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 Item Generation
for
Test Development
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
 Item Generation
for
Test Development

Edited by

Sidney H. Irvine
University of Plymouth

Patrick C. Kyllonen
Air Force Research Laboratory and
EducationalTestingService

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

London Jersey 2002
New Mahwah,
The final camera copy for this work was prepared by the editors
and therefore the publisher takes no responsibility for consistency
or correctness of typographical style. However, this arrangement
helps to make publication of this kindof scholarship possible.

Copyright @ 2002 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in
any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other
means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.. Publishers

10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430

Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN: 0-8058-3441-9

Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper,

and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.
Printed in the United States of America
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Thls book is dedicated to the memory of

Samuel J. Messick

A great scientist, an extraordinary colleague,

and a good friend
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Contributors

Russell G. Almond Patrick C. Icyllonen

Educational TestingServiee A i r Force Research Lcrborutory and
E ducrrtional Testing ServiLx
Dave Bartram
S H L Group Charles Lewis
Educational TestingService
Isaac I. Bejar
E dumtional TestingService Bernd Lorenz
DLR Geman Aerospace Center
Randy E. Bennett
Educutional TestingService Robert J. Mdevy
Educational TestingService
Peter Bradon
Universzg ofI’&mouth, UK Rtck Morgan
Educutional TestingService
Ian Dennis
Universip ofl’&nouth, UK Stephen Newstead
Universip oj’l’&mouth, UK
Susan E. Embretson
Universip of Kunsus Ihthleen M. Sheehan
Educational TestingService
Mary I<. Enright
Educutionul TestingService Mark K. Singley
IBM TJ. Watson Reseurch Center
Jonathan Evans
Universig oj’I’&mouth, UK Linda S. Steinberg
Educational TestingService
IUaus-Martin Goeters
D L K German A4ero~pace
Center Len Swanson
Educutionul TesfznL!Service
Simon Nandley
University oj‘I’/jmouth, UK Howard Wainer
National Board of Medical Examiners
Lutz F. Hornke
.4a~.henUnzvedy of Technology David Wright
Univetisip Of‘Plymouth,UK
Sidney H. Imine
University of Pbmouth, UK

vii
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Contents

Contributors vii
...
Foreword x111
Henry Braun
Item Generationfor Test Development: An Introduction xv
Sidney H . Imine
Acknowledgments xxvii
Prologue and Epilogue: Remembering SamuelJ. Messick xxix

PART I: PSYCHOMETRIC AND COGNITIVE THEORY

OF ITEM GENERATION

ChapterOne
The Foundationsof Item Generationfor Mass Testing 3
Sidney H. Imine

Chapter Two
Using the Psychologyof Reasoning to Predict the Difficulty 35
of Analytical Reasoning Problems
Stephen Newstead, Peter Bradon, Simon Handley, Jonathan Evans,
and Ian Dennis

ChapterThree
Approaches to Modeling Item-Generative Tests 53
Ian Dennis, Simon Handley, Peter Bradon,
Jonathan Evans,and Stephen Newstead

Discussant Remarks 73
Len Swanson

Discussion 77

ix
Contents

Contributors vii
...
Foreword x111
Henry Braun
Item Generationfor Test Development: An Introduction xv
Sidney H . Imine
Acknowledgments xxvii
Prologue and Epilogue: Remembering SamuelJ. Messick xxix

PART I: PSYCHOMETRIC AND COGNITIVE THEORY

OF ITEM GENERATION

ChapterOne
The Foundationsof Item Generationfor Mass Testing 3
Sidney H. Imine

Chapter Two
Using the Psychologyof Reasoning to Predict the Difficulty 35
of Analytical Reasoning Problems
Stephen Newstead, Peter Bradon, Simon Handley, Jonathan Evans,
and Ian Dennis

ChapterThree
Approaches to Modeling Item-Generative Tests 53
Ian Dennis, Simon Handley, Peter Bradon,
Jonathan Evans,and Stephen Newstead

Discussant Remarks 73
Len Swanson

Discussion 77

ix
x Contents

PART 11: CONSTRUCT-ORIENTED APPROACHES

TO ITEM GENERATION

ChapterFour
On the Roles of Task Model Variables in Assessment Design 97
Robert J. Mislevy, Linda S. Steinberg, and
Russell G. Almond

Chapter Five
Modeling the Difficultyof Quantitative Reasoning Items: I29
Implications for Item Generation
Mary K. Enright and Kathleen M.Sheehan

Chapter Six
Item-Generation
Models
for
Higher
Order
Cognitive
Functions
159
Lutz F. Hornke

Discussant Remarks 179

Charles Lewis

Discussion 187

PART 111: FROMTHEORYTOIMPLEMENTATION

Chapter Seven
Generative Testing: From Conception
to Implementation 199
Isaac I. Bejar

Chapter Eight
Generating
Abstract
Reasoning
Items
With
Cognitive
Theory
219
Susan E, Enlbretson

Chapter Nine
Item Generation for Repeated Testing
of Human Performance 25 1
Patrick C. Kyllonen

ChapterTen
Scoring TestsWhen Items HaveBeen Generated 277
David Wright
 Contents xi

Chapter Eleven
On the Automatic Generationof Test Items: Some Whens, 287
Whys, andHows
Howard Wainer

PARTIV:APPLICATIONS OF ITEM-GENERATIVE
PRINCIPLES

Chapter Twelve
The MICROPAT Pilot Selection Battery: Applications 317
of Generative Techniques for Item-Based and Task-
Based Tests
Dave Bartram

ChapterThirteen
On the Implementationof Item-Generation Principles 339
for the Designof Aptitude Testingin Aviation
Klaus-Martin Goeters and B e d Lorenz

ChapterFourteen
of Schema Theory
Item Generation and Beyond: Applications 36 1
to Mathematics Assessment
Mark K. Singley and Randy E. Bennett

Discussant Remarks 385

Rick Morgan

Discussion 39 1

AuthorIndex 399

Subject Index 405

Aboutthe Editors 41 1
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Foreword

It is my pleasure to introduce this landmark volume on item generation. It

presents much of the best thinlung and current research of many of the
leaders in the field. The conference on which this volume is based was
jointly sponsored by the Air Force human research laboratory, through the
good offices of Patrick Kyllonen (now at ETS) and by ETS Research. The
measurement community owes both organizations a vote ofthanks.
This conference was conceivcd and organized by Sidney Imine, and the
late Sam Messick. Sam’s untimely death just a month before the conference
left us all bereft. We lost a great scientist, an estraordlnary colleague, and a
wonderful friend. Sam had a longstanding interest in item generation, and
the talk that he
intended to present would certainly have proved
Illuminating. Unfortunately his Illness, starting in the September beforc the
conference, prevented him from realizing his plans, and we had to make
our way without his p d a n c e . It is also most appropriate to recognize three
very important women in Sam’s life: Betty Messick, his wife: Ann Jungblut,
his longtime research partner who died just a few months before Sam; and
Kathy Howell, his adrmnistrative assistant. Samwould be the first to
acknowledge his debt to all of themand we should do no less. I want
especially to thankKathy Howell, who labored mightdy under trying
circumstances to help bring the conference together and was instrumental
in assisting the edltors in seeing this volume to publication.
At first blush, the topic of this conference appears to be s o technical, so
esoteric, that it could notbe of general interest or concern. Actually, I think
nothing could be further from the truth. It’s certainly the case that the topic
is technical, but I think it has important implications for anyone who is
concerned with testing, or touched by testing, andthat is just about
everyone. Butsome of the reasons for this interest may not be entirely
obvious. I believe we have to consider item generation in the contest of the
general trajectory of test design and test construction. In the future, test
developers are going to have to become more responsive to the comples,
andoften competing,demandsthat societyplaces on us-and this, I
predlct, d force the design process to become both more dlsciplined and
more innovative. What is true for test design, must also betrueofthe
elementsthat g v e a test substance, namely items. Certainly atETSthe
advent of continuous testing through technology, CBT we call it, has placed
increased demands on item capacity,primarily because of concerns with
security. We also have learned that while good items are a necessity,
espcnsive items arc a luxury we can ill-afford. Economic reality has forced

...
x111
xiv Foreword

us to csamine, or re-examine, a central activity that we have long thought of

as an honorable craft. And so this conference comes, for us at least, at a
very timely moment.
We shall see that research efforts in this area have a long history and, in
the first chapter, we wdl be ably conducted ona tour of that history, by one
of its founders. We d learn that a far-seeing few recognized the value in
item generation, quite apart from its potential economic returns: ‘Thatin
combination with technology delivery, it makes possible testing paradtgms
that were heretofore impossible. But I want to drawyour attention to
another aspect of this enterprise. Principled item generation must depend
on deep understandng of what is being done. As we are challcngcd with
new content domains and new formats, we WLLl have to extend oura b h q to
describe and delineate the targets of the generation engne, as wellas to
establish sources of dtfficulty and their relative magnitude. Simply put, once
this
is done there wdl be a muchmore substantial and defensible
foundation for asserting the construct validty of ourtests than ever before.
It wdl also enable us to convey much more useful information about a
canddate’s performance, particularly if this work has been embedded in a
test that is designed for such a purpose.
Further progress d l depend on the dynamic interplay between
theoretical developments and careful empirical work. The classic version of
the scientific method wdl stand us in good stead here. F d u r e s in predction
wdl be welcomed, at least to some extent, because they wdl be of p a t
value in signaling gaps in our understandng, and lead eventually to greatly
strengthened theory. Pushing up against the boundaries urlll be an essential
strategy and expecting serendipity, quite sensible. The conference, and this
volume, wdl be seen to have both marked an important rmlestone in the
field and provided the impetusforfurther rapid development.It is a
privilege for me to have been a small part of this enterprise.

Henry Braun
Educational Testing Service
Item Generation for Test
Development: An Introduction

Sidney H. Irvine
Universip of pbmotltb

The avowed aim of any introduction to a book of contributed chapters is a

conceptual voyagefueled and provisioned by indlvidual contributions. It
may often and perhaps should in this particular instance provide, through
the spyglass of hindsight, an alternative to following the order in which the
late Samuel Messick drewup theprogram of events thatmarked the
invitational seminar held in theHenry Chauncey ConferenceCenter of
Educational Testing Service inOctober, 1998. Here,then, is one such
option, offered as a definition of the field, in the h t e d sense of a key to its
understanding.
To define item-generation theory is somewhat easier than attempting to
define all-embracing constructs such as intelhgence or personality because it
has a much less ambitious role. A concept that grew out ofearly attempts to
harnesscomputer technology tothe production, as distinct fromthe
administrationandscoring of tests, item generation had noportentous
mentionuntdabout fifteenyears ago. It therefore has neither long-
established nor indeed any immediate rivals. T o bring the concept to life,
this volume contains accounts of work by people who pioneered attempts
to generate items for tests. In such circumstances contributors offer
definitions that produce a key to understandmg;and their empirical
materials reveal ostensive and operational definitions in practice.

UNDERSTANDING ITEM GENERATION:

ORIGINS AND SYNTACTICS

Cronbach’s (1957) conception of the two fundamentally dfferent scientific

dlsciplines of psychologcal enquvy is an essential embarkation point. He
characterized these dlsciphes as the dscovery of main effects through
controlledexperimentation with cognitive tasks; andthe exploration of
individual differences apparent in psychometric test scores. One branch of
the dlscipline relies on small numbers of subjects and determinesthe
presence or absence of main effects andinteractions on tasks through
analysis of variance. Theother requires large subjectpools toproduce

XV
xvi Irvine

reliable and robust latent structures and regression equations that can stand
up to validtty replications in all lunds ofdtfferentcontexts, cultural or
dtspositional. Cronbach's goal of a unified main line approach is attainable
in the development of item-generative tests.
How work in item generation has fostered a unified dtscipline of
psychology is a major feature of this volume. Readers wdl find
o v e r w h e h n g evidence of confluence in the pioneeringitem-generation
modelsof authors Bartram, Bejar, Goeters,Hornke,and Irvine, and in
second-generation developments characterized in the chapters by Dennis,
Embretson, Kyllonen, and Newstead; but not confined to their work as one
observes later in this introduction.
Perhaps the obvious and main departure from traditional test
construction, which may be described as a technology with an unendtng
sequence of empirical questions, is theemergence of a basis foritem-
construction requiring mentalmodels. Mental models are founded in theory:
and test items have become increasingly dependent on the verification of
cognitive models in whole or part. These have been sought, applied, and
clarified using dtfferent approaches to item generation owing very little to
each otherbut contributing essential parts of a newtheory of test
development.
Good illustrations ofhow the earliest adventures in itemgeneration
could influence later test development are immedtately evident in the
chapters written byBejar and Hornke. Both were concerned to generate
figtrral' items. Bejar's work in the 1980s (Bejar, 1986a, l986b, 1986c)was
based on two unique and seminal approaches. First, he stipulated that to
construct items a l o g d syntax, or grammar was essential. This made explicit
the need for a verifiable internal logic used by the computer to produce
items. Second, he applied an objective method (the Hough [1962]
transform) to produce an external, computer-drivenreferentforitem
dtfficulty based on figural complexity. With these two original moves, Bejar
providedan ear4definition of theprocess of itemgeneration that was an
indispensable key to its understandtng. He also based test development of
spatial orientation items derived from three-dtmensional representations on
Roger Shepard's chronometricmodels (Shepard & Metzler, 1971), using
that paradtgm as a foundation for m a l n g items progressively more dtfficult
to solve. He thus used two dtfferent methods for item construction and
subsequent verification-one a machine-driven algorithm and the other a
specific mental model based in time to complete an item (see also Bejar &
 Introductionxvii

Yocom, 1991). In doing t h s he was some years ahead of practice and

combined in one series the two basic approaches to item generation
described in the chapter by Dennis.
Hornkeand Habon’s (1986)equally portentouscontributionto the
generation of complex figural tests of inference was published at the same
time as Bejar’searly reports,althoughthe field work was independently
completed in Germany much earlier. The scale of the research is
astonishingly broad.Talung Matrixtype item features as the universe,
Hornke devised a population of some 600 items. The item features were
constructed from a-priori rules based on research findmgs about cognitive
process and inferences about their relation to item difficulty. After testing
more than 7,000 subjects, a set of 450 items was retained. Cognitive
operations conceived as main effects on item difficulty explained item-
response parameters well. Hornke summarizes this approach as having hvo
outcomes, unifying cognitive and psychometric models and freeing “item
construction from item writer idtosyncrasies” (loc.cit. p. 369). This
quotation foreshadowed the need to provide tools for item-writers,
exemplified by the work of Singley and Bennett in this volume, and which
we have defined as “the third way.”
Today, the complex cognitive demandsof Matrix itemsare now
becoming fully understood because of his approach; and these demands are
furtherdemonstrated in Susan Embretson’s (1995, 1996) more recent
experiments involving exemplary protocols with these item types. Even so,
herworkand Hornke’s uncovers no complete delineation of all of the
mental operations employed in the solution of matrix items. Nevertheless,
their successful efforts to generate the items from a common grounding in
cognitive functions have left a permanentcontribution to psychological
theory. They demonstrate the complete inadequacy of psychometric 3 as a
construct for a-priori item construction of items that have had their claim
to recognition, or perhaps notoriety, as stipulated nonverbulg markers. As a
consequence of their work, one understands more about the theoretical
limits of broad constructs like 3. Such primitive2 explanatory constructs now
require detaded redefinition in cognitive terms before they can be
understood to the point of providing the basis for consistent operational
definition through item construction. Embretson and Hornke prove that
this harmony occurs in A-loaded figural tests only when items are generated
to specify individualdtfferences in their constituent cognitive m ‘l rkers.
One of the explicit efforts to predefine both cognitive and psychometric
syntactics for item-generation in the mid-1980s can be seen in Irvine’s

2 Primitive is used hcrc in the sensc of cxplanatory but incapable of further explanation. 11s a
type of unitary scmantic entity it prcscnts barricrs to furthcr decomposition and explanation.
xviiiIrvine

review chapter of the published efforts of his colleagues at the University of

Plymouth (Imine, Dann, & Anderson, 1990; Imine, Dann, & Evans, 1987).
They started in 1986 with the aim of combining the work of Carroll (1976,
1980, 1983) on psychometric tests as cognitive tasks with known current
models of cognitive hnctioning. They deduced and had confirmation from
co-operation with Kyllonen and the late Raymond Christal (Christal, 1987;
Kyllonen & Christal, 1988; Kyllonen & Christal,1989) that Baddeley's
(Baddeley, 1968; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974) work on the role of worhng
memory in cognitive tasks was central to their aims. They knew, because of
Jonathan Evans's direct involvement, that the results of cognitive modeling
of deductive reasoning tasks (Evans, 1982) was almost immedlately
transferable to the construction of psychometric tests. From this and their
own experimental work, the inference that the dlscovery of consistent main
effects would effectively point the way to prediction of item difficulty was a
short stride. In fact,they began their test construction as a series of
experiments to verifyin item types certain main effects found in generic
cognitive tasks widely known in the literature (see pp. 14-15) ). Imine called
these main effects as they were introduced to thegrammar of item
construction rudiub. These were the essential constituentsthat Bejar
predlcated as a requirement ofthe system. The grammar wasbuilt to
produce computer-delivered and paper-and-pencil analogues of the test
items. By 1992, the system was operational throughout the United
IOngdom with each army recruit undertahng a unique version of cach o f
the tests, known as the British Army Recruit Battery (BARB).
In the course of their work, they realized that to sample extensively and
reliably the processes involved in item completion, items had to seem
dlfferent even theyif remained the same
beneath their surface
characteristics. Changes in these necessary surface characteristics were
defined as incidentuls. They were indeed supposed to be only incidental to
the delivery of items whose cogtutive demands could be cbunged by rudicub
derived from models of cognitive competence.' It is a fundamental part of
the grammar of test generation required by Bejar. The dlscovery of these
radlcals and their subsequent use is witnessed in large-scale construction
attempts by Bartram and Goeters. This emphasis is central to the first of
three main approaches to generating items.

3 'I'his same andfundamentaldistinction betwccn aspects of items thataffect and hence

serve to predict their difficulty and those that do not, is charactcrized by Dennis as the
diffcrcnce between confmhg and ?tot!-confmhg aspects of items. Irvinc and Dennis arrivc at
two different terms for precisely the same distinction.
 I n t r o d u c t i o n xix

RUNNING IT U P T H E FLAGPOLE
TO SEE IF IT WOULD FLY

If the radical-incidentallstinctions were not immelately explicit in other

large-scale operational efforts to generate items, such as those described in
the chapters by Bartram and Goeters, they were certainly implicit. Both of
these authors dLtected nationally funded efforts at constructing a battery of
tests for pilot and aviator selection. They required parallel forms of tests,
some of which in Bartram’s battery, were adaptive from the outset. This is
Bartram’ssignal contribution to early computer-delivered tests. Bartram
was able to be adaptive because he went straight to machine delivery, using
a relatively portable system with outfdes recordmg accuracy and latency.
Bartram’s training in cognltivepsychologyis evident in mostof the
machine-delivered tasks,particularly those demonstrating coordtnation of
hand and eye that were created, and whose dtfficulty was governed by, a
control mechanism. In others, conventional pilot-selection wisdom is the
basis for test construction.
In these characteristics the mcropat system described by Bartram (1987)
has much in common with the comprehensive testing r e p e n practised in
Hamburg in Goeters’ laboratory. Goeters, however, keptmachine-based
testing forsecondary stage selection, relying on inexpensive paper-and-
pencil versions for first-phase exclusion. The parallelism of the paper-and-
pencil test forms is amply demonstrated in Goeters and Rathje (1992). The
PARAT system, as it wascalled, had goals in common with other large-
scale fEst stage screening batteries, such as BARB, the British Army Recruit
Battery. These included the lstribution of pretest information to ensure
knowledge of expectations, computer generation of an infinite number of
parallel tests, and the pursuit of equity for applicants to h m t the effects of
language and educational dtfferences.
This account by Goeters and his team shows that for the first time open
testing was considered a real possibhty because the dsclosure of one form
of a test I d not imply the construction of a new one at great expense and
inconvenience. The new forms were already avdableand needed no
restandardzation. In short. technical advance became permanently linked
with the desiderata of cost-benefits, administrative convenience, and
political defensibhty. However, in case one maybelieve that all such
problems have been solved by the avdabhty of multiple parallel forms,
Dennis’s chapter asserts thatwithout the adoption of very sophisticated
models of test generation, the codes for item generation can be derived
from the release of items and, should these items be seen to be open to
strategc solutions, there would be continuedworkfor the test-coaching
industry.
xxIrvine

Dennis’s chapter has to be read alongside that of Newstead, and both,

preferably, after dlgesting the accounts of earlier attempts by Bejar, Hornke,
Imine, Bartram, and Goeters to provide a universe of discourse. Their work
also begins from an applied problem, the creation of many reasoning items;
but the flagpolehas shifted ground.Both Newstead andDennis are
experimental cognitive psychologists for whom item
generation is
essentially a strategic application. Dennis in particular offers a syntactic
alternative to any generative approach that fmt finds radlcal main effects
and proceeds to generate items from these and a number of incidentals. H e
characterizes this alternative, second approach, as a model semanh system.
Simply put, if an item has a number of semantic elements, the possible
number of variants is n! To become a candldate for generation in Dennis’s
universe, the item has first to pass an internal test of logical consistency as
defined by a computer-based algorithm. The emergence of radicalsis
seconrkrty to the item passing this “grammatical” test. In the other approach,
the identification of radlcals is primary.
Onenowbegns to see howimportant Bejar’s insistence on the
derivation of an item grammar has become in the understandmg of the
second approach. It is foreshadowed by the early work of Bejarhimself
with the Hough transform,andtheinstrumentalcontributionstoitem
generation in the BARB system by Evans (Irvine, Dann, & Evans, 1987)
using POPLOG to ensure the internal logical consistency of two and three
term transitive inference items. Both of these early attempts point to the
eventual emergence of the second, important and complementary approach
to item generation encouraged by Dennis and Newstead.
New opportunities for item generation are suggested by Kyllonen and
Chaiken in their approach to repeated-measures testing of cognitive
performance. First, they offer a somewhat unique perspective on item
generation based upon a theory of measurement that is already established
(the CAM Model). Examples of radlcal and incidental variation are given
from this coherent structure. In the second part of the chapter they shift
groundfrom dlfficulty written intothe items byradical elements to
constructing relatively easy items made dlfficult by external stressors such as
time constraints.They also examine the effect of dlspositional variables
includmg experimentally induced fatigue and dlsruption of cognitive
function through sleep deprivation or abrupt change in sleep patterns, such
as those induced by jet lag. They assert that special types of items have to
be generated for use in such testing models. Empirical evidence for the use
of item-generative multiple parallel forms in repeated measures testing is
provided in Imine’s case study of a single patient’s peformance after general
anaesthesia, and 19 weeks later. Finally, of particular interest to Kyllonen
and Chaiken are models of item scoring to combat speed-accuracy trade-
off.TheypointoutthatDennisand Evans (1996) provide a veryfull
 I n t r o d u c t i o n xxi

account of various scoring options in item-generative contexts. S d a r l y ,

the chapter in this volume by Wright provides possible itemresponse
theory expansions using item latencies. If item generation is to be used in
online learning contexts, the chapter by Kyllonen and Chaiken is prescribed
readlng.

T H E T H I R DWAY. TOOLS FOR ITEM WRITERS

Accounts of several attempts to assist people whose job it is to write items

have appeared in the reports of Educational Testing Service. These have
not been conceived outside the standard ETS technical framework of item
response theory nor of the essential political need to satisfy customers in
the educational enterprise. Little in the way of freewheeling in item
construction has followed Bejar’slead of the mid-1980s. This is not to
imply lack of progress, just to emphasize that progress has been made along
other h e c t i o n s and within the unenviable constraints of improving and
adapting established test programs to changing times and politically correct
fashions in educational assessment. This third approach to generating items
from knowledge of their characteristics is witnessed in the provision of t o o h
of con.rtrtt~,tionand verification for item production by experts.
Thus far, there has been an emphasis on the internal logc used by item
constructors. These are, simply, rules of various lunds. The third way has
also a set of rules, but of a dlfferent sort.In fact, the chapter by mslevy and
his colleagues prescribes an overarching metaphysic, a credo for ensuring
the validity of the form of the item. This validation is part of a painstaking
judgmental processs about the content, relevance, and construct validlty of
the items proposed. It may be exercised by machines, but it first has to be
assented to by answers to questions of context. In that sense it begins to
trace an operational definition of the criterion of political defensibdtty that
is required of all high-stakes tests.
The third way, of tools to aid conventional methods of item-
construction is specifically and ostensive4deJined in the system designed by
Singley and Bennett to bring semantic &stance theory du-ectly to bear on
the modeling of elementary mathematics items; and in the tracing of key
elements in predlcting the lfficulty of mathematical items using bzerurcbiuzl
item-responsemodels by Enright andSheehan. Singley andBcnnctt,
however, can be seen to intersect with the logid necexxzpmodel for item
construction fostered by Dennis. Their item-writer’s assistant demands and
obtains total consistency from the author of the item within the algorithms
for item-construction. Theretoo, item dlfficulty is secondary to the
production of items that are consonant with the algorithms defining their
xxiiIrvine

authenticity. In their weltanschauung, the derivation of item lfficulties is,

however, a judgmental as well as a system design function.
Enright and Sheehan are inheritors of itemmponse tbeoty mode6 o j item
venjcufion, and this work isdu-ectly descended from the paper by Mlslevy
and Sheehan (1988) on using item information as addltional item response
theory parameters. Its value-added element lies in the apparently successful
questfor
more precise understandlng of coherent i t e m - f a d e s in
mathematics. In the use of item-response technology, readers wdl see strict
rules for the approach to item-generation that seeks to produce generic item
types of which there are multiple examples relying on radlcals and
incidentals for their dtfficulty parameters.
In the category of tools that are advances on conventional item response
theory is the important synthesis made by Wright’s chapter on scoring item-
generated tests. Wright had collaborated at Plymouth with Dennis (Dennis
& Evans, 1989, 1996), and Evans (Evans & Wright, 1992, 1993) and was
aware of the progressmade by WslevyatEducational Testing Service
(Wslevy, Wingersky, Irvine, & Dann, 1992) on using time to solution as a
means of lscriminating between identical items and the means to solve
them. H I S own lines of enqwry (Wright, 1990, 1992) have resulted in a
majorconceptualadvance onhowto score item-generative tests. This
approach uses time envelopes to change the dlfficulty parameters in
systematic fashion. Only with the avdabhty of item response theory and
the construction of items that vary only in surface characteristics (inL-identA)
were theconltionsfor his work satisfied. The result is a convincing
demonstration of the advances that can be made once the two dtsciplines of
scientific psychology are consciously brought to bear on an operational
definition of item-generation theory.

THE FOURTH HORSEMAN: POLITICAL DEFENSIBILITY

Thus far, the introduction has concerned itself with three of the horsemen
of the computer-based testing apocalypse that may yet sweep away paper-
and-pencil forms.They ride under thebanners of cognitive models,
psychometricrobustness, and a h n i s t r a t i v e convenience. Thefourth
horseman carries the flag of political defensibdlty. Howard Wainer’s
generous agreement to write his comments on presentations as a separate
chapter provides a sharp focus for political issues. When and how should
itemgeneration be used andwhat are its advantages over tradltional
methods? Suffice itto say that Wainer arguescogently for a particular
outcome of the internal debates of major test-producers on how to deliver
andconstruct tests profitably while technology is forcing changes upon
constructors and users alike. It is c h a l l e n p g readlng; but answers to many
of the questions raised by him are either implicit or explicit in the chapters
 Introductionxxiii

described briefly in this introduction. Whether they are in Wainer’s view

adequately answered is notof course, a theoretical question. From his
perspective item-generation proponentsmustbe asked costand benefit
questions as part of the socialjustification for the introduction of their
methods. That is as it should be. But cost-benefit issues are not always nor
are they necessarily scientific censors, even if they are valid considerations
in the programmatic fundmg of item generation as a unified psychometric
and cognitive dlsciphe.

THE DISCUSSIONS

Pat Kyllonen spent many unseen hours edlting transcripts of

the
dlscussions. The fruits of h s painstahng labour are now on the table. In
September 2001, just before this manuscript went to the printer, I received
a proof copy. The dlscussions were then in their rightful context.
Three years on fromtheconference itself, the issues and questions
raised by dlscussants are at the h t s of our knowledge: and they challenge
our creativity, ingenuity and political d in the pursuit of answers. In that
quest,protocolsfor both experimentation and correlational analysis are
suggested, debated, pondered, qualified. As the dlscussions proceed,
alternative solutions become standards to follow and if possible, to emulate.
The unique focus that dlscussion leaders and participants have brought to
this work has enhanced itgreatly. Iwant to thankthem for their signal
contribution. Our chief debt is, of course, to Pat Kyllonen for mahng it
avdable.

REFERENCES

Haddeley, A. D. (1968). A three-minute reasoning test based on grammatical transformation.

Pychonomic Science, IO, 341-342.
Haddclcy, A. I)., & IIitch, G.(1974). Working memory. In G. 11. Bower (Ed.), Thepyholog of
learning andmotivation (Vol. 8, pp.47-90).
Rartram, I). (1987). l‘he development of an automated testing systcm for pilot selection: The
Micropat project. Applied Pycholog: InternationalReview,36,279-298.
Rejar, I. 1. (1986a). The pychometrics ofmental mtation (RR-86-19), Princeton, NJ: Educational
,.
I csting Service.
Hcjar, I. I. (1986b). Analysis and generation of IIidden Figure items: A copitivc approach t o
Psychometric Modelling (Ni-86-20), I’rinceton, NJ: Educational ’resting Service.
Hcjar, I. I. (1986~).Finalrepott: Adaptive testing ofspatialabilities ( O m 150 531). Princeton, NJ:
Educational Testing Service.
Hcjar, I. I., & Yocom, 1’. (1991). A generative approach to the modehng o f isomorphic
hidden-figure items. Applied PsyhologicalMeasuretnenr,15(2), 129-137.
Carroll, J. B. (1976). Psychometric tests as copitive tasks: a new “Structure of Intellect.” In
L. B. Iksnick (Ed.), The nature ofintelhgence. Ildsdale, NJ: Lawrencc Ilrbaum Associates.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
Time, he would take him down again, and sweeten his Humour in a
trice. One Time, when Alexander was at Dinner, this Man play'd him
a Phrygian Air: The Prince immediately rises, snatches up his Lance,
and puts himself into a Posture of Fighting. And the Retreat was no
sooner sounded by the Change of the Harmony, but his Arms were
grounded, and his Fire extinct; and he sat down as orderly as if he
had come from one of Aristotle's Lectures. I warrant you
Demosthenes would have been flourishing about such a Business a
long Hour, and may be not have done it neither. But Timotheus had
a nearer Cut to the Soul: He could neck a Passion at a Stroke, and
lay it Asleep. Pythagoras once met with a Parcel of drunken Fellows,
who were likely to be troublesome enough. He presently orders the
Musick to play Grave, and chop into a Dorian: Upon this, they all
threw away their Garlands, and were as sober and as shame-faced
as one would wish."—It is evident that Dryden, in his inspired Ode,
and Collier in all this pudder of prose, meant the same thing. But
what a work does the latter make with his "necking a passion at his
stroke," "making a man storm and swagger like a tempest," and
then "taking him down and sweetening his humour in a trice." What
in Dryden is "Softly sweet in Lydian measures," Collier calls
"chopping into a Dorian."—This Collier was the same who, in his
Biographical Dictionary, says of Shakespeare, that "though his genius
generally was jocular, and inclining to festivity, yet he could when he
pleased be as serious as any body."

X.—PLAY-HOUSE MEMORANDA
(1813)
I once sat in the Pit of Drury-lane Theatre next to a blind man, who,
I afterwards learned, was a street musician, well known about
London. The play was Richard the Third, and it was curious to
observe the interest which he took in every successive scene, so far
more lively than could be perceived in any of the company around
him. At those pathetic interviews between the Queen and Duchess
of York, after the murder of the children, his eyes (or rather the
places where eyes should have been) gushed out tears in torrents,
and he sat intranced in attention, while every one about him was
tittering, partly at him, and partly at the grotesque figures and
wretched action of the women, who had been selected by
managerial taste to personate those royal mourners. Having no
drawback of sight to impair his sensibilities, he simply attended to
the scene, and received its unsophisticated impression. So much the
rather her celestial light shone inward. I was pleased with an
observation which he made, when I asked him how he liked Kemble,
who played Richard. I should have thought (said he) that that man
had been reading something out of a book, if I had not known that I
was in a play-house.
I was once amused in a different way by a knot of country people
who had come to see a play at that same Theatre. They seemed
perfectly inattentive to all the best performers for the first act or
two, though the piece was admirably played, but kept poring in the
play-bill, and were evidently watching for the appearance of one,
who was to be the source of supreme delight to them that night. At
length the expected actor arrived, who happened to be in possession
of a very insignificant part, not much above a mule [? mute]. I saw
their faint attempt at raising a clap on his appearance, and their
disappointment at not being seconded by the audience in general. I
saw them try to admire and to find out something very wonderful in
him, and wondering all the while at the moderate sensation he
produced. I saw their pleasure and their interest subside at last into
flat mortification, when the riddle was at once unfolded by my
recollecting that this performer bore the same name with an actor,
then in the acme of his celebrity, at Covent-Garden, but who lately
finished his theatrical and mortal career on the other side the
Atlantic. They had come to see Mr. C——, but had come to the
wrong house.
Is it a stale remark to say, that I have constantly found the interest
excited at a play-house to bear an exact inverse proportion to the
price paid for admission. Formerly, when my sight and hearing were
more perfect, and my purse a little less so, I was a frequenter of the
upper gallery in the old Theatres. The eager attention, the
breathless listening, the anxiety not to lose a word, the quick
anticipation of the significance of the scene (every sense kept as it
were upon a sharp look out), which are exhibited by the occupiers of
those higher and now almost out-of-sight regions (who, going
seldom to a play, cannot afford to lose any thing by inattention),
suffer some little diminution, as you descend to the lower or two-
shilling ranks; but still the joy is lively and unallayed, save [that] by
some little incursion of manners, the expression of it is expected to
abate somewhat of its natural liveliness. The oaken plaudits of the
trunkmaker would here be considered as going a little beyond the
line.—In the pit first begins that accursed critical faculty, which,
making a man the judge of his own pleasures, too often constitutes
him the executioner of his own and others! You may see the
jealousy of being unduly pleased, the suspicion of being taken in to
admire; in short, the vile critical spirit, creeping and diffusing itself,
and spreading from the wrinkled brows and cloudy eyes of the front
row sages and newspaper reporters (its proper residence), till it
infects and clouds over the thoughtless, vacant countenance, of
John Bull tradesmen, and clerks of counting-houses, who, but for
that approximation, would have been contented to have grinned
without rule, and to have been pleased without asking why. The
sitting next a critic is contagious. Still now and then, a genuine
spectator is to be found among them, a shopkeeper and his family,
whose honest titillations of mirth, and generous chucklings of
applause, cannot wait or be at leisure to take the cue from the sour
judging faces about them. Haply they never dreamed that there
were such animals in nature as critics or reviewers; even the idea of
an author may be a speculation they never entered into; but they
take the mirth they find as a pure effusion of the actor-folks, set
there on purpose to make them fun. I love the unenquiring gratitude
of such spectators. As for the Boxes, I never can understand what
brings the people there. I see such frigid indifference, such
unconcerned spectatorship, such impenetrability to pleasure or its
contrary, such being in the house and yet not of it, certainly they
come far nearer the nature of the Gods, upon the system of
Lucretius at least, than those honest, hearty, well-pleased,
unindifferent mortals above, who, from time immemorial, have had
that name, upon no other ground than situation, assigned them.
Take the play-house altogether, there is a less sum of enjoyment
than used to be. Formerly you might see something like the effect of
a novelty upon a citizen, his wife and daughters, in the Pit; their
curiosity upon every new face that entered upon the stage. The talk
of how they got in at the door, and how they were crowded upon
some former occasion, made a topic till the curtain drew up. People
go too often now-a-days to make their ingress or egress of
consequence. Children of seven years of age will talk as familiarly of
the performers, aye and as knowingly (according to the received
opinion) as grown persons; more than the grown persons in my
time. Oh when shall I forget first seeing a play, at the age of five or
six? It was Artaxerxes. Who played, or who sang in it, I know not.
Such low ideas as actors' names, or actors' merits, never entered my
head. The mystery of delight was not cut open and dissipated for me
by those who took me there. It was Artaxerxes and Arbaces and
Mandane that I saw, not Mr. Beard, or Mr. Leoni, or Mrs. Kennedy. It
was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since
visited me but in dreams. I was in Persia for the time, and the
burning idol of their devotion in the Temple almost converted me
into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those
significations to be something more than elemental fires. I was, with
Uriel, in the body of the sun.—What should I have gained by
knowing (as I should have done, had I been born thirty years later)
that that solar representation was a mere painted scene, that had
neither fire nor light in itself, and that the royal phantoms, which
passed in review before me, were but such common mortals as I
could see every day out of my father's window? We crush the faculty
of delight and wonder in children, by explaining every thing. We take
them to the source of the Nile, and shew them the scanty runnings,
instead of letting the beginnings of that seven fold stream remain in
impenetrable darkness, a mysterious question of wonderment and
delight to ages.
 REVIEW OF THE EXCURSION; A
POEM
By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. London. 4to. pp. 447
(1814)
The volume before us, as we learn from the Preface, is "a detached
portion of an unfinished poem, containing views of man, nature, and
society;" to be called the Recluse, as having for its principal subject
the "sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement;" and to
be preceded by a "record in verse of the origin and progress of the
author's own powers, with reference to the fitness which they may
be supposed to have conferred for the task." To the completion of
this plan we look forward with a confidence which the execution of
the finished part is well calculated to inspire.—Meanwhile, in what is
before us there is ample matter for entertainment: for the
"Excursion" is not a branch (as might have been suspected)
prematurely plucked from the parent tree to gratify an overhasty
appetite for applause; but is, in itself, a complete and legitimate
production.
It opens with the meeting of the poet with an aged man whom he
had known from his school days; in plain words, a Scottish pedlar; a
man who, though of low origin, had received good learning and
impressions of the strictest piety from his stepfather, a minister and
village schoolmaster. Among the hills of Athol, the child is described
to have become familiar with the appearances of nature in his
occupation as a feeder of sheep; and from her silent influences to
have derived a character, meditative, tender, and poetical. With an
imagination and feelings thus nourished—his intellect not unaided by
books, but those, few, and chiefly of a religious cast—the necessity
of seeking a maintenance in riper years, had induced him to make
choice of a profession, the appellation for which has been gradually
declining into contempt, but which formerly designated a class of
men, who, journeying in country places, when roads presented less
facilities for travelling, and the intercourse between towns and
villages was unfrequent and hazardous, became a sort of link of
neighbourhood to distant habitations; resembling, in some small
measure, in the effects of their periodical returns, the caravan which
Thomson so feelingly describes as blessing the cheerless Siberian in
its annual visitation, with "news of human kind."
In the solitude incident to this rambling life, power had been given
him to keep alive that devotedness to nature which he had imbibed
in his childhood, together with the opportunity of gaining such
notices of persons and things from his intercourse with society, as
qualified him to become a "teacher of moral wisdom." With this
man, then, in a hale old age, released from the burthen of his
occupation, yet retaining much of its active habits, the poet meets,
and is by him introduced to a second character—a sceptic—one who
had been partially roused from an overwhelming desolation, brought
upon him by the loss of wife and children, by the powerful
incitement of hope which the French Revolution in its
commencement put forth, but who, disgusted with the failure of all
its promises, had fallen back into a laxity of faith and conduct which
induced at length a total despondence as to the dignity and final
destination of his species. In the language of the poet, he
——broke faith with those whom he had laid
In earth's dark chambers,

Yet he describes himself as subject to compunctious visitations from

that silent quarter.
——Feebly must They have felt,
Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips
The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards
Were turned on me—the face of her I loved;
The Wife and Mother; pitifully fixing
Tender reproaches, insupportable!—p. 133.
The conversations with this person, in which the Wanderer asserts
the consolatory side of the question against the darker views of
human life maintained by his friend, and finally calls to his assistance
the experience of a village priest, the third, or rather fourth
interlocutor, (for the poet himself is one,) form the groundwork of
the "Excursion."
It will be seen by this sketch that the poem is of a didactic nature,
and not a fable or story; yet it is not wanting in stories of the most
interesting kind,—such as the lovers of Cowper and Goldsmith will
recognise as something familiar and congenial to them. We might
instance the Ruined Cottage, and the Solitary's own story, in the first
half of the work; and the second half, as being almost a continued
cluster of narration. But the prevailing charm of the poem is,
perhaps, that, conversational as it is in its plan, the dialogue
throughout is carried on in the very heart of the most romantic
scenery which the poet's native hills could supply; and which, by the
perpetual references made to it either in the way of illustration or for
variety and pleasurable description's sake, is brought before us as
we read. We breathe in the fresh air, as we do while reading
Walton's Complete Angler; only the country about us is as much
bolder than Walton's, as the thoughts and speculations, which form
the matter of the poem, exceed the trifling pastime and low-pitched
conversation of his humble fishermen. We give the description of the
"two huge peaks," which from some other vale peered into that in
which the Solitary is entertaining the poet and companion. "Those,"
says their host,
——if here you dwelt, would be
Your prized Companions.—Many are the notes
Which in his tuneful course the wind draws forth
From rocks, woods, caverns, heaths, and dashing shores;
And well those lofty Brethren bear their part
In the wild concert—chiefly when the storm
Rides high; then all the upper air they fill
With roaring sound, that ceases not to flow,
Like smoke, along the level of the blast
In mighty current; theirs, too, is the song
 Of stream and headlong flood that seldom fails;
And in the grim and breathless hour of noon,
Methinks that I have heard them echo back
The thunder's greeting:—nor have Nature's laws
Left them ungifted with a power to yield
Music of finer frame; a harmony,
So do I call it, though it be the hand
Of silence, though there be no voice;—the clouds,
The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns,
Motions of moonlight, all come thither—touch,
And have an answer—thither come, and shape
A language not unwelcome to sick hearts
And idle spirits:—there the sun himself
At the calm close of summer's longest day
Rests his substantial Orb;—between those heights
And on the top of either pinnacle,
More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault,
Sparkle the Stars as of their station proud.
Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man
Than the mute agent stirring there:—alone
Here do I sit and watch.—p. 84.
To a mind constituted like that of Mr. Wordsworth, the stream, the
torrent, and the stirring leaf—seem not merely to suggest
associations of deity, but to be a kind of speaking communication
with it. He walks through every forest, as through some Dodona;
and every bird that flits among the leaves, like that miraculous
one[31] in Tasso, but in language more intelligent, reveals to him far
higher lovelays. In his poetry nothing in Nature is dead. Motion is
synonymous with life. "Beside yon spring," says the Wanderer,
speaking of a deserted well, from which, in former times, a poor
woman, who died heart-broken, had been used to dispense
refreshment to the thirsty traveller,
——beside yon Spring I stood,
And eyed its waters till we seem'd to feel
One sadness, they and I. For them a bond
Of brotherhood is broken: time has been
When, every day, the touch of human hand
Dislodged the natural sleep that binds them up
In mortal stillness;—p. 27.
 [31]

With partie coloured plumes and purple bill,

A woondrous bird among the rest there flew,
That in plaine speech sung love laies loud and shrill,
Her leden was like humaine language trew,
So much she talkt, and with such wit and skill,
That strange it seemed how much good she knew.
Fairefax's Translation [Book 16, Stanza 13].

To such a mind, we say—call it strength or weakness—if weakness,

assuredly a fortunate one—the visible and audible things of creation
present, not dim symbols, or curious emblems, which they have
done at all times to those who have been gifted with the poetical
faculty; but revelations and quick insights into the life within us, the
pledge of immortality:—
——the whispering Air
Sends inspiration from the shadowy heights,
And blind recesses of the caverned rocks;
The little Rills, and Waters numberless,
Inaudible by day-light,

"I have seen," the poet says, and the illustration is an happy one:
——I have seen
A curious Child [who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground], applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipp'd Shell;
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely, and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard,—sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the Monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native Sea.
Even such a Shell the Universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith; and [there are times,
I doubt not, when to you it] doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things;
Of ebb and flow, and ever during power;
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.—p. 191.
Sometimes this harmony is imaged to us by an echo; and in one
instance, it is with such transcendant beauty set forth by a shadow
and its corresponding substance, that it would be a sin to cheat our
readers at once of so happy an illustration of the poet's system, and
so fair a proof of his descriptive powers.
Thus having reached a bridge, that overarched
The hasty rivulet where it lay becalmed
In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
A two-fold Image; on a grassy bank
A snow-white Ram, and in the crystal flood
Another and the same! Most beautiful,
On the green turf, with his imperial front
Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,
The breathing Creature stood; as beautiful,
Beneath him, shewed his shadowy Counterpart.
Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,
And each seemed centre of his own fair world:
Antipodes unconscious of each other,
Yet, in partition, with their several spheres,
Blended in perfect stillness, to our sight!—p. 407.

Combinations, it is confessed, "like those reflected in that quiet

pool," cannot be lasting: it is enough for the purpose of the poet, if
they are felt.—They are at least his system; and his readers, if they
reject them for their creed, may receive them merely as poetry. In
him, faith, in friendly alliance and conjunction with the religion of his
country, appears to have grown up, fostered by meditation and
lonely communions with Nature—an internal principle of lofty
consciousness, which stamps upon his opinions and sentiments (we
were almost going to say) the character of an expanded and
generous Quakerism.
From such a creed we should expect unusual results; and, when
applied to the purposes of consolation, more touching considerations
than from the mouth of common teachers. The finest speculation of
this sort perhaps in the poem before us, is the notion of the
thoughts which may sustain the spirit, while they crush the frame of
the sufferer, who from loss of objects of love by death, is commonly
supposed to pine away under a broken heart.
——If there be whose tender frames have drooped
Even to the dust; apparently, through weight
Of anguish unrelieved, and lack of power
An agonizing spirit to transmute,
Infer not hence a hope from those withheld
When wanted most; a confidence impaired
So pitiably, that, having ceased to see
With bodily eyes, they are borne down by love
Of what is lost, and perish through regret.
Oh! no, full oft the innocent Sufferer sees
Too clearly; feels too vividly; and longs
To realize the Vision with intense
And overconstant yearning—there—there lies
The excess, by which the balance is destroyed.
Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh,
This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs,
Though inconceivably endowed, too dim
For any passion of the soul that leads
To extacy; and, all the crooked paths
Of time and change disdaining, takes its course
Along the line of limitless desires.—p. 148.

With the same modifying and incorporating power, he tells us,—

Within the soul a Faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal, that they become
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample Moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty Grove,
Burns like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green tree; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene. Like power abides
In Man's celestial Spirit; Virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
 From the incumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment,—nay from guilt;
And sometimes, so relenting Justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of Despair.—p. 188.
This is high poetry; though (as we have ventured to lay the basis of
the author's sentiments in a sort of liberal Quakerism) from some
parts of it, others may, with more plausibility, object to the
appearance of a kind of Natural Methodism: we could have wished
therefore that the tale of Margaret had been postponed, till the
reader had been strengthened by some previous acquaintance with
the author's theory, and not placed in the front of the poem, with a
kind of ominous aspect, beautifully tender as it is. It is a tale of a
cottage, and its female tenant, gradually decaying together, while
she expected the return of one whom poverty and not unkindness
had driven from her arms. We trust ourselves only with the
conclusion—
Nine tedious years;
From their first separation, nine long years,
She lingered in unquiet widowhood,
A Wife and Widow. [Needs must it have been
A sore heart-wasting!] I have heard, my Friend,
That in yon arbour oftentimes she sate
Alone, through half the vacant Sabbath-day;
And if a dog passed by she still would quit
The shade, and look abroad. On this old Bench
For hours she sate; and evermore her eye
Was busy in the distance, shaping things
That made her heart beat quick. You see that path,
[Now faint,—the grass has crept o'er its grey line;]
There, to and fro, she paced through many a day
Of the warm summer, from a belt of hemp
That girt her waist, spinning the long drawn thread
With backward steps. Yet ever as there pass'd
A man whose garments shew'd the Soldier's[32] red,
[Or crippled Mendicant in Sailor's garb],
The little Child who sate to turn the wheel
Ceas'd from his task; and she with faultering voice
Made many a fond enquiry; and when they,
Whose presence gave no comfort, were gone by,
 Her heart was still more sad. And by yon gate,
That bars the Traveller's road, she often stood,
And when a stranger Horseman came the latch
Would lift, and in his face look wistfully;
Most happy, if, from aught discovered there
Of tender feeling, she might dare repeat
The same sad question. Meanwhile her poor hut
Sank to decay: for he was gone—whose hand,
At the first nipping of October frost,
Closed up each chink, and with fresh bands of straw
Checquered the green-grown thatch. And so she lived
Through the long winter, reckless and alone;
Until her house by frost, and thaw, and rain,
Was sapped; and while she slept the nightly damps
Did chill her breast; and in the stormy day
Her tattered clothes were ruffled by the wind;
Even at the side of her own fire. Yet still
She loved this wretched spot, nor would for worlds
Have parted hence: and still that length of road,
And this rude bench, one torturing hope endeared,
Fast rooted at her heart: and here, my Friend,
In sickness she remains; and here she died,
Last human Tenant of these ruined Walls.—p. 44.
[32] Her husband had enlisted for a soldier.

The fourth book, entitled "Despondency Corrected," we consider as

the most valuable portion of the poem. For moral grandeur; for wide
scope of thought and a long train of lofty imagery; for tender
personal appeals; and a versification which we feel we ought to
notice, but feel it also so involved in the poetry, that we can hardly
mention it as a distinct excellence; it stands without competition
among our didactic and descriptive verse. The general tendency of
the argument (which we might almost affirm to be the leading moral
of the poem) is to abate the pride of the calculating understanding,
and to reinstate the imagination and the affections in those seats
from which modern philosophy has laboured but too successfully to
expel them.
"Life's autumn past," says the grey-haired Wanderer,
——I stand on Winter's verge,
 And daily lose what I desire to keep:
Yet rather would I instantly decline
To the traditionary sympathies
Of a most rustic ignorance, and take
A fearful apprehension from the owl
Or death-watch,—and as readily rejoice,
If two auspicious magpies crossed my way;
This rather would I do than see and hear
The repetitions wearisome of sense,
Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place;—p. 168.
In the same spirit, those illusions of the imaginative faculty to which
the peasantry in solitary districts are peculiarly subject, are
represented as the kindly ministers of conscience:
——with whose service charged
They come and go, appear and disappear;
Diverting evil purposes, remorse
Awakening, chastening an intemperate grief,
Or pride of heart abating:

Reverting to more distant ages of the world, the operation of that

same faculty in producing the several fictions of Chaldean, Persian,
and Grecian idolatry, is described with such seductive power, that the
Solitary, in good earnest, seems alarmed at the tendency of his own
argument.—Notwithstanding his fears, however, there is one thought
so uncommonly fine, relative to the spirituality which lay hid beneath
the gross material forms of Greek worship, in metal or stone, that
we cannot resist the allurement of transcribing it—
——triumphant o'er this pompous show
Of Art, this palpable array of Sense,
On every side encountered; in despite
Of the gross fictions, chaunted in the streets
By wandering Rhapsodists; and in contempt
Of doubt and bold denials hourly urged
Amid the wrangling Schools—a SPIRIT hung,
Beautiful Region! o'er thy Towns and Farms,
Statues and Temples, and memorial Tombs;
And emanations were perceived; and acts
Of immortality, in Nature's course,
 Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt
As bonds, on grave Philosopher imposed
And armed Warrior; and in every grove
A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed
When piety more awful had relaxed.
"Take, running River, take these Locks of mine"—
Thus would the Votary say—"this severed hair,
My Vow fulfilling, do I here present,
Thankful for my beloved Child's return.
Thy banks, Cephissus, he again hath trod,
Thy murmurs heard; and drunk the chrystal lymph
With which thou dost refresh the thirsty lip,
And moisten all day long these flowery fields."
And doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed
Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose
Of Life continuous, Being unimpaired;
That hath been, is, and where it was and is
There shall be,—seen, and heard, and felt, and known,
And recognized,—existence unexposed
To the blind walk of mortal accident;
From diminution safe and weakening age;
While Man grows old, and dwindles, and decays;
And countless generations of Mankind
Depart; and leave no vestige where they trod.—p. 173.
In discourse like this the first day passes away.—The second (for this
almost dramatic poem takes up the action of two summer days) is
varied by the introduction of the village priest; to whom the
Wanderer resigns the office of chief speaker, which had been yielded
to his age and experience on the first. The conference is begun at
the gate of the church-yard; and after some natural speculations
concerning death and immortality—and the custom of funereal and
sepulchral observances, as deduced from a feeling of immortality—
certain doubts are proposed respecting the quantity of moral worth
existing in the world, and in that mountainous district in particular.
In the resolution of these doubts, the priest enters upon a most
affecting and singular strain of narration, derived from the graves
around him. Pointing to hillock after hillock, he gives short histories
of their tenants, disclosing their humble virtues, and touching with
tender hand upon their frailties.
Nothing can be conceived finer than the manner of introducing these
tales. With heaven above his head, and the mouldering turf at his
feet—standing betwixt life and death—he seems to maintain that
spiritual relation which he bore to his living flock, in its undiminished
strength, even with their ashes; and to be in his proper cure, or
diocese, among the dead.
We might extract powerful instances of pathos from these tales—the
story of Ellen in particular—but their force is in combination, and in
the circumstances under which they are introduced. The traditionary
anecdote of the Jacobite and Hanoverian, as less liable to suffer by
transplanting, and as affording an instance of that finer species of
humour, that thoughtful playfulness in which the author more nearly
perhaps than in any other quality resembles Cowper, we shall lay (at
least a part of it) before our readers. It is the story of a whig who,
having wasted a large estate in election contests, retired "beneath a
borrowed name" to a small town among these northern mountains,
where a Caledonian laird, a follower of the house of Stuart, who had
fled his country after the overthrow at Culloden, returning with the
return of lenient times, had also fixed his residence.
——Here, then, they met,
Two doughty Champions; flaming Jacobite
And sullen Hanoverian! you might think
That losses and vexations, less severe
Than those which they had severally sustained,
Would have inclined each to abate his zeal
For his ungrateful cause; no,—I have heard
My reverend Father tell that, mid the calm
Of that small Town encountering thus, they filled
Daily its Bowling-green with harmless strife;
Plagued with uncharitable thoughts the Church;
And vexed the Market-place. But in the breasts
Of these Opponents gradually was wrought,
With little change of general sentiment,
Such change towards each other, that their days
By choice were spent in constant fellowship;
And if, at times, they fretted with the yoke,
Those very bickerings made them love it more.
 A favourite boundary to their lengthened walks
This Church-yard was. And, whether they had come
Treading their path in sympathy and linked
In social converse, or by some short space
Discreetly parted to preserve the peace,
One Spirit seldom failed to extend its sway
Over both minds, when they awhile had marked
The visible quiet of this holy ground
And breathed its soothing air;——
[Seven lines omitted].

—There live who yet remember to have seen

Their courtly Figures,—seated on a stump
Of an old Yew, their favourite resting-place.
But, as the Remnant of the long-lived Tree
Was disappearing by a swift decay,
They, with joint care, determined to erect,
Upon its site, a Dial, which should stand
For public use; and also might survive
As their own private monument; for this
Was the particular spot, in which they wished
(And Heaven was pleased to accomplish their desire)
That, undivided their Remains should lie.
So, where the mouldered Tree had stood, was raised
Yon Structure, framing, with the ascent of steps
That to the decorated Pillar lead,
A work of art, more sumptuous, as might seem,
Than suits this Place; yet built in no proud scorn
Of rustic homeliness; they only aimed
To ensure for it respectful guardianship.
Around the margin of the Plate, whereon
The Shadow falls, to note the stealthy hours,
Winds an inscriptive Legend,——At these words
Thither we turned; and gathered, as we read,
The appropriate sense, in Latin numbers couched.
"Time flies; it is his melancholy task
To bring, and bear away, delusive hopes,
And re-produce the troubles he destroys.
But, while his blindness thus is occupied.
Discerning Mortal! do thou serve the will
Of Time's eternal Master, and that peace,
Which the World wants, shall be for Thee confirmed."—pp. 270-3.
The causes which have prevented the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth
from attaining its full share of popularity are to be found in the
boldness and originality of his genius. The times are past when a
poet could securely follow the direction of his own mind into
whatever tracts it might lead. A writer, who would be popular, must
timidly coast the shore of prescribed sentiment and sympathy. He
must have just as much more of the imaginative faculty than his
readers, as will serve to keep their apprehensions from stagnating,
but not so much as to alarm their jealousy. He must not think or feel
too deeply.
If he has had the fortune to be bred in the midst of the most
magnificent objects of creation, he must not have given away his
heart to them; or if he have, he must conceal his love, or not carry
his expressions of it beyond that point of rapture, which the
occasional tourist thinks it not overstepping decorum to betray, or
the limit which that gentlemanly spy upon Nature, the picturesque
traveller, has vouchsafed to countenance. He must do this, or be
content to be thought an enthusiast.
If from living among simple mountaineers, from a daily intercourse
with them, not upon the footing of a patron, but in the character of
an equal, he has detected, or imagines that he has detected,
through the cloudy medium of their unlettered discourse, thoughts
and apprehensions not vulgar; traits of patience and constancy, love
unwearied, and heroic endurance, not unfit (as he may judge) to be
made the subject of verse, he will be deemed a man of perverted
genius by the philanthropist who, conceiving of the peasantry of his
country only as objects of a pecuniary sympathy, starts at finding
them elevated to a level of humanity with himself, having their own
loves, enmities, cravings, aspirations, &c., as much beyond his
faculty to believe, as his beneficence to supply.
If from a familiar observation of the ways of children, and much
more from a retrospect of his own mind when a child, he has
gathered more reverential notions of that state than fall to the lot of
ordinary observers, and, escaping from the dissonant wranglings of
men, has tuned his lyre, though but for occasional harmonies, to the
milder utterance of that soft age,—his verses shall be censured as
infantile by critics who confound poetry "having children for its
subject" with poetry that is "childish," and who, having themselves
perhaps never been children, never having possessed the tenderness
and docility of that age, know not what the soul of a child is—how
apprehensive! how imaginative! how religious!
We have touched upon some of the causes which we conceive to
have been unfriendly to the author's former poems. We think they
do not apply in the same force to the one before us. There is in it
more of uniform elevation, a wider scope of subject, less of manner,
and it contains none of those starts and imperfect shapings which in
some of this author's smaller pieces offended the weak, and gave
scandal to the perverse. It must indeed be approached with
seriousness. It has in it much of that quality which "draws the
devout, deterring the profane." Those who hate the Paradise Lost
will not love this poem. The steps of the great master are discernible
in it; not in direct imitation or injurious parody, but in the following
of the spirit, in free homage and generous subjection.
One objection it is impossible not to foresee. It will be asked, why
put such eloquent discourse in the mouth of a pedlar? It might be
answered that Mr. Wordsworth's plan required a character in humble
life to be the organ of his philosophy. It was in harmony with the
system and scenery of his poem. We read Piers Plowman's Creed,
and the lowness of the teacher seems to add a simple dignity to the
doctrine. Besides, the poet has bestowed an unusual share of
education upon him. Is it too much to suppose that the author, at
some early period of his life, may himself have known such a person,
a man endowed with sentiments above his situation, another Burns;
and that the dignified strains which he has attributed to the
Wanderer may be no more than recollections of his conversation,
heightened only by the amplification natural to poetry, or the lustre
which imagination flings back upon the objects and companions of
our youth? After all, if there should be found readers willing to
admire the poem, who yet feel scandalized at a name, we would
advise them, wherever it occurs, to substitute silently the word
Palmer, or Pilgrim, or any less offensive designation, which shall
connect the notion of sobriety in heart and manners with the
experience and privileges which a wayfaring life confers.
 ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS
(1814. Text of 1818)
Sedet, æternumque sedebit,
Infelix Theseus.————Virgil.
That there is a professional melancholy, if I may so express myself,
incident to the occupation of a tailor, is a fact which I think very few
will venture to dispute. I may safely appeal to my readers, whether
they ever knew one of that faculty that was not of a temperament,
to say the least, far removed from mercurial or jovial.
Observe the suspicious gravity of their gait. The peacock is not more
tender, from a consciousness of his peculiar infirmity, than a
gentleman of this profession is of being known by the same infallible
testimonies of his occupation. "Walk, that I may know thee."
Do you ever see him go whistling along the foot-path like a carman,
or brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to himself like a
lover? Is he forward to thrust into mobs, or to make one at the
ballad-singer's audiences? Does he not rather slink by assemblies
and meetings of the people, as one that wisely declines popular
observation?
How extremely rare is a noisy tailor! a mirthful and obstreperous
tailor!
"At my nativity," says Sir Thomas Browne, "my ascendant was the
earthly sign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn,
and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me." One would
think that he were anatomizing a tailor! save that to the latter's
occupation, methinks, a woollen planet would seem more consonant,
and that he should be born when the sun was in Aries.—He goes on.
"I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of
company." How true a type of the whole trade! Eminently
economical of his words, you shall seldom hear a jest come from
one of them. He sometimes furnishes subject for a repartee, but
rarely (I think) contributes one ore proprio.
Drink itself does not seem to elevate him, or at least to call out of
him any of the external indications of vanity. I cannot say that it
never causes his pride to swell, but it never breaks out. I am even
fearful that it may swell and rankle to an alarming degree inwardly.
For pride is near of kin to melancholy;—a hurtful obstruction from
the ordinary outlets of vanity being shut. It is this stoppage which
engenders proud humours. Therefore a tailor may be proud. I think
he is never vain. The display of his gaudy patterns in that book of
his which emulates the rainbow, never raises any inflations of that
emotion in him, corresponding to what the wigmaker (for instance)
evinces, when he expatiates on a curl or a bit of hair. He spreads
them forth with a sullen incapacity for pleasure, a real or affected
indifference to grandeur. Cloth of gold neither seems to elate, nor
cloth of frize to depress him—according to the beautiful motto which
formed the modest impresse of the shield worn by Charles Brandon
at his marriage with the King's sister. Nay, I doubt whether he would
discover any vain-glorious complacence in his colours, though "Iris"
herself "dipt the woof."
In further corroboration of this argument—who ever saw the
wedding of a tailor announced in the newspapers, or the birth of his
eldest son?
When was a tailor known to give a dance, or to be himself a good
dancer, or to perform exquisitely on the tight rope, or to shine in any
such light and airy pastimes? to sing, or play on the violin?
Do they much care for public rejoicings, lightings up, ringing of bells,
firing of cannons, &c.?
Valiant I know they can be; but I appeal to those who were
witnesses to the exploits of Eliot's famous troop, whether in their
fiercest charges they betrayed any thing of that thoughtless oblivion
of death with which a Frenchman jigs into battle, or whether they
did not shew more of the melancholy valour of the Spaniard, upon
whom they charged; that deliberate courage which contemplation
and sedentary habits breathe?
Are they often great newsmongers?—I have known some few
among them arrive at the dignity of speculative politicians; but that
light and cheerful every-day interest in the affairs and goings-on of
the world, which makes the barber[33] such delightful company, I
think is rarely observable in them.
[33] Having incidentally mentioned the barber, in a comparison of
professional temperaments, I hope no other trade will take
offence, or look upon it as an incivility done to them, if I say, that
in courtesy, humanity, and all the conversational and social graces
which "gladden life," I esteem no profession comparable to his.
Indeed so great is the goodwill which I bear to this useful and
agreeable body of men, that, residing in one of the Inns of Court
(where the best specimens of them are to be found, except
perhaps at the universities) there are seven of them to whom I
am personally known, and who never pass me without the
compliment of the hat on either side. My truly polite and urbane
friend, Mr. A——m, of Flower-de-luce-court, in Fleet-street, will
forgive my mention of him in particular. I can truly say, that I
never spent a quarter of an hour under his hands without deriving
some profit from the agreeable discussions, which are always
going on there.
This characteristic pensiveness in them being so notorious, I wonder
none of those writers, who have expressly treated of melancholy,
should have mentioned it. Burton, whose book is an excellent
abstract of all the authors in that kind who preceded him, and who
treats of every species of this malady, from the hypochondriacal or
windy to the heroical or love melancholy, has strangely omitted it.
Shakspeare himself has overlooked it. "I have neither the scholar's
melancholy (saith Jaques) which is emulation; nor the courtier's,
which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is politick; nor the lover's,
which is all these:"—and then, when you might expect him to have
brought in, "nor the tailor's, which is so and so"—he comes to an
end of his enumeration, and falls to a defining of his own
melancholy.
Milton likewise has omitted it, where he had so fair an opportunity of
bringing it in, in his Penseroso.
But the partial omissions of historians proving nothing against the
existence of any well-attested fact, I shall proceed and endeavour to
ascertain the causes why this pensive turn should be so predominant
in people of this profession above all others.
And first, may it not be, that the custom of wearing apparel being
derived to us from the fall, and one of the most mortifying products
of that unhappy event, a certain seriousness (to say no more of it)
may in the order of things have been intended to be impressed upon
the minds of that race of men to whom in all ages the care of
contriving the human apparel has been entrusted,—to keep up the
memory of the first institution of clothes, and serve as a standing
remonstrance against those vanities, which the absurd conversion of
a memorial of our shame into an ornament of our persons was
destined to produce? Correspondent in some sort to this, it may be
remarked, that the tailor sitting over a cave or hollow place, in the
cabbalistic language of his order, is said to have certain melancholy
regions always open under his feet.—But waving further enquiry into
final causes, where the best of us can only wander in the dark, let us
try to discover the efficient causes of this melancholy.
I think, then, that they may be reduced to two, omitting some
subordinate ones, viz.,
The sedentary habits of the tailor.—
Something peculiar in his diet.—

First, his sedentary habits.—In Dr. Norris's famous narrative of the

frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, the patient, being questioned as to the
occasion of the swelling in his legs, replies that it came "by
criticism;" to which the learned doctor seeming to demur, as to a
distemper which he had never read of, Dennis (who appears not to
have been mad upon all subjects) rejoins with some warmth, that it
was no distemper, but a noble art! that he had sat fourteen hours a
day at it: and that the other was a pretty doctor not to know that
there was a communication between the brain and the legs.
When we consider that this sitting for fourteen hours continuously,
which the critic probably practised only while he was writing his
"remarks," is no more than what the tailor, in the ordinary pursuance
of his art, submits to daily (Sundays excepted) throughout the year,
shall we wonder to find the brain affected, and in a manner over-
clouded, from that indissoluble sympathy between the noble and
less noble parts of the body, which Dennis hints at? The unnatural
and painful manner of his sitting must also greatly aggravate the
evil, insomuch that I have sometimes ventured to liken tailors at
their boards to so many envious Junos, sitting cross-legged to hinder
the birth of their own felicity. The legs transversed thus X cross-
wise, or decussated, was among the ancients the posture of
malediction. The Turks, who practise it at this day, are noted to be a
melancholy people.
Secondly, his diet.—To which purpose I find a most remarkable
passage in Burton, in his chapter entitled "Bad diet a cause of
melancholy." "Amongst herbs to be eaten (he says) I find gourds,
cucumbers, melons, disallowed; but especially CABBAGE. It causeth
troublesome dreams, and sends up black vapours to the brain.
Galen, loc. affect. lib. 3, cap. 6, of all herbs condemns CABBAGE.
And Isaack, lib. 2, cap. 1, animæ gravitatem facit, it brings
heaviness to the soul." I could not omit so flattering a testimony
from an author, who, having no theory of his own to serve, has so
unconsciously contributed to the confirmation of mine. It is well
known that this last-named vegetable has, from the earliest periods
which we can discover, constituted almost the sole food of this
extraordinary race of people.
Burton, Junior.
 ON NEEDLE-WORK
(By MARY LAMB)
(1815)
To the Editor of The British Lady's Magazine
MR. EDITOR,—In early life I passed eleven years in the exercise of
my needle for a livelihood. Will you allow me to address your
readers, among whom might perhaps be found some of the kind
patronesses of my former humble labours, on a subject widely
connected with female life—the state of needlework in this country.
To lighten the heavy burthen which many ladies impose upon
themselves is one object which I have in view: but, I confess, my
strongest motive is to excite attention towards the industrious
sisterhood to which I once belonged.
From books I have been informed of the fact, upon which "The
British Lady's Magazine" chiefly founds its pretensions, namely, that
women have of late been rapidly advancing in intellectual
improvement. Much may have been gained in this way, indirectly, for
that class of females for whom I wish to plead. Needlework and
intellectual improvement are naturally in a state of warfare. But I am
afraid the root of the evil has not as yet been struck at. Workwomen
of every description were never in so much distress for want of
employment.
Among the present circle of my acquaintance I am proud to rank
many that may truly be called respectable; nor do the female part of
them, in their mental attainments, at all disprove the prevailing
opinion of that intellectual progression which you have taken as the
basis of your work; yet I affirm that I know not a single family where
there is not some essential drawback to its comfort which may be
traced to needle-work done at home, as the phrase is for all needle-
work performed in a family by some of its own members, and for
which no remuneration in money is received or expected.
In money alone, did I say? I would appeal to all the fair votaries of
voluntary housewifery, whether, in the matter of conscience, any one
of them ever thought she had done as much needle-work as she
ought to have done. Even fancy work, the fairest of the tribe!—how
delightful the arrangement of her materials! the fixing upon her
happiest pattern, how pleasing an anxiety! how cheerful the
commencement of the labour she enjoins! But that lady must be a
true lover of the art, and so industrious a pursuer of a
predetermined purpose, that it were pity her energy should not have
been directed to some wiser end, who can affirm she neither feels
weariness during the execution of a fancy piece, nor takes more
time than she had calculated for the performance.
Is it too bold an attempt to persuade your readers that it would
prove an incalculable addition to general happiness, and the
domestic comfort of both sexes, if needle-work were never practised
but for a remuneration in money? As nearly, however, as this
desirable thing can be effected, so much more nearly will women be
upon an equality with men, as far as respects the mere enjoyment
of life. As far as that goes, I believe it is every woman's opinion that
the condition of men is far superior to her own.
"They can do what they like," we say. Do not these words generally
mean, they have time to seek out whatever amusements suit their
tastes? We dare not tell them we have no time to do this; for, if they
should ask in what manner we dispose of our time, we should blush
to enter upon a detail of the minutiæ which compose the sum of a
woman's daily employment. Nay, many a lady who allows not herself
one quarter of an hour's positive leisure during her waking hours,
considers her own husband as the most industrious of men, if he
steadily pursue his occupation till the hour of dinner, and will be
perpetually lamenting her own idleness.
Real business and real leisure make up the portions of men's time—
two sources of happiness which we certainly partake of in a very
inferior degree. To the execution of employment, in which the
faculties of the body or mind are called into busy action, there must
be a consoling importance attached, which feminine duties (that
generic term for all our business) cannot aspire to.
In the most meritorious discharges of those duties, the highest
praise we can aim at is to be accounted the helpmates of man; who,
in return for all he does for us, expects, and justly expects, us to do
all in our power to soften and sweeten life.
In how many ways is a good woman employed, in thought or action,
through the day, in order that her good man may be enabled to feel
his leisure hours real substantial holyday, and perfect respite from
the cares of business! Not the least part to be done to accomplish
this end is to fit herself self to become a conversational companion;
that is to say, she has to study and understand the subjects on
which he loves to talk. This part of our duty, if strictly performed, will
be found by far our hardest part. The disadvantages we labour
under from an education differing from a manly one make the hours
in which we sit and do nothing in men's company too often any
thing but a relaxation; although, as to pleasure and instruction, time
so passed may be esteemed more or less delightful.
To make a man's home so desirable a place as to preclude his having
a wish to pass his leisure hours at any fireside in preference to his
own, I should humbly take to be the sum and substance of woman's
domestic ambition. I would appeal to our British ladies, who are
generally allowed to be the most zealous and successful of all
women in the pursuit of this object,—I would appeal to them who
have been most successful in the performance of this laudable
service, in behalf of father, son, husband, or brother, whether an
anxious desire to perform this duty well is not attended with enough
of mental exertion, at least, to incline them to the opinion that
women may be more properly ranked among the contributors to,
than the partakers of, the undisturbed relaxation of man.
If a family be so well ordered that the master is never called in to its
direction, and yet he perceives comfort and economy well attended
to, the mistress of that family (especially if children form a part of it)
has, I apprehend, as large a share of womanly employment as ought
to satisfy her own sense of duty; even though the needle-book and
thread-case were quite laid aside, and she cheerfully contributed her
part to the slender gains of the corset-maker, the milliner, the dress-
maker, the plain-worker, the embroidress, and all the numerous
classifications of females supporting themselves by needle-work,
that great staple commodity which is alone appropriated to the self-
supporting part of our sex.
Much has been said and written on the subject of men engrossing to
themselves every occupation and calling. After many years of
observation and reflection, I am obliged to acquiesce in the notion
that it cannot well be ordered otherwise.
If at the birth of girls it were possible to foresee in what cases it
would be their fortune to pass a single life, we should soon find
trades wrested from their present occupiers, and transferred to the
exclusive possession of our sex. The whole mechanical business of
copying writings in the law department, for instance, might very
soon be transferred with advantage to the poorer sort of women,
who with very little teaching would soon beat their rivals of the other
sex in facility and neatness. The parents of female children, who
were known to be destined from their birth to maintain themselves
through, the whole course of their lives with like certainty as their
sons are, would feel it a duty incumbent on themselves to
strengthen the minds, and even the bodily constitutions, of their
girls, so circumstanced, by an education which, without affronting
the preconceived habits of society, might enable them to follow
some occupation now considered above the capacity or too robust
for the constitution of our sex. Plenty of resources would then lie
open for single women to obtain an independent livelihood, when
every parent would be upon the alert to encroach upon some
employment, now engrossed by men, for such of their daughters as
would then be exactly in the same predicament as their sons now
are. Who, for instance, would lay by money to set up his sons in
trade; give premiums, and in part maintain them through a long
apprenticeship; or, which men of moderate incomes frequently do,
strain every nerve in order to bring them up to a learned profession;
if it were in a very high degree probable that, by the time they were
twenty years of age, they would be taken from this trade or
profession, and maintained during the remainder of their lives by the
person whom they should marry. Yet this is precisely the situation in
which every parent, whose income does not very much exceed the
moderate, is placed with respect to his daughters.
Even where boys have gone through a laborious education,
superinducing habits of steady attention, accompanied with the
entire conviction that the business which they learn is to be the
source of their future distinction, may it not be affirmed that the
persevering industry required to accomplish this desirable end
causes many a hard struggle in the minds of young men, even of the
most hopeful disposition? What then must be the disadvantages
under which a very young woman is placed who is required to learn
a trade, from which she can never expect to reap any profit, but at
the expence of losing that place in society, to the possession of
which she may reasonably look forward, inasmuch as it is by far the
most common lot, namely, the condition of a happy English wife?
As I desire to offer nothing to the consideration of your readers but
what, at least as far as my own observation goes, I consider as
truths confirmed by experience, I will only say that, were I to follow
the bent of my own speculative opinion, I should be inclined to
persuade every female over whom I hoped to have any influence to
contribute all the assistance in her power to those of her own sex
who may need it, in the employments they at present occupy, rather
than to force them into situations now filled wholly by men. With the
mere exception of the profits which they have a right to derive from
their needle, I would take nothing from the industry of man which
he already possesses.
"A penny saved is a penny earned," is a maxim not true, unless the
penny be saved in the same time in which it might have been
earned. I, who have known what it is to work for money earned,
have since had much experience in working for money saved; and I
consider, from the closest calculation I can make, that a penny saved
in that way bears about a true proportion to a farthing earned. I am
no advocate for women, who do not depend on themselves for a
subsistence, proposing to themselves to earn money. My reasons for
thinking it not advisable are too numerous to state—reasons
deduced from authentic facts, and strict observations on domestic
life in its various shades of comfort. But, if the females of a family,
nominally supported by the other sex, find it necessary to add
something to the common stock, why not endeavour to do
something by which they may produce money in its true shape?
It would be an excellent plan, attended with very little trouble, to
calculate every evening how much money has been saved by
needle-work done in the family, and compare the result with the
daily portion of the yearly income. Nor would it be amiss to make a
memorandum of the time passed in this way, adding also a guess as
to what share it has taken up in the thoughts and conversation. This
would be an easy mode of forming a true notion, and getting at the
exact worth of this species of home industry, and perhaps might
place it in a different light from any in which it has hitherto been the
fashion to consider it.
Needle-work, taken up as an amusement, may not be altogether
unamusing. We are all pretty good judges of what entertains
ourselves, but it is not so easy to pronounce upon what may
contribute to the entertainment of others. At all events, let us not
confuse the motives of economy with those of simple pastime. If
saving be no object, and long habit have rendered needle-work so
delightful an avocation that we cannot think of relinquishing it, there
are the good old contrivances in which our grand-dames were used
to beguile and lose their time—knitting, knotting, netting, carpet
working, and the like ingenious pursuits—those so-often-praised but
tedious works, which are so long in the operation, that purchasing
the labour has seldom been thought good economy, yet, by a certain
fascination, they have been found to chain down the great to a self-
imposed slavery, from which they considerately, or haughtily, excuse
the needy. These may be esteemed lawful and lady-like
amusements. But, if those works, more usually denominated useful,
yield greater satisfaction, it might be a laudable scruple of
conscience, and no bad test to herself of her own motive, if a lady,
who had no absolute need, were to give the money so saved to poor
needle-women belonging to those branches of employment from
which she has borrowed these shares of pleasurable labour.
Sempronia.
 ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF
GEORGE WITHER
(? 1815. Text of 1818)
The poems of G. Wither are distinguished by a hearty homeliness of
manner, and a plain moral speaking. He seems to have passed his
life in one continued act of an innocent self-pleasing. That which he
calls his Motto is a continued self-eulogy of two thousand lines, yet
we read it to the end without any feeling of distaste, almost without
a consciousness that we have been listening all the while to a man
praising himself. There are none of the cold particles in it, the
hardness and self-ends which render vanity and egotism hateful. He
seems to be praising another person, under the mask of self; or
rather we feel that it was indifferent to him where he found the
virtue which he celebrates; whether another's bosom, or his own,
were its chosen receptacle. His poems are full, and this in particular
is one downright confession, of a generous self-seeking. But by self
he sometimes means a great deal,—his friends, his principles, his
country, the human race.
Whoever expects to find in the satirical pieces of this writer any of
those peculiarities which pleased him in the satires of Dryden or
Pope, will be grievously disappointed. Here are no high-finished
characters, no nice traits of individual nature, few or no
personalities. The game run down is coarse general vice, or folly as
it appears in classes. A liar, a drunkard, a coxcomb, is stript and
whipt; no Shaftesbury, no Villiers, or Wharton, is curiously
anatomized, and read upon. But to a well-natured mind there is a
charm of moral sensibility running through them which amply
compensates the want of those luxuries. Wither seems every where
bursting with a love of goodness and a hatred of all low and base
actions.—At this day it is hard to discover what parts in the poem
here particularly alluded to, Abuses Stript and Whipt, could have
occasioned the imprisonment of the author. Was Vice in High Places
more suspicious than now? had she more power; or more leisure to
listen after ill reports? That a man should be convicted of a libel
when he named no names but Hate, and Envy, and Lust, and
Avarice, is like one of the indictments in the Pilgrim's Progress,
where Faithful is arraigned for having "railed on our noble Prince
Beelzebub, and spoken contemptibly of his honourable friends, the
Lord Old Man, the Lord Carnal Delight, and the Lord Luxurious."
What unlucky jealousy could have tempted the great men of those
days to appropriate such innocent abstractions to themselves!
Wither seems to have contemplated to a degree of idolatry his own
possible virtue. He is for ever anticipating persecution and
martyrdom; fingering, as it were, the flames, to try how he can bear
them. Perhaps his premature defiance sometimes made him
obnoxious to censures, which he would otherwise have slipped by.
The homely versification of these Satires is not likely to attract in the
present day. It is certainly not such as we should expect from a poet
"soaring in the high region of his fancies with his garland and his
singing robes about him;"[34] nor is it such as he has shown in his
Philarete, and in some parts in his Shepherds Hunting. He seems to
have adopted this dress with voluntary humility, as fittest for a moral
teacher, as our divines chuse sober grey or black; but in their
humility consists their sweetness. The deepest tone of moral feeling
in them, (though all throughout is weighty, earnest and passionate)
is in those pathetic injunctions against shedding of blood in quarrels,
in the chapter entitled Revenge. The story of his own forbearance,
which follows, is highly interesting. While the Christian sings his own
victory over Anger, the Man of Courage cannot help peeping out to
let you know, that it was some higher principle than fear which
counselled his forbearance.
[34] Milton.
Whether encaged, or roaming at liberty, Wither never seems to have
abated a jot of that free spirit, which sets its mark upon his writings,
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