Or on Mouthey, his friend, without taking to flight.
Lady Bluem. Sir, your taste is too common; but time and posterity
Will right these great men, and this age's severity100
Become its reproach.
Ink.I've no sort of objection,
So I'm not of the party to take the infection.
Lady Blueb. Perhaps you have doubts that they ever will take?
Ink. Not at all; on the contrary, those of the lake
Have taken already, and still will continue
To take—what they can, from a groat to a guinea,
Of pension or place;—but the subject's a bore.
Lady Bluem. Well, sir, the time's coming.
Ink.Scamp! don't you feel sore?
What say you to this?
Scamp.They have merit, I own;
Though their system's absurdity keeps it unknown.110
Ink. Then why not unearth it in one of your lectures?
Scamp. It is only time past which comes under my strictures.
Lady Blueb. Come, a truce with all tartness;—the joy of my heart
Is to see Nature's triumph o'er all that is art.
Wild Nature!—Grand Shakespeare!
Both.And down Aristotle!
Lady Bluem. Sir George[1] thinks exactly with Lady Bluebottle:
- ↑ [Sir George Beaumont, Bart., of Coleorton, Leicestershire (1753-1827), landscape-painter, art critic, and picture-collector, one of the founders of the National Gallery, married, in 1778, Margaret Willis, granddaughter of Chief Justice Willis. She corresponded with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and with Coleridge (see Memorials of Coleorton, 1888). Coleridge visited the Beaumonts for the first time at Dunmore, in 1804. "I was not received here," he tells Wordsworth, "with mere kindness; I was welcomed almost as you welcomed me when first I visited you at Racedown" (Letters of S. T. Coleridge, 1895, ii. 459). Scott (Memoirs of the Life, etc., 1838, ii. 11) describes Sir George Beaumont as "by far the most sensible and pleasing man I ever knew, kind, too, in his nature, and generous and gentle in society.... He was the great friend of Wordsworth, and understood his poetry."]
- ↑ [It was not Wordsworth's patron, William Lord Lonsdale, but
