Henry Crabb Robinson, Bury St. Edmunds, to John Miller, Bockleton, 4 July 1850.  

Bury St Edmunds 4th July 50

My dear Sir

     You will probably have seen in the Times an earlier announcemt of the intention to do honour to the name of Wordsworth: I am unable to add to the information this circular contains; for I have in fact been but little in London since the first meeting at Mr J. Coleridge’s – And I should be ashamed of having taken so little part in what has been done, if my being put on the SubCommee had been my own act which it was not. I have written more at length to your brother J. K. this morning – And here content myself with saying that Dr Chr: Wordsw: is now at Rydal preparing under Mrs Ws eye a memoir of our departed friend And that the Recluse – part 1. is to appear forthwith.

    In the 5th Vol: of Southeys Life, there is a brief notice of our old friend E. H. but without any thing to betray his name And indeed very little to draw attention to the fact.

             I am

                my dear Sir

                         with great respect

                                    faithfully your’s

                                                        H. C. Robinson

Revd John Miller

Bockleton –

Address: Revd John Miller / Parsonage / Bockleton/ Tenbury –.  Postmark: 5 July 1850, Bury St Edmunds. 

Text:WLL/1994.64.25.1. Robinson begins his diary entry on 4 July 1850 with these comments: ‘I remained within all the forenoon. I was engaged writing letters – To J. K. Miller & John Miller – to J.K.M: at length on his calling on me and leaving a card without an address just before he left town – On the Monument to be erected to Wordsworth and on the short reference to Hamond in Vol 5 of Southey’s Life without his name. To Jno M: very short on the Monument – Both letters on a circular of the subscription.’ 

The Revd John Miller (1787-1858) was a friend of both Wordsworth and Crabb Robinson. He attended St. Paul’s School and in 1804 let for Worcester College, Oxford (BA 1808, MA 1811), remaining as a Fellow there from 1810 to 1823. He was Bampton Lecturer in 1817, then Vicar of Bockleton, Worcester, prior to his death in 1864. He was an established theologian and a life-long friend of Keble. Among his publications is Two Sermons Preached in the Parish Church of Bockleton: On Sexagesima Sunday, February 15, and Sunday, March 1, 1857, Being the Sunday Before the Death, and that Next After the Burial of the Rev. Thomas Elton Miller (1857) (sermon about his brother).  Thomas Elton Miller (1783-1857) left St Paul’s School in 1801 and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1805; he received his M.A. in 1809. Another brother, John Kirkman Miller (1785-1855), left St. Paul’s in 1803, later becoming Vicar of Walkeringham, Nottinghamshire, in 1819. All were sons of Peter Miller (1746-1824) of Bockleton, Worcester.