"AN IDLER IN THE LAND." go THE EDITOR OF THE
"SPECTATOR.") Sfit,—Your correspondent has kindly pointed out my careless error in referring the well-known phrase to anything but to
Wordsworth's "Poet's Epitaph." Yet—avoiding, of course, the quotation of a phrase of another's—I meant, and still mean, to allude to Mr. Lowell's "Shepherd of King Admetus :"— "They knew not how he learned at all, For idly, hour by hour, He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, And mused upon a flower?'
The two poems (1799 and 1842) were once by young writers ;
but, each being judged by his then future career, the instinctive decision was made that Wordsworth, known to be vowed to, "the Genius of Solitude," was less acceptable as a witness than he who—in several senses—has made the most of both worlds. Wordsworth, however, has had his revenge, and, though shut out from allusion most deliberately, has contrived to convict
of erroneous quotation one who is, Sir, &c., THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE.
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