Sir
George was an amateur painter of considerable merit, and his friendship
was undoubtedly of service to Wordsworth in making him familiar with the
laws of a sister art and thus contributing to enlarge the sympathies of
his criticism, the tendency of which was toward too great exclusiveness.
Sir George Beaumont, dying in 1827, did not forego his regard for the
poet, but contrived to hold his affection in mortmain by the legacy of an
annuity of L100, to defray the charges of a yearly journey.
In March, 1805, the poet's brother, John, lost his life by the shipwreck
of the Abergavenny East-Indiaman, of which he was captain. He was a man
of great purity and integrity, and sacrificed himself to his sense of
duty by refusing to leave the ship till it was impossible to save him.
Wordsworth was deeply attached to him, and felt such grief at his death
as only solitary natures like his are capable of, though mitigated by a
sense of the heroism which was the cause of it. The need of mental
activity as affording an outlet to intense emotion may account for the
great productiveness of this and the following year. He now completed
"The Prelude," wrote "The Wagoner," and increased the number of his
smaller poems enough to fill two volumes, which were published in 1807.
This collection, which contained some of the most beautiful of his
shorter pieces, and among others the incomparable Odes to Duty and on
Immortality, did not reach a second edition till 1815.
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