1840s, English Hellenist discourse took "Grecian"). She naturalizes the thematics of Hellenism, re
a critical turn as it absorbed a new wave of continental schol- placing its marble ruins with "natural temples": "The golden
arship (Turner 6). For Landon and her contemporaries, the shrine and its perfume are gone," but the Grecian memory
sting of Byron's death in the cause of Greek liberation was fills the void with "green altars." She de-Hellenizes Helle
gone, and much of the novelty of Hellenism had worn off. nism, insisting that it has less to do with Greece than with
greenness, a Wordsworthian impulse to disperse subjectivity
With the dissolution of the ideals that had underwrit- into nature. The poem contains unmistakable echoes of
ten Hellenist excess, all that could remain of Greece was an Wordsworth's "Nutting," especially his hazel trees that rise
archaeological and textual history unequal to the posturings "Tall and erect," protecting a "virgin scene" (19-21), and the
of a Hellenism it had never really inspired. The artifacts of belated and displaced sense of guilt that he too called "a
Greece were no match for the "artifice of Hellenism" (Gaull, spirit in the woods" (56). Like Wordsworth, Landon projects

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her anxieties onto an external, silent landscape, but whereas considered as articles of property" ( Critical Writings 99). In
he overcomes a momentary doubt that he confounds "pre her poem she rejects a neoclassicism premised on uncompli
sent feelings with the past" (49), in order to deliver a warning cated sexual femininity, which she represents with an ivory
to his listener (and thus to speak for the "spirit"), Landon skinned nymph, bathing after an innocent affair with a faun.
maintains the diffidence of "tenderness," rather than "true Instead of gazing into the fountain to see such an erotic fan
belief," granting no voice to the "spirit in the woods and flow tasy reflected (modern critics often refer to Romantic Helle
ers." Instead, her spirit's story remains unheard and un nism as "a mirror in which the age could see itself' [Webb
knowable: "some tale" that "Seems beautiful." 32]), her speaker turns away, and finds consolation in the
"green altars," which remain inanimate and remote. In turn
Landon's Hellenism encompasses both "love and
ing from an erotic "visible poetry" to a "Grecian memory"
grounded in nature, Landon dramatizes the shift from a Ro
grief," the idea of Greece, and the sense of loss it conveys.
The reviewer who found in her poems artillery against mantic Hellenism that embodies and objectifies feminine
"pseudo-Utilitarians," may have had lines twenty-eight characteristics
and (like the "classic fictions," treating femininity
twenty-nine of "The Thessalian Fountain" specifically in as "property"), to her own Hellenism, in which she disperses
mind: "The heart clings to old idolatry, / If not with truethe idea of Greece into non-proprietary organic metaphors.
She continues to aestheticize the "Grecian," and her floral
belief, with tenderness." Landon offers a rationale for Helle
imagery retains a feminine eroticism, but she resists the Ro
nism, "old idolatry," not on the basis of its utility, but rather
mantic Hellenist urge to personify, or ventriloquize. Such
its consolation, its "tenderness." Here is none of the pagan
impositions represent the disingenuous and domineering
spirituality of Shelley or Swinburne. Her Hellenism debunks
a Romantic ingenuousness she found untenable in 1835, "true
sup belief," that Landon counteracts with an affective
plying in its place a nostalgia for the grecian, rather than"tenderness."
the
Greek.

Landon struggles with a Hellenism of second thoughts.

Having undermined the scene with which she began Like Keats, Byron, and Shelley, she finds in the idea of
her poem, acknowledging its falsity and reestablishing it in Greece an appealing range of aesthetic and political values,
the name of "tenderness" rather than "true belief," Landon'sbut unlike her male predecessors, she cannot identify with
poem itself falls apart. The blank verse gives way to a line ofthem, not in the 1830s, not as a female poet with an acute
hexameter, and a final line of trimeter, suggesting that the sense of women's history. In her own schematic terms, she
poem, however coherent, is but a fragment. The genre of refuses to stand in the prescribed "single spot" before the
Romantic fragments is familiar enough; although Landon mirror of Romantic Hellenism, and this refusal is itself the
challenges the sincerity of Romantic Hellenism, she never hallmark of Landon's own Hellenism. For her the idea of
theless shares a Romantic belief in the inadequacy of words Greece is a voiceless spirit that resists substantiation, and thus
to convey meaning. As a formal convention of Hellenism, registers the priorities and desires (the "tenderness") of each
moreover, fragments have a special significance beyond the of its many authors. Many questions remain unanswered,
well-noted fragmentary Sapphic tradition. Since Greek rem most importantly, whether or not Landon's Hellenism was
nants represented fragments of an irrecoverable whole, the part of a larger trend among women writers. In attempting
Hellenizing memory was, by definition, synecdochal. Helle to answer this question another problem will emerge, as it
nism was a search for lost continuities, thus, for Percy Shel always does in Landon studies: her work has proven difficult
ley, "the ruins of a fine statue obscurely suggest [. . .] the to contextualize. To which narrative does it belong, late Ro
grandeur & perfection of the whole" (Goslee 2). Landon's mantic or early Victorian? Or, is she an author who resists
poetic fragment is resolutely unfragmented, a formal reiteraperiodization, and destabilizes narratives altogether? One
tion of her theory that whatever Greece has lost, the "Grecian thing is for certain: in her own poetry, she sought to
memory" will replenish. destabilize the narrative of Hellenism.

In "The Thessalian Fountain" Landon contests the Ro NOTES

mantic Hellenism she inherited, and offers an alternative. This essay is revised and adapted from a paper called " 'If not
Her objections stem partly from her aesthetic priorities as a true belief, with tenderness': Letitia Landon's Deviant Hellenism"

poet of the 1830s, one with a vexed relationship to Romantic presented at NASSR 2005 in Montreal and will appear in an
poetics.5 But the pale nymph, and the gendered configura
tion of a fountain surrounded by paternalistic trees, also
point to her dissatisfaction with Romantic Hellenism as a
shortsighted, masculine neoclassicism whose patrons femi
nized and eroticized the idea of Greece. From her reading
of Greek and Roman translations, Landon was aware of wo
men's status in the ancient world, commenting on the matter
in an essay on Sir Walter Scott, "there is none of this high
toned imagination in the classic fictions; women were then
extended study of nineteenth-century English Hellenism, dealing
with gender, and the aesthetics of condescension.
H follow Landon in using the term "grecian" rather than the
more substantive "Greek" because Winckelmann primarily examined
Roman copies of Greek statues, rather than originals.
2Landon borrowed from Spenser: lines 73-86 of the Prothala
mion present a scene of two Thessalian "Nymphes" with "snowie Fore

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heads" weaving garlands of fragrant flowers, but neither Spenser nor Discourse." The Wordsworth Circle 36.1 (2005) 2-5;
Dryden includes a fountain. Jenkyns, Richard. The Victorians and Ancient Greece.
1980; Keats, John. The Poems of John Keats. Ed. Jack Stil
3I follow Martin Aske and David Ferris in co-opting Wallace linger. 1978; Landon, Letitia Elizabeth. Critical Writ
Stevens's term. For more on the "supreme fiction" and Hellenism, ings. Ed. F.J. Sypher. 1996; . Letters. Ed. F.J.
Aske, 8-37. Sypher. 2001; . Poetical Works. Ed. F.J. Sy
pher.1990; . Selected Writings. Ed. Jerome Mc
4John Buxton notes that Landor, who frequently published in Gann and Daniel Riess. 1997; Lessing, Gotthold
Latin, "did not, like Shelley, wish his voice to be the trumpet of a Ephraim. Laocoön. Trans, and ed. Edward Allen Mc
prophecy; he was therefore not distressed by the deafness of the pop Cormick. 1962; Mellor, Anne. Romanticism and Gender.
ulace" (111). 1993; Pater, Walter. The Renaissance. Ed. Donald Hill.
1989; Peacock, Thomas Love. The Works of Thomas Love
5For an account of how Landon's work relates to earlier Ro Peacock. Ed. H.F.B. Brettsmith and C.E. Jones. 1924.
mantic writings, Mellor, 107-123. Schlegel, A.W. von. A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art
and Literature, tr.J. Black. 1815; Spenser, Edmund. The
WORKS CITED Shorter Poems. Ed. William Oram; Trippi, Peter, ed. J.W.
Waterhouse. Phaidon, 2002; Turner, Frank. The Greek
Aske, Martin. Keats and Hellenism: An Essay. 1985; Clarke,
Heritage in Victorian Britain. 1981; Webb, Timothy. En
G.W. Rediscovering Hellenism. 1989; Buxton, John. The
glish Romantic Hellenism, 1700-1824. 1982; Winck
Grecian Taste. 1978; Dryden, John. Complete Works, Ed.
elmann, Johann Joachim. Writings on Art, Selected &
H.T. Swedenberg, 1956; Ferris, David. Silent Ums: Ro
Edited by David Irwin. Trans, and ed. David Irwin. 1972;
manticism, Hellenism, Modernity. 2000; Gaull, Marilyn.
Wordsworth, William. Poetical Works. Ed. E. de Se
"Romans and Romanticism." The Wordsworth Circle 36.1
lincourt and H. Darbishire. 1940-49.
(2005) 15-20; Goslee, Nancy. "Shelley's Cosmopolitan

Wordsworth and the Ordnance Survey in

Ireland: "Dreaming O'er the Map of
Things"
Rachel Hewitt
Queen Mary, University of London

Wordsworth had been planning a visit to Ireland ever Descending, first I met that honoured Bard;
since his first meeting with the Irish Astronomer Royal, Wil- And gazing scarcely satisfied at length
liam Rowan Hamilton, in September, 1827. Introduced by A reverential longing; nor till night
Caesar Otway, author of Sketches in Ireland, whose book Had wrapped up long, and morning brought her star,
Wordsworth received that same year (Shaver 191), they were Ceased I to listen, or to pour my soul
on an excursion to Helvellyn, and, according to Hamilton, Forth in enthusiast talk, by the blandest mood
reluctant to part: "[Wordsworth] walked back with our party Of him encouraged. (46-7)
as far as their lodge; and then. . . I offered to walk back with
him, while my party proceeded to the hotel. This offer he Wordsworth described Hamilton as "a young man
accepted, and our conversation had become so interesting extraordinary genius" (Letters 5.120), and in a conver
that when we arrived at his house, a distance of about a mile, with Aubrey De Vere in 1831, as "singularly like Coler
he proposed to walk back with me on my way to Ambleside, a (41). Through letters, through Hamilton's visits to the
proposal which you may be sure that I did not reject; so far District and London, their friendship and intellec
from it, that when he came to turn once more towards his change lasted until Wordsworth's death, and extended to
home, I also turned once more along with him. It was very entire family; Hamilton was also friends with Edwa
late when I reached the hotel after all this walking" (Graves, linan, Dora's husband, and became godfather to
1.264). Afterwards, Wordsworth described himself as "over worth's grandson,
stimulated" (5.120) by the conversauon, while Hamilton
wrote "Recollections of Wordsworth": In late August, 1829, two years after their first meeting,
Wordsworth began his first and only visit to Ireland. With a
. . . that earliest evening, when, from top, friend, John Marshall, he sailed from Holyhead to Dublin
Mist-clad, of old Helvellyn, image-fraught, Bay, then to the Dunsink Observatory in Castleknock, south

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