DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

1769-1852.

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. Despatch, 1815.

It is very true that I have said that I considered Napoleon's presence in the field equal to forty thousand men in the balance. This is a very loose way of talking; but the idea is a very different one from that of his presence at a battle being equal to a reinforcement of forty thousand men. Mem. by the Duke,1 Sept. 18, 1836.

Circumstances over which I have no control.2

8

I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life. Upon seeing the first Reformed Parliament.

There is no mistake; there has been no mistake; and there shall be no mistake.1

Letter to Mr. Huskisson.

JOHN TOBIN. 1770-1804.

The man that lays his hand upon a woman,
Save in the way of kindness, is a wretch
Whom 't were gross flattery to name a coward.
The Honeymoon. Act ii. Sc. 1.
She's adorned

Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely,—
The truest mirror that an honest wife
Can see her beauty in.

Act iii. Sc. 4.

1 STANHOPE: Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, p. 81.

2 This phrase was first used by the Duke of Wellington in a letter, about 1839 or 1840. SALA: Echoes of the Week, in London Illustrated News, Aug. 23, 1884.

8 Sir William Fraser, in "Words on Wellington " (1889), p. 12, says this phrase originated with the Duke. Captain Gronow, in his "Recollections," says it originated with the Duke of York, second son of George III., about 1817.

4 This gave rise to the slang expression, "And no mistake." - Words on Wellington, p. 122.

GEORGE CANNING. 1770–1827.

Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir.
The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.

I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first.

So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides
The Derby dilly, carrying three INSIDES.

Ibid.

The Loves of the Triangles. Line 178.

And finds, with keen, discriminating sight,
Black's not so black, nor white so very white.

New Morality.

Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet, perhaps may turn his blow!
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend! 1

Ibid.

I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.

The King's Message, Dec. 12, 1826.

No, here's to the pilot that weathered the storm!

1 "Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies." The French Ana assign to Maréchal Villars this aphorism when taking leave of Louis XIV.

2 See Shakespeare, page 74.

JOSEPH HOPKINSON. 1770-1842.

Hail, Columbia! happy land!

Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!

Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,

Enjoyed the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,

Let its altar reach the skies!

Hail, Columbia !

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.1 1770-1850.

Oh, be wiser thou!

Instructed that true knowledge leads to love.

Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree.

And homeless near a thousand homes I stood,
And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.

Guilt and Sorrow. Stanza 41.

Action is transitory, a step, a blow;
The motion of a muscle, this way or that.

The Borderers. Act iii.

Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.2

Act iv. Sc. 2.

1 Coleridge said to Wordsworth ("Memoirs" by his nephew, vol. ii. p. 74), Since Milton, I know of no poet with so many felicities and unforgettable lines and stanzas as you."

2 The intellectual power, through words and things,

Went sounding on a dim and perilous way!

The Excursion, book iii.

A simple child

That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

mind

O Reader! had you in your
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find

A tale in everything.

I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;

Alas! the gratitude of men

Hath oftener left me mourning.

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

We are Seven.

Simon Lee.

Ibid.

Lines written in Early Spring.

And 't is my faith, that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

Ibid.

Expostulation and Reply.

Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you'll grow double!

Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks!
Why all this toil and trouble?

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

The Tables Turned.

Ibid.

Ibid.

The bane of all that dread the Devil.

The Idiot Boy.

Sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.

Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

That blessed mood,

In which the burden of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened.

Ibid.

Ibid.

The fretful stir

Ibid.

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world.
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart.

The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me

An appetite, a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm

By thoughts supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.

But hearing oftentimes.

The still, sad music of humanity.

A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels

Ibid.

Ibid.

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Ibid.

Knowing that Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her.

Ibid.