AUTOGRAPH QUOTATION SIGNED (AQS)

5 July 1815. Framed Manuscript. Not examined out of the frame but appears to be Fine. A one-page (8" x 10") lengthy AUTOGRAPH QUOTATION SIGNED by Wordsworth from a poem by Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke), a contemporary and friend of poet Philip Sidney. In full:

"The chief use, then in Man of that he knows
Is his painstaking for the good of all;
Not fleshly weeping for our own made woes,
Not laughing from a melancholy gall,
Not hating from a Soul that overflows
In bitterness, breathed forth from inward thrall;
But sweetly rather to ease, loose, or bind,
As need requires, this frail, fallen human kind.

Lord Brooke./Peter House July 5th 1815/Wm Wordsworth."

It is clear why Wordsworth might have chosen these words of Brooke's--"Man's Service" from A TREATISE OF HUMANE LEARNING--to write as the two shared the notion that while knowledge might bring happiness, it also increases susceptibility to suffering and self-torment. Matted and framed with an engraved portrait of Wordsworth to an overall size of 22" x 18".



Fulke Greville (1554-1628) was a close friend of Sir Philip Sidney and a great patron of letters. Most of his works were not published until after his murder by a servant who thought he had been omitted from his master’s will. Some believe Greville is the true author of several plays attributed to William Shakespeare.