DEAR Miss
Wordsworth, You will think me negligent, but I wanted to see
more of Willy, before I ventured to
express a prediction. Till yesterday I had barely seen
him—Virgilium Tantum
Vidi—but yesterday he gave us his small company to a
bullock’s heart—and I can pronounce him a lad of promise. He is no pedant
nor bookworm, so far I can answer. Perhaps he has hitherto paid too little
attention to other men’s inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the “natural sprouts of
his own.” But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I
am ill at remembering other people’s bon mots, but the following are a
few. Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no mountains,
we had a fine river at least, which was a Touch of the Comparative, but then he
added, in a strain which augured less for his future abilities as a Political
Economist, that he supposed they must take at least a pound a week Toll. Like a
curious naturalist he inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This
being satisfactorily answered, he put another question as to the flux and
reflux, which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that
she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered
something about its getting up an hour sooner and sooner every day, he sagely
replied, “Then it must come to the same thing at last” which
was a speech worthy of an infant Halley!
The Lion in the ’Change by no means came up to his ideal standard. So
impossible it is for Nature in any of her works to come up to the standard of a
child’s imagination. The whelps (Lionets) he was sorry to find were dead,
and on particular enquiry his old friend the Ouran Outang had gone the way of
all flesh also. The grand Tiger was also sick, and expected in no short time to
exchange this transitory world for another—or none. But again, there was a
Golden Eagle (I do not mean that of Charing) which did much arride and console
him. William’s genius, I take it, leans a little to
the figurative, for being at play at Tricktrack (a kind of minor Billiard-table
which we keep for smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our own mature fatigues
with taking a hand at), not being able to hit a ball he had iterate aimed at,
he cried out, “I cannot hit that beast”. Now the balls are
usually called men, but he felicitously hit upon a middle term, a term of
approximation and imaginative reconciliation, a something where the two ends,
of the brute matter (ivory) and their human and rather violent
| 1819 | WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, JR. | 535 |
It is hard to discern the Oak in the Acorn, or a Temple like St. Paul’s in the first stone which is laid, nor can I quite prefigure what destination the genius of William Minor hath to take. Some few hints I have set down, to guide my future observations. He hath the power of calculation in no ordinary degree for a chit. He combineth figures, after the first boggle, rapidly. As in the Tricktrack board, where the hits are figured, at first he did not perceive that 15 and 7 made 22, but by a little use he could combine 8 with 25—and 33 again with 16, which approacheth something in kind (far let me be from flattering him by saying in degree) to that of the famous American boy. I am sometimes inclined to think I perceive the future satirist in him, for he hath a sub-sardonic smile which bursteth out upon occasion, as when he was asked if London were as big as Ambleside, and indeed no other answer was given, or proper to be given, to so ensnaring and provoking a question. In the contour of scull certainly I discern something paternal. But whether in all respects the future man shall transcend his father’s fame, Time the trier of geniuses must decide. Be it pronounced peremptorily at present, that Willy is a well-mannerd child, and though no great student, hath yet a lively eye for things that lie before him. Given in haste from my desk at Leadenhall. Your’s and yours’ most sincerely
