Читать книгу The Old Church Clock онлайн

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The author has thus put the reader in possession of some of the reasons why the character of Robert Walker should have been one of especial interest to himself: and he has now only to explain the artifice which has been employed, in order that the public might have it before them in all its beauty.

It is well known to all the readers of Wordsworth, that in addition to the sketch which he has drawn of this primitive pastor in his great poem of the Excursion, he has, in his notes to his sonnets on the River Duddon, given a prose history of his life, from materials supplied by the family, in language of the utmost simplicity and beauty. This little memoir is, of course, locked up from the generality of readers in the somewhat costly volumes of Mr. Wordsworth’s works; and the author has often wished that it were reprinted in a separate form, for general perusal, as a great man’s “Records of a Good man’s life.” Happening then, as has already been said, to place the birth of his hero in the North, the thought occurred to him so far to attempt a sketch of the character of Robert Walker, as to justify him, in his own eyes, in presenting to the Poet the request (even now an unreasonable one) that he would permit his own true history of the Patriarch to accompany this little narrative into the world. With this request Mr. Wordsworth has kindly complied; thus conferring on the author a favour in addition to many others previously received; and affording to his reader the comfortable assurance that, in purchasing this otherwise meagre production, he will at least receive, in the following memoir alone, something well worth his money.