Memoirs of William Wordsworth

Grasmere

The wandering minstrel and his sister—that great-hearted, most beautiful, and devoted sister, whom we cannot help loving so devoutly,—went in the spring of 1799 to visit their friends, the Hutchinsons, at Stockton-on-Tees, and remained there, with occasional exceptions, until the close of the year. Here dwelt Miss Mary Hutchinson, for whom the poet had begun to conceive such passion as he was capable of from the time of her visit to him and his sister, at Alfoxden. For although Dr. Wordsworth is silent also respecting this visit, De Quincy tells us that it actually took place.—And now the lovers—in their saturnine way—had leisure to cement their attachment, and what is more, they took advantage of it, as their subsequent marriage, about the commencement of the present century, sufficiently proves.—Many other things, however, occupied the poet’s attention beside this, and we find him, September 20, planning another tour, and this time through the lake district, with his friends Cottle and Coleridge. It was the first time that the latter had seen the lake country, and he, in writing to Miss Wordsworth, thus speaks of it:—

“At Temple Sowerby we met your brother John, who accompanied us to Hawes-water, Ambleside, and the divine sisters, Rydal and Grasmere. Here we stayed two days. We accompanied John over the fork of Helvellyn, on a day when light and darkness co-existed in contiguous masses, and the earth and sky were but one. Nature lived for us in all her grandest accidents. We quitted him by a wild turn, just as we caught a sight of the gloomy Ullswater.

“Your brother John is one of you; a man who hath solitary usings of his own intellect, deep in feelings, with a subtle tact, a swift instinct of truth and beauty; he interests me much.

“You can feel what I cannot express for myself, how deeply I have been impressed by a world of scenery, absolutely new to me. At Rydal and Grasmere I received, I think, the deepest delight; yet Hawes-water, through many a varying view, kept my eyes dim with tears; and the evening approaching, Derwent-water, in diversity of harmonious features, in the majesty of its beauties, and in the beauty of its majesty... and the black crags close under the snowy mountains, whose snows were pinkish with the setting sun, and the reflections from the rich clouds that floated over some, and rested over others!—it was to me a vision of a fair country: why were you not with us?”

It was in this tour that Wordsworth resolved to settle at Grasmere. First he thought of building a house by the lake side, and to enable him to do this, his brother John offered to give him £40 to buy the land. There was a small house to let, however, at Grasmere, which, after much deliberation with his sister, he finally hired, and the two inseparables entered upon it on St. Thomas’s Day, 1799.

One of the very finest of all Wordsworth’s letters—written to Coleridge four days after the settlement at Grasmere—details, with a graphic and truly poetic power, the wanderings of the sister and brother from Sockburn to their new home. It is too long, however, to quote here, and for a perusal of it the reader is referred to the Memoirs.H

The poet lived at Grasmere with his sister for eight years.I “The cottage,” says Dr. Wordsworth, in which Wordsworth and his sister took up their abode, and which still retains the form it wore then, stands on the right hand, by the side of what was then the coach road, from Ambleside to Keswick, as it enters Grasmere, or, as that part of the village is called, “Town End.” The front of it faces the lake; behind is a small plot of orchard and garden-ground, in which there is a spring, and rocks; the enclosure shelves upward towards the woody sides of the mountain above it.—Many of his poems, as the reader will remember, are associated with this fair spot:

“This spot of orchard ground is ours;
My trees they are, my sister’s flowers.”

In the first book of the “Recluse,” still unpublished, he thus expresses his feelings in settling in this house at Grasmere, and in looking down from the hills which embosom the lake.

“On Nature’s invitation do I come,
By reason sanctioned. Can the choice mislead,
That made the calmest, fairest spot on earth,
With all its unappropriated good,
My own, and not mine only, for with me
Entrenched—say rather peacefully embowered—
Under yon orchard, in yon humble cot,
A younger orphan of a home extinct
The only daughter of my parents, dwells;
Aye, think on that, my heart, and cease to stir;
Pause upon that, and let the breathing frame
No longer breathe, but all be satisfied.
O, if such silence be not thanks to God
For what hath been bestowed, then where, where then,
Shall gratitude find rest? Mine eyes did ne’er
Fix on a lovely object, nor my mind
Take pleasure in the midst of happy thoughts,
But either she, whom now I have, who now
Divides with me that loved abode was there,
Or not far off. Where’er my footsteps turned,
Her voice was like a hidden bird that sung;
The thought of her was like a flash of light
Or an unseen companionship, a breath
Or fragrance independent of the wind.
In all my goings, in the new and old
Of all my meditations, and in this
Favourite of all, in this the most of all....
Embrace me then, ye hills, and close me in.
Now in the clear and open day I feel
Your guardianship; I take it to my heart;
’Tis like the solemn shelter of the night,
But I would call thee beautiful; for mild,
And soft, and gay, and beautiful thou art,
Dear valley, having in thy face a smile,
Though peaceful, full of gladness. Thou art pleased,
Pleased with thy crags, and woody steeps, thy lake
Its one green island, and its winding shores,
The multitude of little rocky hills,
Thy church, and cottages of mountain stone
Clustered like stars, some few, but single most,
And lurking dimly in their shy retreats,
Or glancing at each other cheerful looks,
Like separated stars with clouds between.”

All this is a burst of quiet, yet beautiful, and almost ecstatic, enthusiasm—the like of which is not to be met with elsewhere, I think, in poetry. Surely, Wordsworth was worthy of his sweet cottage, and sweeter and dearer sister, and his glorious lake, with its one green island,—his mountains, and woods, and dales,—his church, and the cottages, “clustered like stars,” around it; for he had the great heart, and large brain, which Nature makes the condition for all those who would share her communion. And, then, his tastes were so simple, natural, and unaffected; he lived so close to Nature, and knew so many of her secrets, and loved her too, with the passion of a first and only love. Yes, surely, he was worthy of all he enjoyed.

During the three years which elapsed, between the poet’s entering upon the cottage at Grasmere, and his marriage, he was very industriously, and even laboriously, employed in cultivating his art; for he had resolved that poetry should be the business and not the pastime of his life. We find Coleridge urging him to continue the “Recluse,”—by which he meant, as Dr. Wordsworth informs us, the “Prelude;”—in the summer of 1799, and again in October of the same year, he says he will hear of nothing else but the “Recluse;” for in the mood he was in at that time, he was wholly against the publication of any small poems. He desired that his friend should build, what my friend J. H. Stirling calls an “Opus;” but Wordsworth, though still at work upon the foundations of his opus, cannot rest without making little oratories—holy cells—in the pauses of his labour. Hence a new volume of poems was soon ready for publication; and as the 12mo. edition of the “Lyrical Ballads,” was by this time exhausted, Wordsworth determined to reprint them, and add this new volume to the work, calling the two conjointly “Lyrical Ballads, in two Volumes.” The pieces now presented to the public, included some of his finest lyrical effusions. Amongst others, “Lucy Gray,” “Nutting,” “The Brothers,” “Ruth,” “Poor Susan,” “The Waterfall, and the Eglantine.” This new edition was published, in 1800, by Messrs. Longmans, who offered the poet £100 for two editions of the two volumes.

In 1801, Wordsworth presented a copy of the “Lyrical Ballads” to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox, accompanied by a characteristic letter; in reply to which, Mr. Fox expresses his high admiration of many of the poems, particularly of “Harry Gill,” “We are Seven,” “The Mad Mother,” and “The Idiot Boy.” Mr. Fox, however, takes exception to blank verse, as a vehicle for subjects which are to be treated with simplicity.

Other poems of deep interest succeeded these new lyrics; and I will name “The Leech Gatherer,” and the “Ode to Immortality,” because these poems have always been great favourites with me; and, further, because I wish to add here the notes which the poet has furnished respecting them. And first of all “The Leech Gatherer:”—speaking of this poem to his friends he says,—

“I will explain to you in prose, my feelings in writing that poem. I describe myself as having been exalted to the highest pitch of delight by the joyousness and beauty of Nature; and then as depressed, even in the midst of these beautiful objects, to the lowest dejection and despair. A young poet in the midst of the happiness of Nature is described as overwhelmed by the thoughts of the miserable reverses which have befallen the happiest of all men—viz., poets. I think of this till I am so deeply impressed with it, that I consider the manner in which I was rescued from my dejection and despair almost as an interposition of Providence. A person reading the poem with feelings like mine, will have been awed and controlled, expecting something spiritual or supernatural. What is brought forward? A lonely place, ‘a pond by which an old man was, far from all house and home;’ not stood, nor sat, but was. The figure presented in the most naked simplicity possible. This feeling of spirituality or supernaturalness is again referred to as being strong in my mind in this passage. How came he here? thought I, or what can he be doing? I then describe him, whether ill or well is not for me to judge with perfect confidence; but this I can confidently affirm, that though I believe God has given me a strong imagination, I cannot conceive a figure more impressive than that of an old man like this, the survivor of a wife and children, travelling alone among the mountains, and all lonely places, carrying with him his own fortitude in the necessities which an unjust state of society has laid upon him. You speak of his speech as tedious. Everything is tedious when one does not read with the feelings of the author. The ‘Thorn’ is tedious to hundreds; and so is the ‘Idiot Boy.’ It is in the character of the old man to tell his story, which an impatient reader must feel tedious. But, good heavens! should he ever meet such a figure in such a place; a pious, self-respecting, miserably infirm old man telling such a tale!”

Having thus shown the feelings of the poet in writing “The Thorn,” I will quote, secondly and lastly, the note to the celebrated “Ode.” “This,” he says, “was composed during my residence at Town End, Grasmere. Two years at least passed between the writing of the first four stanzas and the remaining part. To the attentive and competent reader the whole sufficiently explains itself; but there may be no harm in adverting here to particular feelings or experiences of my own mind on which the structure of the poem partly rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable to my own being. I have said elsewhere—

      “A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?”

But it was not so much from the source of animal vivacity that my difficulties came, as from a source of the indomitableness of the spirit within me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated in something of the same way to heaven. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having externally existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in my own immaterial nature. Many times, when going to school, have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in the lines “Obstinate Questionings,” &c. To that dream-like vividness of splendour which invests objects of sight in childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here; but having in the poem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it right to protest against such a conclusion which has given pain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith as more than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear in mind that, though the idea is not advanced in revelation, there is nothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an analogy in its favour. Accordingly, a pre-existent state has entered into the popular creeds of many nations, and among all persons acquainted with classic literature is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy. Archimedes said that he could move the world if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his own mind? Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the ‘Immortality of the Soul,’ I took hold of the notion of pre-existence, as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorising me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet.”

Now, in this note, and in the “Ode” which it illustrates, will be found the key to all Wordsworth’s philosophy, and to the secret of his mind as a poet. The mystic spiritualism which imbues all his writings, is the great distinguishing feature which marks and separates him from merely didactic and descriptive poets; and, were this element wanting in him, we should have a fine reporter of Nature’s doings—a fine painter of objective effects—but no creator—no idealist, and therefore, properly speaking, no poet, in the high signification of that term. Luckily, however, for Wordsworth and for the world, he possessed the spiritual faculty, and kept it always active; so that his eye, even in the presence of the meanest objects, was open to the ideal things of which the symbols they were. The infinite was ever present to his mind, and he saw all objects through that medium of light and relationship. But the great band of critics outside the fine region in which Wordsworth dwelt, could not of course understand this “Ode,” or the general tone of Wordsworth’s poetry, and therefore they denounced it, as incomprehensible, mystic, and absurd. But because they had no faculty with which to appreciate spiritual representation, or even to believe in spirituality as a fact belonging to the nature of man, that was no reason in the estimation of our poet, that he should cease to sing his wonted strains in his wonted manner. In alluding to this depreciation of his poems, he very sorrowfully says, somewhere in his letters or notes, that it is a fact that “nineteen out of every twenty persons are unable to appreciate poetry;” and we are bound to confess that this hard judgment is truth. Even the better sort of “Reviews,” in which we should have expected at least a recognition of the genius and noble aims of the poet, stood out dead against him; and Jeffrey’s “This will never do,” in speaking of “The Excursion,” shows how blindly bigotted and intolerant were such critics in those days. As a sample of the abuse, and utter want of judgment which characterised Wordsworth’s critics, take the following anecdotes, which are recorded by the writer on “Wordsworth,” (Chamber’s Tracts) as a good joke, or I will hope, as a picture of the folly of the time.

“A writer in Blackwood for November, 1829, gives an amusing sketch of a party where the ‘Intimations of Immortality,’ revered by the initiated as the ‘Revelation,’ was read aloud by a true disciple, in a kind of unimaginable chant then peculiar to the sect. There were one or two believers present, with a few neophytes, and one or two absolute and wicked sceptics! No sooner had the recitation fairly commenced, than one of the sceptics, of laughing propensities, crammed his handkerchief half-way down his throat; the others looked keen and composed: the disciples groaned, and the neophytes shook their heads in deep conviction.’ The reciter proceeded with deeper unction, till on being asked by a neophyte to give an explanation, which he was unable to give, he got angry, and ‘roundly declared, that things so out of the common way, so sublime, and so abstruse, could be conveyed in no language but their own. When the reciter came to the words, ‘Callings from us,’ the neophyte again timidly requested an explanation, and was informed by one of the sceptics, that they meant the child’s transitory gleams of a glorious pre-existence, that fall away and vanish almost as soon as they appear. The obstinate neophyte only replied, in a tone of melancholy, ‘When I think of my childhood, I have only visions of traps and balls, and whippings. I never remember being “haunted by the eternal mind.” To be sure I did ask a great many questions, and was tolerably obstinate, but I fear these are not the “obstinate questionings” of which Mr. Wordsworth speaks.’ This is but a small sample of the Wordsworthian scenes and disputations then of every-day occurrence. In 1816 a kind of shadow of Horace Smith again took the field. It seems that Hogg intended to publish an anthology of the living British bards, and had written to some of them for specimens. A wag, who had heard of the project, immediately issued an anthology, purporting to be this, but containing merely the coinage of his own brain. As may be imagined, Wordsworth occupied a prominent corner; and indeed some of the imitations—for most were imitations rather than parodies—did him no discredit. ‘The Flying Tailor,’ however, was not an infelicitous burlesque of the poet’s blank verse:—

          “Ere he was put
By his mother into breeches, Nature strung
The muscular part of his anatomy
To an unusual strength; and he could leap,
All unimpeded by his petticoats,
Over the stool on which his mother sat,
More than six inches—o’er the astonished stool!”

Enough, however, has been said about these critics, for the present, at least. Wordsworth’s was a struggle to get for poetry, once more, a true utterance; to annihilate the old dead, mechanical form which it had for the most part assumed, from the time of Pope downwards to him; for although Burns and Cowper had sounded the first trumpet in this morning of the resurrection, it was reserved for Wordsworth to awake the dead, and infuse into them a new and living soul.

During the residence of the poet at Grasmere, his sister kept a diary of the proceedings of their little household, which, with Wordsworth’s letters, are the chief biographical records of this period, respecting the poet himself. The following extracts will give some idea of the calm and beautiful life which they led together:—

“As we were going along, we were stopped at once, at the distance, perhaps of fifty yards from our favourite birch-tree; it was yielding to the gust of wind, with all its tender twigs; the sun shone upon it, and it glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower; it was a tree in shape, with a stem and branches, but it was like a spirit of water....

When we were in the woods before Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side.... As we went along there were more, and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw there was a long belt of them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about them; some rested their heads on these stones, as on a pillow; the rest tossed, and reeled, and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, they looked so gay and glancing.”

The poet was frequently indebted to this beautiful sister for the material of his poems; and many of the minor pieces are a musical transformation of her descriptions of natural scenery, and the feelings with which she beheld it. The poem of “The Beggars” is an instance of this; and if the reader will peruse “The Daffodils,” and compare it with Miss Wordsworth’s description of these fair flowers, as quoted above, he will perhaps discover how much the poet is indebted to her, in this instance also. Here is the poem.

“I wandered lonely as a cloud
  That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
  A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
  And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch’d in never ending line
  Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
  Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but feel gay,
  In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
  In vacant, or in passive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
  Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”

In writing to his friends the Wranghams, November 4, 1802, Wordsworth, after thanking them for their good opinion of this poem, alludes to “Butler, Montague’s friend,” as having said of it (the poem,) “Aye, a fine morsel this for the reviewers,”—and adds, “When this was told me (for I was not present) I observed that there were two lines in that little poem, which, if thoroughly felt, would annihilate nine-tenths of the reviews of the kingdom, as they would find no readers. The lines I alluded to were these—

‘They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude.’”

And, now, I will make a few quotations from Miss Wordsworth’s journal:—

“1802. Wednesday, April 28.—Copied the ‘Prioress’ Tale.’ W. in the orchard tired. I happened to say, that when a child, I would not have pulled a strawberry blossom; left him, and wrote out the ‘Manciples’ Tale.’ At dinner he came in with the poem on children gathering flowers [the poem entitled ‘Foresight’].

“April 20.—We went into the orchard after breakfast, and sat there. The lake calm; sky cloudy. W. began poem on the “Celandine.”

“May 1.—Sowed flower seeds; W. helped me. We sat in the orchard. W. wrote the ‘Celandine.’ Planned an arbour,—the sun too hot for us.

“May 7.—W. wrote ‘The Leech Gatherer.’

“May 21.—W. wrote two sonnets, ‘On Buonaparte,’ after I had read Milton’s sonnets to him.

“May 29.—W. wrote his poem “On going to M. H.” I wrote it out.

“June 8.—W. wrote the poem ‘The sun has long been set.’

“June 17.—W. added to the ‘Ode’ he is writing [‘On the Immortality of the Soul’].

“June 19.—Read Churchill’s ‘Rosciad.’

“July 9.—W. and I set forth to Keswick, on our road to Gallow Hill (to the Hutchinsons’, near Malton, York). On Monday, the 11th, went to Eusemere (the Clarksons’). 13th, walked to Emont Bridge, thence by Greta Bridge. The sun shone cheerfully, and a glorious ride we had over the moors; every building bathed in golden light; we saw round us miles beyond miles, Darlington spire, &c. Thence to Thirsk; on foot to the Hamilton Hills—Rivaux. I went down to look at the ruins; thrushes singing, cattle feeding amongst the ruins of the abbey; green hillocks about the ruins—these hillocks scattered over with grovelets of wild roses, and covered with wild flowers: could have staid in this green quiet spot till evening, without a thought of moving, but W. was waiting for me....

July 30.—Left London between five and six o’clock of the morning, outside the Dover coach. A beautiful morning. The city, St. Paul’s, with the river—a multitude of little boats—made a beautiful sight, as we crossed Westminster Bridge [Wordsworth’s sonnet “On Westminster Bridge” was written on the roof of the Dover coach]; the houses, not overhung by their clouds of smoke, were spread out endlessly; yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a pure light, that there was something like the purity of one of Nature’s own grand spectacles.... Arrived at Calais at four in the morning of July 31st.

Delightful walks in the evening; seeing far off in the west the coast of England, like a cloud, crested with Dover Castle, the evening star, and the glory of the sky: the reflections in the water were more beautiful than the sky itself; purple waves, brighter than precious stones, for ever melting away on the sands.

August 29.—Left Calais, at twelve o’clock in the morning, for Dover... bathed, and sat on the Dover Cliffs, and looked upon France; we could see the shores almost as plain as if it were but an English lake. Mounted the coach at half-past four; arrived in London at six, August 30. Stayed in London till 22nd September: arrived at Gallow Hill on Friday, September 24th.

On Monday, October 4th, 1802, W. was married, at Brompton church, to Mary Hutchinson.... We arrived at Grasmere, at six in the evening, on October 6th, 1802.”

And that the reader may hereafter have a clear perception of the persons of the poetic household at Grasmere, I will now go to De Quincy, who has drawn portraits of them, which, in the absence of any similar literary venture, are invaluable. Speaking of Mrs. Wordsworth, he says,—she was a tall young woman, with the most winning expression of benignity upon her features that he had ever beheld; her manner frank, and unembarrassed. “She was neither handsome or comely, according to the rigour of criticism, and was generally pronounced plain-looking, but the absence of the practical power and fascination which lie in beauty, were compensated by sweetness all but angelic, simplicity the most entire, womanly self-respect, and purity of heart, speaking through all her looks, acts, and movements. She rarely spoke; so that Mr. Slave-trade Clarkson used to say of her, that she could only say God bless you. Certainly her intellect was not of an active order; but in a quiescent, reposing, meditative way, she appeared always to have a social enjoyment from her own thoughts; and it would have been strange indeed, if she, who enjoyed such eminent advantages of training, from the daily society of her husband and his sister; not only hearing the best parts of English literature daily read, or quoted by short fragments, but also hearing them very often critically discussed in a style of great originality and truth, and by the light of strong poetic feeling,—strange would it have been had any person, dull as the weeds of Lethe in the native constitution of mind, failed to acquire the power of judging for herself, and putting forth some functions of activity. But undoubtedly that was not her element: to feel and to enjoy a luxurious repose of mind—there was her forte and her peculiar privilege; and how much better this was adapted to her husband’s taste, how much more suited to uphold the comfort of his daily life, than a blue-stocking loquacity, or even a legitimate talent for discussion and analytic skill may be inferred from his celebrated verses, beginning:

‘She was a phantom of delight
  When first she gleamed upon my sight;’

and ending with this matchless winding up of

‘A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn, to comfort, to command;
And yet——’

going back to a previous thought, and resuming a leading impression of the whole character—

‘And yet a spirit too, and bright
  With something of an angel light.’”

“From these verses,” continues De Quincy, “it may be inferred what were the qualities which won Wordsworth’s admiration in a wife; for these verses were written upon Mary Hutchinson, his own cousin, and his wife; and not written as Coleridge’s memorable verses upon “Sara,” for some forgotten original Sara, and consequently transferred to every other Sara who came across his path. Once for all, these exquisite lines were dedicated to Mrs. Wordsworth; were understood to describe her—to have been prompted by the feminine graces of her character; hers they are and will remain for ever.” To these, therefore, De Quincy refers the reader for an idea infinitely more powerful and vivid, he says, than any he could give, of what was most important in the partner and second self of the poet. And to this abstract of her moral portrait he adds the following remarks upon her physical appearance. “She was tall, as already stated; her figure was good—except that for my taste it was rather too slender, and so it always continued. In complexion she was fair; and there was something peculiarly pleasing even in this accident of the skin, for it was accompanied by an animated expression of health, a blessing which in fact she possessed uninterruptedly, very pleasing in itself, and also a powerful auxiliary of that smiling benignity which constituted the greatest attraction of her person. Her eyes—the reader may already know—her eyes

‘Like stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight, too, her dark brown hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May time and the cheerful dawn.’

But strange it is to tell, that in these eyes of vesper gentleness, there was a considerable obliquity of vision; and much beyond that slight obliquity which is often supposed to be an attractive foible of the countenance; and yet though it ought to have been displeasing or repulsive, in fact it was not. Indeed, all faults, had they been ten times and greater, would have been swallowed up or neutralised by that supreme expression of her features, to the intense unity of which every lineament in the fixed parts, and every undulation in the moving parts or play of her countenance, concurred, viz., a sunny benignity—a radiant perception—such as in this world De Quincy says he never saw equalled or approached.”

Such, then, is the portrait of Mrs. Wordsworth; and now for that of sweet, musical, romantic, true and generous Dorothy. She was much shorter, much slighter, and perhaps in other respects as different from Mrs. Wordsworth in personal characteristics as could have been wished for the most effective contrast. “Her face was of Egyptian brown: rarely in a woman of English birth had a more determined gipsy tan been seen. Her eyes were not soft, as Mrs. Wordsworth’s, nor were they fierce or bold; but they were wild and startling, and hurried in their motion. Her manner was warm, and even ardent; her sensibility seemed constitutionally deep; and some subtle fire of impassioned intellect apparently burned within her, which, being alternately pushed forward into a conspicuous expression by the irrepressible instinct of her temperament, and then immediately checked in obedience to the decorum of her sex and age, and her maidenly condition (for she had rejected all offers of marriage, out of pure sisterly regard to her brother, and subsequently to her sister’s children) gave to her whole demeanour and to her conversation, an air of embarrassment and even of self conflict, that was sometimes distressing to witness. Even her very utterance, and enunciation often, or rather generally, suffered in point of clearness and steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility, and perhaps from some morbid irritability of the nerves. At times the self-contracting and self-baffling of her feelings, caused her even to stammer, and so determinedly to stammer, that a stranger who should have seen her, and quitted her in that state of feeling, would have certainly set her down for one plagued with that infirmity of speech, as distressingly as Charles Lamb himself.... The greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth’s attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her in right of her character, her history, and the relation which she fulfilled towards her brother, was the glancing quickness of her motions, and other circumstances in her deportment—such as her stooping attitude when walking, which gave an ungraceful, and even an unsexual character to her appearance when out of doors. She did not cultivate the graces which preside over the person and its carriage. But on the other hand she was a person of very remarkable endowments intellectually; and in addition to the other great services which she rendered to her brother, this may be mentioned as greater than all the rest, and it was one which equally operated to the benefit of every casual companion in a walk—viz., the extending sympathy, always ready, and always profound, by which she made all that one could tell her, all that one could describe, all that one could quote from a foreign author, reverberate as it were a plusieurs reprises to one’s own feelings, by the manifest pleasure it made upon her.... Her knowledge of literature was irregular, and not systematically built up. She was content to be ignorant of many things; but what she knew and had really mastered, lay where it could not be disturbed—in the temple of her own most fervid heart.”... At the time this sketch was written, both the ladies were about twenty-eight years old. “Miss Wordsworth,” continues De Quincy, “had seen most of life, and even of good company; for she had lived, when quite a girl, under the protection of a near relation at Windsor, who was a personal favourite of the royal family, and consequently of George the Third.” Nevertheless, De Quincy thinks that “Mrs. Wordsworth was the more ladylike person of the two.”

The last figure, and the greatest, in this little group of portraits, is Wordsworth’s, and it is certainly hit off, like the others, with a free and discriminating hand.

“Wordsworth was, upon the whole, not a well-made man. His legs were positively condemned by all the female connoisseurs in legs that De Quincy ever heard lecture on that topic; not that they were bad in any way that would force itself upon your notice—there was no absolute deformity about them; and undoubtedly they had been serviceable legs, beyond the average standard of human requisition; for with these identical legs Wordsworth must have travelled a distance of one hundred and seventy-five to one hundred and eighty thousand English miles,—a mode of exertion which to him stood in the stead of wine, spirits, and all other stimulants whatever to the animal spirits; to which he has been indebted for a life of unclouded happiness, and even for much of what is most excellent in his writings. But useful as they have proved themselves, the Wordsworthian legs were certainly not ornamental; it was really a pity that he had not another pair for evening dress parties, when no boots lend their friendly aid to mask our imperfections from the eyes of female rigourists—the elegantes formarum spectatrices.... But the worst part of Wordsworth’s person was the bust; there was a narrowness and a stoop about the shoulders, which became striking, and had an effect of meanness, when brought into close juxtaposition with a figure of a most statuesque “order.”... Further on, De Quincy relates how he was walking out with Miss Wordsworth, the poet being before them, deeply engaged in conversation with a person of fine proportions, and towering figure,—when the contrast was so marked, and even painful to the poet’s sister, that she could not help exclaiming: “Is it possible? Can that be William? How very mean he looks!” “And yet,” continues De Quincy, “Wordsworth was of a good height, just five feet ten, and not a slender man; on the contrary, by the side of Southey, his limbs looked thick, almost in a disproportionate degree. But the total effect of Wordsworth’s person was always worst in a state of motion; for, according to the remark I have heard from the county people, ‘he walked like a cade;’ a cade being a kind of insect which advances by an oblique motion. This was not always perceptible, and in part depended (I believe) upon the position of his arms; when either of these happened (as was very customary) to be inserted into the unbuttoned waistcoat, his walk had a wry or twisted appearance; and not appearance only,—for I have known it by slow degrees gradually to edge off his companion, from the middle to the side of the high road.’ Meantime his face—that was one which would have made amends for greater defects of figure; it was certainly the noblest for intellectual effect, that, De Quincy says, he ever saw. Haydon, the eminent painter, in his great picture of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, has introduced Wordsworth in the character of a disciple attending his Divine Master.... “Wordsworth’s face was of the long order, often classed as oval,... and if not absolutely the indigenous face of the lake district, at any rate a variety of that face,—a modification of the original type. The head was well filled out.... The forehead was not remarkably lofty... but it was, perhaps, remarkable for its breadth and expansive development. Neither were the eyes large,... on the contrary, they were rather small; but that did not interfere with their effect, which at times was fine, and suitable to his intellectual character.... The mouth and the region of the mouth—the whole circumference of the mouth, were about the strongest feature in Wordsworth’s face. There was nothing especially to be noticed in the mere outline of the lips, but the swell and protrusion of the parts above and around the mouth are noticeable.” And then De Quincy tells us why. He had read that Milton’s surviving daughter, when she saw the crayon drawing representing the likeness of her father, in Richardson the painter’s thick octavo volume of Milton, burst out in a rapture of passionate admiration, exclaiming—“This is my father! this is my dear father!” And when De Quincy had procured this book, he saw in this likeness of Milton a perfect portrait of Wordsworth. All the peculiarities, he says, were retained—“A drooping appearance about the eyelids—that remarkable swell that I have noticed about the mouth,—the way in which the hair lay upon the forehead. In two points only there was a deviation from the rigorous truth of Wordsworth’s features—the face was a little too short and too broad, and the eyes were too large.—There was also a wreath of laurel about the head, which, (as Wordsworth remarked,) disturbed the natural expression of the whole picture; else, and with these few allowances, he also admitted that the resemblance was, for that period of his life (but let not that restriction be forgotten;) perfect, or, as nearly so as art could accomplish. This period was about the year 1807.

Here, then, thanks to De Quincy, who, for these “Lake Reminiscences” alone, is well worthy of a pension, which, had I been Prime Minister, he should have had long ago; for no living man is more deserving of this distinction for the service he has rendered to our literature:—here, I say, we have portraits of the inmates of the white cottage at Grasmere; and beautiful portraits they are. One could have wished that Dr. Wordsworth had given a little more vitality to his biography of these inmates—that he had used his pallet and brushes a little more freely (for he can paint, if he likes, as the description of Rydal Mount shows); but instead of vitality, we have dry facts—which are the mere bones of biography—and these are often strung together with very indifferent tendons. We have no picture, for example, of the poet’s wedded life at this time—we cannot get behind the scenes; all we know is, that a wedding had taken place, and the good doctor tells us, that the twain were afterwards very happy all the days of their life, just as fairy tales wind up. There seems to be a good deal of needless reserve about this matter; and I, for one, do not thank the greedy poet when he says, touching his private life, that “a stranger intermeddleth not with his joy.” No one wishes to meddle with it; but to sympathise with it, and to know how this joy manifested itself in the little household, appear to be legitimate demands of the curious lovers of Wordsworth, and, indeed of all curious men, whether lovers of Wordsworth or not. But the doctor has nothing to say on these points; and all we can gather respecting them is to be found in the “Prelude,” and one or two other poems. Here is the extract from the “Prelude,” expressing the poet’s feelings as he left the cottage with his sister before his marriage:—

“Fareweil! thou little nook of mountain-ground,
Farewell! we leave thee to Heaven’s peaceful care,
Thee, and the cottage, which thou dost surround.
We go for one to whom ye will be dear;
And she will prize this bower, this Indian shed,
Our own contrivance—building without peer;
A gentle maid....
Will come to you, to you herself will wed,
And love the blessed life that we lead here.”

And in this place it will be well to give De Quincy’s sketch of the cottage itself, where this blessed life was lived, and to share which the poet went to fetch his bride from her father’s house:—“A little semi-vestibule between two doors, prefaced the entrance into what might be considered the principal room of the cottage. It was an oblong square, not above eight and a half feet high, sixteen feet long, and twelve broad; very prettily wainscotted, from the floor to the ceiling, with dark polished oak, slightly embellished with carving. One window there was—a perfect and unpretending cottage window—with little diamond panes, embowered, at almost every season of the year, with roses; and in the summer and autumn, with jessamine and other fragrant shrubs. From the exuberant luxuriance of the vegetation around it, and from the dark hue of the wainscotting, this window, though tolerably large, did not furnish a very powerful light to one who entered from the open air.... I was ushered up a little flight of stairs—fourteen in all—to a little dingy room, or whatever the reader chooses to call it. Wordsworth himself has described the fire-place of this, his—

‘Half kitchen and half parlour fire.’

It was not fully seven feet six inches high, and in other respects of pretty nearly the same dimensions as the rustic hall below. There was however, in a small recess, a library of perhaps three hundred volumes, which seemed to consecrate the nook as the poet’s study, and composing room; and so occasionally it was.”

So far then, De Quincy; and the following poem, already alluded to, will give an idea of the poet’s feelings respecting the bride he brought with him to share the cottage blessedness of Grasmere.

“She was a phantom of delight,
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament.
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight too her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May time and the cheerful dawn;
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, to command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright,
With something of angelic light.”

This beautiful poem, so full of calm affection, and intellectual homage, is a fair sample of Wordsworth’s love poems, as well as a charming tribute to his wife’s loveliness and virtue. In early life, it is thought by De Quincy and others, that the poet had experienced a tragical termination to an early love, and that the poems of which “Lucy” is the theme, were addressed to the object of this love; but Wordsworth always maintained a mysterious silence about the whole affair, and would never resolve the riddle of this attachment. The “Lucy” poems, however, beautiful as they are, are chiefly valuable as exhibiting the kind of passion which love showed itself in Wordsworth. Passion, in the proper meaning of the word—viz., deep, fiery, intense, and all-embracing feeling, was certainly not Wordsworth’s. His love was calm, intellectual, and emotional—but it was not passion. All his love seems to have passed through his head before it touched his heart. And yet he loved his wife, and lived, as I said before, very happily with her.

Mrs. Wordsworth, however, was a true household woman, and had not acquired that faculty of walking which Wordsworth and his sister possessed, in so eminent a degree. In about a year, therefore, after his marriage—that is, August 14, 1803,—we find Wordsworth parting from his wife, and making a tour into Scotland, with his sister and Coleridge, taking Carlisle on the way. When they arrived at Longtown, they found a guide-post pointing out two roads,—one to Edinburgh, the other to Glasgow. They took the latter road, and entered Scotland by crossing the river Sark. Edinburgh was no favourite place with Wordsworth, and for reasons which are sufficiently obvious. The tourists then passed through Gretna Green to Annan, leaving the Solway Frith, and the Cumberland hills to their left hand. On Thursday the 18th August, they went to the churchyard where Burns is buried; a bookseller accompanied them, of whom Miss Wordsworth had bought some little books for Johnny, the poet’s first child. He showed them first the outside of Burns’ house, where he had lived the last three years of his life, and where he died. It had a mean appearance, and was in a bye situation, white-washed, and dirty about the doors, as all Scotch houses are; flowering plants in the windows. They went on to visit his grave. He lies in a corner of the churchyard, and his second son, Francis Wallace, is beside him. There was no stone to mark the spot. The greatest bard that had sung in Britain for some centuries, lay buried there like a dog. A hundred guineas, however, had been collected to build a monument over his ashes. “There,” said the bookseller to the visitors, pointing to a pompous monument, a few yards off, “there lies Mr. John Bushby, a remarkably clever man; he was an attorney, and hardly ever lost a cause he undertook. Burns made many a lampoon upon him; and there they rest as you see.” Yes, indeed, there they rested; and that was the deep, sad moral of the story. We shall all rest so at last. They then went to Burns’ house. Mrs. Burns was not at home, but had gone to the sea-shore with her children. They saw the print of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” which Burns mentioned in one of his letters having received as a present. In the room above the parlour Burns died, and his son after him; and of all who saw this parlour on this 18th of August,—Wordsworth and his sister, Coleridge and the poor bookseller—who survives? “There they rest, as you see.”

The tourists travelled subsequently through the Vale of the Nith, and crossing the Frith, reached Brownhill, where they slept.

“I cannot take leave of this country,” says Miss Wordsworth, in her Journal, “without mentioning that we saw the Cumberland mountains within half a mile of Ellisland (Burns’ house) the last view we had of them. Drayton has prettily described the connection which the neighbourhood has with ours, when he makes Skiddaw say—

          ‘Scurfell from the sky,
That Annandale doth crown, with a most amorous eye,
Salutes me every day, or at my pride looks grim,
Oft threatening me with clouds, as I oft threatening him!’

These lines occurred to William’s memory; and while he and I were talking of Burns, and the prospect he must have had, perhaps from his own door, of Skiddaw and his companions, we indulged ourselves in fancying that we might have been personally known to each other, and he have looked upon those objects with more pleasure for our sakes. We talked of Coleridge’s children and family, then at the foot of Skiddaw, and our own new-born John, a few miles behind it; and the grave of Burns’ son, which we had just seen, by the side of that of his father; and the stories we had heard at Dumfries, respecting the dangers which his surviving children were exposed to, filled us with melancholy concern, which had a kind of connection with ourselves, and with thoughts, some of which were afterwards expressed in the following supposed address to the sons of the ill-fated poet:—

“Ye now are toiling up life’s hill,
’Tis twilight time of good and ill!”

During this Scotch tour the party walked through the vale of the Clyde, visited Glengyle, the scene of some of Rob Roy’s exploits, Loch Lomond, Inverary, Glencoe, Kenmore, and the Duke of Athol’s gardens; resting whilst in this latter place on “the heather seat which Burns was so loth to quit that moonlight evening when he first went to Blair Castle.” Then they went to the Pass of Killicranky, respecting which Wordsworth wrote the following sonnet.

“Six thousand veterans practis’d in war’s game,
Tried men, at Killicranky were arrayed
Against an equal host that wore the plaid,
Shepherds and herdsmen. Like a whirlwind came
The Highlanders; the slaughter spread like flame;
And Garry, thundering down his mountain road,
Was stopped, and could not breathe beneath the load
Of the dead bodies! ’Twas a day of shame
For them whom precept, and the pedantry
Of cold mechanic battle do enslave.
Oh for a single hour of that Dundee,
Who on that day the word of onset gave!
Like conquest might the men of England see!
And their foes find a like inglorious grave.

In the year 1803, when this sonnet was written, an invasion was hourly looked for; and Miss Wordsworth and her brother (for Coleridge had left them, worried by the “evil chance,” and something worse perhaps at Loch Lomond) could not but think with some regret of the times when from the now depopulated Highlands, forty or fifty thousand men might have been poured down for the defence of the country, under such leaders as the Marquis of Montrose, or the brave man who had so distinguished himself upon the ground where they were standing.

The tourists returned by way of Edinburgh, visiting Peebles and Melrose Abbey. Sir Walter, then Mr. Scott, was, at the time of their visit to the abbey, travelling as Sheriff of Selkirk to the assizes at Jedburgh. They dined together at the Melrose Inn. Sir Walter was their guide to the abbey, taking them into Mr. Riddel’s gardens and orchard, where they had a sweet view of it through trees, the town being quite excluded. Sir Walter was of course at home in the history and tradition of these noble ruins, and pointed out to his visitors many things which would otherwise have escaped their notice. Beautiful pieces of sculpture in obscure corners, flowers, leaves, and other ornaments, which being cut in the durable pale red stone of which the abbey is built, were quite perfect. What destroyed, however, the effect of the abbey, was the barbarous taste of the good Scotch people who had built an ugly, damp charnel house within the ruins, which they called a church!

Quitting Melrose, they crossed the Teviot by a stone bridge, and visited Jedburgh. It rained all the way, and they arrived at the inn just before the judges were expected out of court to dinner, very wet and cold. There was no private room but the judges’ sitting-room, and they had to get private lodgings in the town. Scott sat with them an hour in the evening, and repeated a part of his “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” Their landlady was a very remarkable woman; and Wordsworth wrote some verses expressive of the feelings with which she inspired him. Here is the burden.

“Aye! twine thy brows with fresh spring flowers,
And call a train of laughing hours,
And bid them dance, and bid them sing,
And thou, too, mingle in the ring.”

Miss Wordsworth gives the following sweet picture of the home at Grasmere on their return:—

“September 25th.—A beautiful autumnal day. Breakfasted at a public-house by the road-side; dined at Threlkeld; and arrived there between eight and nine o’clock, where we found Mary in perfect health. Joanna Hutchinson with her, and little John asleep in the clothes-basket by the fire.”

At the ferry-house, and waterfall of Loch Lomond, Wordsworth had been struck with the beauty and kindness of two girls whom they met there, and on his return to Grasmere he wrote the following lines upon one of them:—

“Sweet Highland girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head:
And these grey rocks; this household lawn;
These trees, a veil just half withdrawn;
This fall of water that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake;
This little bay, a quiet road,
That holds in shelter thy abode;
In truth together ye do seem
Like something fashioned in a dream;
Such forms as from their covert peep
When earthly cares are laid asleep.
Yet dream and vision as thou art,
I bless thee with a human heart:
God shield thee to thy latest years!
I neither know thee, nor thy peers;
And yet my eyes are filled with tears.”

This Scottish tour was a little episode in the quiet history of the poet’s residence at Grasmere. The truth is, that Wordsworth could not at this time rest long, even in his beautiful Grasmere, without the excitement of pedestrian travel and adventure. It was likewise a part of his education as a poet; the knowledge which he thus acquired of men, manners, and scenery. He had devoted himself to poetry; and every thing that tended to feed the divine faculty, he grasped at with an avidity equally as intense as that with which your mere canine man grasps at food for his perishing body. Nothing comes amiss to him; high and low, great and small; from the daffodil to Skiddaw—from Skiddaw to heaven and its hosts of glorious stars,—all are seized by this omnivorous poet, fused in his mind, and reproduced by him in song. His limited means are no barrier to his wanderings; he and his sister can live upon black bread and water, so far as rations are concerned; but setting aside the necessity of the case, this economy is for a sacred purpose,—viz.:—that they may enjoy the communion of Nature, and partake of her spiritual banquets. The gods, however, had determined to pet Wordsworth, and recompense him for his religious devotion to their doings through early life; and, to say nothing of the bequest of Raisley Calvert, the second Lord Lonsdale, just as the poet needed a wife, and larger means, paid the debt which his predecessor owed to Wordsworth’s father, amounting to £1,800, as the share of each member of the family. This was a most fortunate circumstance to Wordsworth and his sister; though it mattered little to the rest, because they were well appointed in life. De Quincy says that, a regular succession of similar, but superior, God-sends fell upon Wordsworth, to enable him to sustain his expenditure duly, as it grew with the growing claims upon his purse; and after enumerating the three items of “good luck,” mentioned above, he adds:—and “fourthly, some worthy uncle of Mrs. Wordsworth’s was pleased to betake himself to a better world; leaving to various nieces, and especially to Mrs. W., something or other, I forget what, but it was expressed by thousands of pounds. At this moment Wordsworth’s family had begun to increase; and the worthy old uncle, like every body else in Wordsworth’s case (I wish I could say the same in my own), finding his property clearly ‘wanted,’ and as people would tell him ‘bespoke,’ felt how very indelicate it would look for him to stay any longer, and so he moved off. But Wordsworth’s family, and the wants of that family, still continued to increase; and the next person, being the fifth, who stood in the way, and must, therefore, have considered himself rapidly growing into a nuisance, was the Stamp-Distributor for the county of Westmorland. About March, 1814, I think it was, that this very comfortable situation was vacated. Probably it took a month for the news to reach him; because in April, and not before, feeling that he had received a proper notice to quit, he, good man—this Stamp-Distributor—like all the rest, distributed himself and his offices into two different places,—the latter falling of course into the hands of Wordsworth.

“This office, which it was Wordsworth’s pleasure to speak of as a little one, yielded, I believe, somewhere about £500 a year. Gradually even that, with all former sources of income, became insufficient; which ought not to surprise anybody; for a son at Oxford, as a gentleman-commoner, could spend at least £300 per annum; and there were other children. Still it is wrong to say, that it had become insufficient; as usual it had not come to that; but, on the first symptoms arising that it would soon come to that, somebody, of course, had notice to consider himself a sort of nuisance elect,—and in this case it was the Distributor of Stamps for the county of Cumberland.” And in this strain of good-humoured banter—stimulated no doubt by his own precarious circumstances, in a measure, circumstances which ought not in his case to be precarious,—De Quincy relates how another £400 a year was added to the poet’s income from the increase of his district as Stamp-Distributor.

In 1842, since De Quincy wrote the above, Wordsworth resigned this office, and it was bestowed upon his son,—whilst he (the poet,) was put down upon the Civil-list for £300 a year, and finally made Poet Laureate.

To return, however, to the more even tenor of these Memoirs:—A circumstance occurred in the year 1803, shortly after the Scottish tour, which will further illustrate the “good luck” of Wordsworth, although in this instance he did not avail himself of it. Sir George Beaumont, the painter, out of pure sympathy with the poet,—and before he had seen or written to him,—purchased a beautiful little estate at Applethwaite, near Keswick, and presented it to him, in order that he (Wordsworth) and Coleridge, who was then residing at Greta Hall, might have the pleasure of a nearer and more permanent intercourse. A fragment of Sir George’s letter (good Sir George, who could recognise genius, and was noble and generous enough to prove his recognition in a most practical form) is printed in Dr. Wordsworth’s “Memoirs,” and it shews what a fine heart he had, God bless him! It is dated October 24, 1803, and runs thus:—

“I had a most ardent desire to bring you and Coleridge together. I thought with pleasure on the increase of enjoyment you would receive from the beauties of Nature, by being able to communicate more frequently your sensations to each other, and that this would be the means of contributing to the pleasure and improvement of the world, by stimulating you both to poetic exertions.” The benevolent project of this excellent baronet was defeated, partly because Coleridge soon after left Greta Hall for a warmer climate, being impelled to this course by ill health, and partly from private considerations respecting Wordsworth and his family, which, however, do not transpire in the “Memoirs.” A curious fact in connection with this gift of Sir George is, that Wordsworth neglected to thank the donor, or to take the slightest notice of it, for eight weeks after the writings were placed in his hands. In a letter addressed to the baronet, dated Grasmere, October 14th, 1803, Wordsworth apologises for this apparent neglect, and attributes it partly to the overpowering feelings with which the gift inspired him, and partly to a nervous dread of writing, and a fear lest he should acknowledge the honour that had been done him in an unworthy manner. “This feeling,” he says, “was indeed so very strong in me, as to make me look upon the act of writing to you, not as the work of a moment, but as a thing not to be done, but in my best, my purest, my happiest moments.” Thus strangely began one of the few friendships which Wordsworth cultivated with men, and one which lasted through the life of the noble-hearted baronet, who, in dying, in the year 1827 (on the 7th of February), left Wordsworth an annuity of £100 to defray the expenses of an annual tour. (Another instance of the poet’s “good luck!”) It is right to add, that Wordsworth was deeply affected by his friend’s death, and that he has left, in his “Elegiac Musings,” some noble lines to his memory.

Amongst the occasional visitors at Grasmere between the years 1800 and 1804, was Captain John Wordsworth, the poet’s second brother, who was eventually lost in the Abergaveny East Indiaman, on the 5th of February, 1804. His brother was a man of fine taste and discernment, and prophesied in various letters and at various times, the ultimate success of Wordsworth’s poetry. Wordsworth felt severely the untimely death of his brother, whom he loved with that devoted family fondness, which was characteristic of him. Writing to Sir George Beaumont upon this event, he says: “February 11th, 1808. This calamitous news we received at two o’clock to-day; and I write to you from a house of mourning. My poor sister, and my wife, who loved him almost as we did (for he was one of the most amiable of men) are in miserable affliction, which I do all in my power to alleviate; but, Heaven knows, I want consolation myself. I can say nothing higher of my ever dear brother than that he was worthy of his sister, who is now weeping beside me, and of the friendship of Coleridge; meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, and a poet in everything but words.” The lyre of the poet sounded his praises in three poems. The first is entitled “Elegiac Stanzas suggested by a picture of Peel Castle in a storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont.” The next is “To a Daisy,” which suggests his brother’s love of quiet and peaceful things, and closes with the tragedy of his death, and the discovery and final burial of the body in the country churchyard of Wythe, a village near Weymouth.

“And thou, sweet flower, shalt sleep and wake,
  Upon his senseless grave,”

he concludes, returning thus finely to the simple flower which suggested the melancholy train of thought that runs through the poem. The third of these sad lyrical verses refers to the scene where the poet bade his brother farewell, on the mountains from Grasmere to Patterdale. The verses upon the “Picture of Peel Castle,” is the best of all these pieces; and as a fitting conclusion to this brief memorial of the poet’s brother, I will transcribe it.

“I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged pile!
  Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
  Thy form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure thy sky, so quiet was the air!
  So like, so very like, was day to day!
Where’er I looked, thy image still was there;
  It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
  No mood, which season takes away or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty deep
  Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! then, if mine had been the painter’s hand,
  To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was on sea, or land,
  The consecration, and the poet’s dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile!
  Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile
  On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

A picture had it been of lasting ease,
  Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,
  Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
  Such picture would I at that time have made;
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
  A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.

So once it would have been—’tis so no more;
  I have submitted to a new control;
A power is gone, which nothing can restore;
  A deep distress hath humanised my soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold
  A smiling sea, and be what I have been;
The feeling of my loss will ne’er be old;
  This, which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, friend! who would have been the friend,
  If he had lived, of him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
  This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O ’tis a passionate work!—yet wise and well;
  Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That hulk, which labours in the deadly swell,
  This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear!

And this huge castle, standing here sublime,
  I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
  The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone,
  Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
  Is to be pitied, for ’tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
  And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.—
  Not without hope we suffer, and we mourn.”
          —1805.

About a month after his brother’s death, Wordsworth concluded his “Prelude,” upon which he had been employed for upwards of six years. In allusion to this poem, Coleridge, in the “Table Talk,” says: “I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not first publish his thirteen books (there are fourteen of them,) “On the growth of an individual mind,”—superior, as I used to think, on the whole, to the “Excursion!”... Then the plan laid out, and I believe partly suggested by me was, that Wordsworth should assume the station of a man in mental repose, one whose principles were made up, and so prepared to deliver upon authority a system of philosophy. He was to treat man as man, a subject of eye, ear, touch and taste, in contact with external nature, and inferring the senses from the mind, and not compounding a mind out of the senses; then he was to describe the pastoral and other states of society, assuming something of the Juvenalian spirit as he approached the high civilization of cities and towns, and opening a melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy and vice; thence he was to infer and reveal the proof of, and necessity for, the whole state of man and society being subject to, and illustrative of, a redemptive process in operation, showing how this idea reconciled all the anomalies, and promised future glory and restoration.”

Wordsworth himself unfolds his own plan of the poem to Sir George Beaumont, in a letter dated December 25th, 1804. It was to consist, first of all, of a poem to be called “The Recluse,” wherein the poet was to express in verse, his own feelings concerning Man, Nature, and Society—and, secondly, a poem on his earlier life or the growth of his own mind. This latter poem was “The Prelude,” two thousand verses of which, he says, in the same letter, he had written during the last ten weeks. “The Prelude,” therefore, which was not published till after the poet’s death, was first written, and “The Recluse,” subsequently. Only a part of this poem, however—viz., “The Excursion,” except, of course, “The Prelude,” is published; “The Recluse” Proper, being still in MS.

Besides these larger works, Wordsworth threw off—not without care and meditation,—for no man ever wrote with more method and purpose—many minor poems, and amongst them was “The Waggoner,” dedicated to Charles Lamb, but not published until 1819. It was in this year (1805) that Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, and Sir Humphry Davy ascended Helvellyn together; and learned the sad story of poor Charles Gough, who perished in attempting to cross over Helvellyn to Grasmere, by slipping from a steep part of the rock, where the ice was not thawed, and beside whose remains his faithful dog was found many days afterwards, almost starved to death. This affecting incident afforded a theme for both poets—viz., Sir Walter and Wordsworth, and each wrote upon it without knowing that the other was similarly engaged. Scott’s poem is entitled “Helvellyn,” and Wordsworth’s “Fidelity.”

In 1807, Wordsworth issued two new volumes of poetry, in 12mo., which contained some of his best pieces; but which, like all his poems, did not gain immediate popularity. It is true that a fourth edition of the “Lyrical Ballads” had been called for, and that this indicated a growing taste in the public mind for Wordsworth’s effusions; but the critics assailed him with the bitterest animosity, and on the whole without much reason. With no reason, in short, so far as the poetic principles—the canon of his poetry—was concerned, and only with some show of reason in the instance of his peculiar mannerism. For although he was often misled by his craving after simplicity, and uttered what might be called without any violation of truth or desecration of the poet’s name and memory—drivel—still he had published poems of a very high order, such as had not been published in the lifetime of any man then living. The critics, however, could not let him alone, could not see the manifest beauties of his poetry, or would not see them, but denounced the whole without reserve or mercy. In the meanwhile Coleridge cheered him on, and on his return to England, in the summer of 1806, Wordsworth read “The Prelude” to him in the gardens of Coleorton, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, where the poet was then residing at the invitation of Sir George Beaumont; and the high commendations which Coleridge poured upon this poem animated Wordsworth to increased exertion and perseverance. During his residence at this beautiful house, he composed the noble “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,”—the finest thing of the kind in our language; and he left behind him as usual, many records of his feelings at Coleorton. The poet’s letters to Sir George Beaumont and an occasional one to Sir Walter Scott, are amongst the most interesting transcripts we have of his mind at this period.

It was in the beginning of the winter, 1807, that De Quincy paid his first visit to Wordsworth; and I find great fault with Dr. Wordsworth that he makes no allusion to De Quincy in all his memoirs of the poet. This is the more unpardonable, inasmuch as De Quincy is a man of the highest calibre—of the most refined taste,—of the profoundest scholarship, and possessing the widest acquaintance with general literature—to say nothing of his transcendant genius—of any man who has lived in this generation. Unpardonable, likewise, because De Quincy was a devout lover, and a chivalrous defender of Wordsworth, when it was not fashionable to speak well of him, and when a man who praised him stood a fair chance of being estimated, if not called, a madman. Neither can I ever forgive the poet himself for his cold neglect of the great Opium Eater. Such a man as De Quincy is not to be treated with contumely and despite, even by such a man as Wordsworth; for assuredly, in point of genius, both men stood pretty much upon the same level, and Wordsworth was far inferior to De Quincy in the other important matters specified above. De Quincy’s demon did not inspire him to write verses, but to write essays—and what essays! I do not know the writer who has ever taken so wide a range of subjects, and written upon them in such grand and noble English. De Quincy was a prose architect, Wordsworth a poetic one; and this is all the difference between them. In genius they were equal. Some day, perhaps, De Quincy will be better appreciated. We are indebted to De Quincy for the best account existing of the poet, his family, and home at Grasmere and Rydal; and no one would go to Dr. Wordsworth for information when he could go to De Quincy. Not that I have anything to say against Dr. Wordsworth personally, but I dislike his studied exclusiveness. The men who for long years were in constant intercourse with the poet, and on terms of friendship with him—Wilson, for example, as well as De Quincy—cannot be shut out from his biography without manifest injustice both to them and to the poet; and yet this is systematically done. Perhaps the good doctor has a clerical horror of his great-uncle being associated with loose Men of Letters; men, too, of not quite an orthodox cast in their opinions; genial, jovial, and full of all good fellowship besides. But of what avail could such horror so manifested be? The world will know the truth at last; and it is right they should; and one thing is certain enough, that Wordsworth will suffer no dishonour in the companionship of De Quincy and Wilson.

When I first read No. 1, of the “Lake Reminiscences,” by De Quincy, in “Tait’s Magazine,” I could scarcely believe what I read; and nothing would have convinced me of its truth, short of the authority which announced it. I had looked upon Wordsworth as a kind-hearted, generous, and unselfish man; noble, friendly, and without the vanity which has so often blurred the fair page of a great man’s nature. I was sorry to find that I was mistaken in this estimate of the poet; and that he, like me, and all the rest of us, had faults and failings manifold. De Quincy’s own account of his first visit to Wordsworth, the deep reverence with which he regarded him, and the overwhelming feelings which beset him on the occasion, is very affecting; and contrasted with the poet’s subsequent treatment of him, his wanton throwing away of that noble and affectionate heart, and his total disregard of the high intellectual homage which De Quincy offered to him, is still more affecting, and full, likewise, of pain and sorrow. Whilst he was a student at Oxford, De Quincy twice visited the Lake Country, on purpose to pay his respects to Wordsworth; and once, he says, he went forward from Coniston to the very gorge of Hammerscar, “from which the whole vale of Grasmere suddenly breaks upon the view in a style of almost theatrical surprise, with its lovely valley stretching in the distance, the lake lying immediately below, with its solemn boat-like island, of five acres in size, seemingly floating on its surface; its exquisite outline on the opposite shore, revealing all its little bays, and wild sylvan margin, feathered to the edge with wild flowers and ferns!

“In one quarter a little wood, stretching for about half a mile towards the outlet of the lake, more directly in opposition to the spectator; a few green fields: and beyond them, just two bow-shots from the water, a little white cottage gleaming from the midst of trees, with a vast and seemingly never-ending series of ascents, rising above it to the height of more than three thousand feet. That little cottage was Wordsworth’s, from the time of his marriage, until 1808. Afterwards, for many a year, it was mine. Catching one glimpse of this loveliest of landscapes, I retreated, like a guilty thing, for fear I might be surprised by Wordsworth, and then returned faint-hearted to Coniston, and so to Oxford, re infecta.—This was in 1806. And thus, from mere excess of nervous distrust in my own powers for sustaining a conversation with Wordsworth, I had for nearly five years shrunk from a meeting for which, beyond all things under heaven, I longed.”

This nervous distrust yielded in after life to a sober confidence, and a matchless power of unfolding his thoughts colloquially. In the meanwhile, that is to say, in 1807, Coleridge returned from Malta, and De Quincy was introduced to him first of all at Bridgewater, and met him again at the Hot-wells, near Bristol,—when, upon discovering that he was anxious to put his wife and children under some friendly escort, on their return homewards to Keswick, De Quincy offered to unite with Mrs. Coleridge in a post-chaise to the north. Accordingly they set out. Hartley Coleridge was then nine years old, Derwent about seven, and the beautiful little daughter about five. In such companionship, then, did De Quincy pay his first visit to Wordsworth, at Grasmere,—a most interesting and artistic account of which he has written in “Tait’s Magazine,” and to which I have been frequently indebted in the compilation of these Memoirs. The cottage has already been described, and the reader who has followed the course of this imperfect history, will remember the portraits of its illustrious inmates. Let us now see how it fared with De Quincy, when he met the mighty man of his heart. He was “stunned,” when Wordsworth shook him cordially by the hand, and went mechanically towards the house, leaving Mrs. Coleridge in the chaise at the door. The re-appearance of the poet, however, after exercising due hospitality to his lady guest, gave him courage, and he found that the said poet was, after all, but a man. His reverence for him, however, continued unabated, and for twenty-five years, during which time De Quincy lived at the lakes, in constant communion with Wordsworth, his reverence for the poet’s genius remained the same, and still remains, although he has long since ceased to respect him in so highly as a man; not, however, because Wordsworth was not of unimpeachable character, and estimable in so many ways, but because he had not that generous love for his friends which friendship demands. De Quincy confesses his estrangement from the poet with sorrow, and some bitterness of heart; and the following extract will throw all the light upon this subject which can be thrown at present:—

“I imagine a case such as this which follows,” says De Quincy, in alluding to the estrangement spoken of above—“the case of a man who for many years has connected himself with the domestic griefs and joys of another, over and above his primary service of giving to him the strength and the encouragement of a profound literary sympathy, at a time of universal scorning from the world; suppose this man to fall into a situation, in which, from want of natural connections, and from his state of insulation in life, it might be most important to his feelings that some support should be lent to him by a friend having a known place and acceptation, and what may be called a root in the country, by means of connections, descent, and long settlement. To look for this might be a most humble demand on the part of one who had testified his devotion in the way supposed. To miss it might—— But enough. I murmur not; complaint is weak at all times; and the hour is passed irrevocably, and by many a year, in which an act of friendship so natural, and costing so little (in both senses so priceless), could have been availing. The ear is deaf that should have been solaced by the sound of welcome. Call, but you will not be heard; shout aloud, but your ‘ave!’ and ‘all hail!’ will now tell only as an echo of departed days, proclaiming the hollowness of human hopes. I, for my part, have long learned the lesson of suffering in silence; and also I have learned to know that, wheresoever female prejudices are concerned, there it will be a trial, more than Herculean, of a man’s wisdom, if he can walk with an even step, and swerve neither to the right nor to the left.”

Leaving this sad subject, however, let us return to De Quincy at Grasmere in 1807. Mrs. Coleridge, on leaving the poet’s family for Keswick, invited De Quincy to visit her and Southey, and it was arranged that Wordsworth and the Opium Eater should go together. Accordingly they set off in a farmer’s cart to Ambleside, and from thence mounted the ascent of Kirkstone. Descending towards Brothers’ Water—“a lake which lies immediately below; and about three miles further, through endless woods, and under the shade of mighty fells, immediate dependencies and processes of the still more mighty Helvellyn” they approached the vale of Patterdale, and reached the inn, by moonlight. “All I remember,” says De Quincy is—“that through those romantic woods and rocks of Stybarren—through those silent glens of Glencoin and Glenridding—through that most romantic of parks then belonging to the Duke of Norfolk—viz., Gobarrow Park—we saw alternately for four miles, the most grotesque and the most awful spectacles—

——“Abbey windows
And Moorish temples of the Hindoos,”

all fantastic, all as unreal and shadowy as the moon-light which created them; whilst at every angle of the road, broad gleams came upwards of Ullswater, stretching for nine miles northward, but fortunately for its effect, broken into three watery channels of about equal length, and rarely visible at once.”

The party, (for Miss Wordsworth and the poet’s children were present on this occasion,) passed the night in a house called Ewsmere, and in the morning, leaving his family at this inn, the poet set out, with De Quincy, for a ramble through the woods of Lowther. These are the woods concerning which the poet, in a letter to Sir George Beaumont, dated October 17, 1805, says:—“I believe a more delightful spot is not under the sun. Last summer I had a charming walk along the river, for which I was indebted to this man [alluding to a good quaker, who was Lord Lowther’s arbiter elegantiarum, or master of the grounds, and who was making improvements in them, by virtue of his office], whose intention is to carry the walk along the river side till it joins the great road at Lowther Bridge, which you will recollect, just under Brougham, about a mile from Penrith. This, to my great sorrow! for the manufactured walk, which was absolutely necessary in many places, will, in one place, pass through a few hundred yards of forest-ground, and will there efface the most beautiful specimen of forest pathway ever seen by human eyes, and which I have paced many an hour when I was a youth, with one of those I best loved. There is a continued opening between the trees, a narrow slip of green turf, besprinkled with flowers, chiefly daisies; and here it is that this pretty path plays its pranks, weaving among the turf and flowers at its pleasure.” And it was in these woods, just five days after their introduction to each other, that Wordsworth and De Quincy spent a whole glorious morning in wild ramblings and in conversation. They dined together, towards evening, at Emont Bridge, and then walked on to the house of Captain Wordsworth, at Penrith. The family was absent, and the poet had business which occupied him all the next day; so De Quincy took a walk, sauntering along the road, about seventeen miles, to Keswick, where he enquired for Greta Hall, the residence of the poet Southey. “It stands out of the town a few hundred yards, upon a little eminence, overhanging the river Greta.” Mrs. Coleridge and Southey came to the door to welcome their visitor. “Southey was in person somewhat taller than Wordsworth being about five feet eleven in height, or a trifle more, whilst Wordsworth was about five feet ten; and partly from having slenderer limbs, partly from being more symmetrically formed about the shoulders, than Wordsworth, he struck me as a better and lighter figure, to the effect of which his dress contributed; for he wore, pretty constantly, a short jacket and pantaloons, and had much the air of a Tyrolese mountaineer.... His hair was black, and yet his complexion was fair; his eyes, I believe, hazel, and large, but I will not vouch for that fact; his nose aquiline; and he had a remarkable habit of looking up into the air, as if looking at abstraction. The expression of his face was that of a very acute, and an aspiring man. So far it was even noble, as it conveyed a feeling of serene and gentle pride, habitually familiar with elevating subjects of contemplation. And yet it was impossible that this pride could have been offensive to anybody, chastened as it was by the most unaffected modesty; and this modesty made evident and prominent, by the constant expression of reverence for the great men of the age (when he happened to esteem them such), and for all the great patriarchs of our literature. The point in which Southey, however, failed most in conciliating regard was, in all which related to the external expression of friendliness. No man could be more sincerely hospitable, no man more completely disposed to give up, even his time (the possession which he most valued), to the service of his friends; but, there was an air of reserve and distance about him—the reserve of a lofty, self-respecting mind, but, perhaps, a little too freezing,—in his treatment of all persons who were not amongst the corps of his ancient fireside friends. Still, even towards the veriest strangers, it is but justice to notice his extreme courtesy, in sacrificing his literary employments for the day, whatever they might be, to the duty (for such he made it,) of doing the honors of the lake, and the adjacent mountains.”

De Quincy says that the habits of the poet Southey were exceedingly regular, and that all his literary business was conducted upon a systematic plan. He had his task before breakfast, which, however, must have been an inconsiderable nothing, for it occupied him only an hour, and rarely that, for he never rose until eight, and always breakfasted at nine o’clock. He went to bed precisely at half-past ten, and no sleep short of nine hours, refreshed him, and enabled him to do his work. He usually dined between five and six, and his chief labour was done between breakfast and dinner. If he had visitors, he would sit over his wine, and talk; if not, he retired to his library, until eight, when he was summoned to tea. At ten he read the London papers; “and it was perfectly astonishing,” says De Quincy, “to men of less methodical habits, to find how much he got through of elaborate business, by his unvarying system of arrangement in the distribution of his time.” All his letters were answered on the same day that they arrived. Even his poetry was written by forced efforts, or rather, perhaps, by what De Quincy calls, “a predetermined rule.” It was by writing prose, however, that Southey got his living—made “his pot boil,” as he says; and his chief source of regular income was derived from “The Quarterly Review.” At one time, however, he received £400 a year for writing the historical part of “The Edinburgh Annual Register.” This, however, he gave up, because the publisher proposed to dock £100 from the salary which he had previously paid him.—Southey, however, could afford to lose this large income, because he had an annuity which had been settled upon him by his friend, Charles Wynne, “the brother of Sir Watkin, the great autocrat of Wales.” This annuity, however, when his friend married, Southey voluntarily gave up; and the Granvilles, to whom Wynne was related by his marriage, placed Southey on the civil list, for the sacrifice which he thus made.

Such, then, were the circumstances of Southey at the time of De Quincy’s visit, and it must be owned that they were very comfortable, for a poet. Wordsworth came on the day after De Quincy’s arrival, and it was evident that the two poets were not on the most friendly terms; not that there was any outward sign of this,—on the contrary, there were all the exteriors of hospitality and good feeling on both sides; but De Quincy saw that the spiritual link between them was not complete, but broken; that, indeed, they did not understand, or fully sympathise with each other. Their minds and habits were different—I had almost said totally different. Wordsworth lived on the mountain top, composed there, and drew his inspiration direct from Nature; Southey lived in his magnificent library, and was inspired more by books than by natural objects.—Wordsworth’s library consisted of two or three hundred volumes, mostly torn and dilapidated; many were odd volumes; they were ill bound—not bound—or put in boards. Leaves were often wanting, and their place supplied occasionally by manuscript. These books “occupied a little homely book-case, fixed into one of two hollow recesses, formed on each side of the fireplace by the projection of the chimney into the little solitary room up stairs, which he had already described as his ‘half kitchen, half parlour.’.... Southey’s collection occupied a separate room—the largest, and every way the most agreeable in the house.”

Wordsworth’s poetry was subjective—referred chiefly to the inner life of man; and his dealings with Nature had a special reference to this inner life, his imagery being the mere vehicle of his thought. Southey’s poetry, on the contrary, was essentially objective,—a reflex of the outward nature, heightened by the fiery colouring of his imagination. Wordsworth had a contempt for books, or, at all events, for most books,—whilst Southey’s library, as De Quincy says, was his estate. Wordsworth would toss books about like tennis balls; and to let him into your library, quoth Southey, “is like letting a bear into a tulip-garden.” De Quincy relates, that Wordsworth being one morning at breakfast with him at Grasmere, took a handsome volume of Burke’s from his book-case, and began very leisurely to cut the leaves with a knife smeared all over with butter. Now tastes and habits such as those which marked the two poets could not unite them very closely together; at all events, not at this time; although they were subsequently, and in later years, upon terms of close intimacy and friendship. Upon the present occasion, however,—that is to say, during De Quincy’s visit to Southey—the two poets managed very well together, and the evening was passed agreeably enough. Next morning they discussed politics, and to the horror of De Quincy, who was then a young man, and took no interest in the passing movements of nations, and had always heard the French Revolution, and its barbaric excesses, stigmatised as infernal,—who was, moreover a loyal person according to the tradition of his fathers, and a lover of Mr. Pitt—to his horror, the two poets uttered the most disloyal sentiments, denouncing all monarchial forms of government, and proposed to send the royal family to Botany Bay! This proposal, which Southey immediately threw into extempore verse, was so comical, that the whole party laughed outright, and outrageously; they then set off towards Grasmere.

De Quincy speaks in the highest terms of Southey, and in the comparison which he institutes between Southey and Wordsworth, the latter certainly sustains loss. I refer the reader to the “Lake Reminiscences” for this, and other most interesting particulars relating to these poets. Still I cannot bid adieu to these “Reminiscences,” without using them once more, as materials for an account of Greta Hall and its occupants.

Southey and his family did not occupy the whole of the Hall, but shared it with Coleridge and his family, and with Mrs. Lovell and her son. There was no absolute partition, but an amicable distribution of the rooms. Coleridge had a study to himself, in which was a grand organ, about the only piece of furniture it could boast of. To atone for this, the windows looked out upon a magnificent sweep of country, and objects of sublimity and beauty met the eye wherever it wandered. Southey’s library—already described as the best room of the house—was open to all the ladies alike. The books in it were chiefly English, Spanish, and Portuguese, well selected, being the best cardinal classics of the three literatures; fine copies, and decorated externally with a reasonable elegance, so as to make them in harmony with the other embellishments of the room. This was aided by the horizontal arrangement, upon brackets, of many rare manuscripts, Spanish or Portuguese. The two families always met at dinner, in a common drawing-room.

The scenery around Greta Hall was grand beyond all power of description. “The lake of Derwent Water, in one direction, with its lovely islands—a lake about ten miles in circuit, and shaped pretty much like a boy’s kite; the lake of Bassinthwaite in another; the mountains of Newlands, arranging themselves like pavilions; the gorgeous confusion of Borrowdale, just revealing its sublime chaos through the narrow vista of its gorge; whilst the sullen rear, not fully visible on this side of the house, was closed for many a league by the vast and towering masses of Skiddaw and Blencathara—mountains which are rather to be considered as frontier barriers, and chains of hilly ground, cutting the county of Cumberland into great chambers, and different climates, than as insulated eminences; so vast is the area which they occupy; though there are, also, rich, separate, and insulated heights, and nearly amongst the highest in the county.”

Such, then, is the description of Southey’s house and neighbourhood, as given by De Quincy. The first visit of the Opium Eater to Wordsworth—including these visits to Greta Hall, and wanderings through the lake districts—extended over a week; and at the conclusion of that time, when it was necessary for him to return to Oxford, to save his Michaelmas term, he witnessed, and has described one of the most extraordinary scenes, at the table of the woman with the “Saracen’s Head,” in company with Wordsworth and his sister, that has, perhaps, ever been enacted at any supper table in the kingdoms of this world. I can give no account of it here, and refer the reader once more to the “Reminiscences:” all I will say, in conclusion is, that in the following November (1808), De Quincy returned to Grasmere, and took possession of the late cottage of the poet; who, with his family, had removed to a house, called Allan Bank, about three-quarters of a mile off, which had recently been built by a Liverpool merchant, at a cost of £1,500; a damp, cold, and incurably smoky house, which defects the poet set forth so eloquently to the proprietor, that he allowed him to live in it for a merely nominal rent.

The reason for Wordsworth’s removal, was the increasing number of his family. And here I may as well give a list of this family, adding to it the only one who was born after the period to which I now allude. They are as follow:—

John, born 18th June, 1803.

Dorothy, called, and generally known as, Dora, born 16th August, 1804.

Thomas, born 16th June, 1806.

Catharine, born 6th September, 1808.

William, born 12th May, 1810.

Thomas and Catharine, died in their childhood; John and William are still living; and Dora, “My own Dora,” as the poet loved to call her, after a wedded life, more or less happy (she married Edward Quillinan, Esq.), she died in 1847, just three years before her venerable father.

Wordsworth was singularly fortunate in his family. There was no jars nor discords in the sacred temple of his home; but beauty, love, and all the virtues and the graces dwelt with him, and ministered to his happiness and repose. He loved his children with an intense affection; and sweet Dora, his best beloved, exercised an influence over him, more beautiful and harmonising perhaps, even than that which his sister exercised in his early life, and still continued to exercise, because it was deeper, and struck deeper into the very being of the poet. This child threw a sacred halo round his soul, and inspired one of the sweetest of his lyrics. Only a month after her birth he wrote:—

      “Hast thou then survived
Mild offspring of infirm humanity?
      .... Hail to thee!
Frail, feeble monthling.... On thy face
Smiles are beginning, like the beams of dawn,
To shoot, and circulate. Smiles have there been seen;
Tranquil assurances that heaven supports
The feeble motions of thy life, and cheers
Thy loveliness; or shall those smiles be called
Feelers of love, put forth as if to explore
This untried world, and to prepare thy way
Through a strait passage intricate and dim?”

In the autumn of the same year we find him writing the lines “The Kitten and the Falling Leaves,” suggested by the delight of his dear Dora at the pretty frolics of a kitten on the wall, playing with the leaves of autumn.

“Such a light of gladness breaks
Pretty kitten! from thy freaks;
Spreads with such a living grace,
O’er my little Dora’s face.”

then the poet resolves that he will have his glee out of life:—

“I will have my careless season,
Spite of melancholy reason;
Will walk thro’ life in such a way,
That, when time brings on decay,
Now and then, I may possess
Hours of perfect gladsomeness;
Keep the sprightly soul awake,
And have faculties to take,
Even from things by sorrow wrought,
Matter for a jocund thought;
Spite of care and spite of grief,
To gambol with life’s falling leaf.”

He likewise addresses “The Longest Day” to her; and what a contrast to the last poem! Instead of gambolling with the falling leaves, and making life a grand holiday, he exhorts his child, now grown older, to think of higher matters:—

“Summer ebbs; each day that follows
  Is a reflex from on high,
Tending to the darksome hollows,
  Where the frosts of winter lie.
Now, even now, e’er wrapped in slumber,
  Fix thine eyes upon the sea,
That absorbs time, space, and number,—
  Look thou to eternity!”

And a little later, when the possibility of blindness came like a gloomy shadow to darken his more thoughtful moments; he anticipates the time when his own Dora shall guide his lonely steps. Poor Dora! she died of consumption, after trying, in vain, the warm south of Portugal. And yet she is not dead, and cannot die. In Dr. Wordsworth’s Memoirs, second volume, there is a fine portrait of her, and a sweet, mild, gentle, and spiritual girl she is; the eye singularly beautiful, and full of deep mystic fire. The poet has also drawn a portrait of her:—

“Open, ye thickets! let her fly,
Swift as a Thracian nymph, o’er field or height!
For she, to all but those who love her, shy,
Would gladly vanish from a stranger’s sight;
Tho’ where she is beloved, and loves
Light as the wheeling butterfly she moves;
Her happy spirit as a bird is free,
That rifles blossoms on a tree,
Turning them inside out, with rich audacity.”

And all this sweet surfeit of painting is true to the spirit of the beautiful girl; the spirit which stirs her thoughts, and makes all her movements an impulsive comminglement of music and poetry. A more airy, celestial form could not be imagined than hers. It seems to float on the atmosphere. And then she is so happy, and loving to those who love her.

“Alas! how little can a moment show
Of an eye where feeling plays
In ten thousand dewy rays;
A face o’er which a thousand shadows go!—
She stops—is fastened to that rivulet’s side;
And these (while, with sedater mien
O’er timid waters that have scarcely left
Their birthplace in the rocky cleft,
She bends) at leisure may be seen
Features to old ideal grace allied,
Amid their smiles and dimples dignified—
Fit countenance for the soul of primal truth;
The bland composure of eternal youth!

What more changeful than the sea?
But over his great tides
Fidelity presides;
And this light-hearted maiden constant is as he.
High is her aim, as heaven above,
And wide as ether her good will;
And like the lowly reed, her love
Can drink its nurture from the scantiest rill;
Insight as keen as frosty star
Is to her charity no bar,
Nor interrupts her frolic graces
When she is far from those wild places,
Encircled by familiar faces.

O the charms that manners draw,
Nature, from thy genuine law!
If from what her hand would do
Her voice would utter, aught ensue
Untoward or unfit;
She in benign affections pure
In self-forgetfulness, secure,
Sheds round the transient harm, or vague mischance
A light unknown to tutored elegance:
Hers is not a cheek shame-stricken,
But her blushes, are joy-flushes;
And the fault, if fault it be,
Only ministers to quicken
Laughter-loving gaiety,
And kindly sportive wit,
Leaving this daughter of the mountains free
As if she knew that Oberon, king of faery
Had crossed her purpose with some quaint vagary,
And heard his viewless bands
Over their mirthful triumph clapping hands.”

A fairer drawn portrait—a more beautiful poem, as a whole—does not, I think, exist. Alas! sweet Dora.

To return, however, to the narrative. When Wordsworth was living at Allan Bank, and during the time that Coleridge sojourned with him, two prose works appeared, by these two poets, which are memorable to all scholars. The former wrote his famous “Essay on the Convention of Cintra,” and the latter dictated (for he did not write it) his still more famous work entitled “The Friend.” Notwithstanding Wordsworth’s devotion, therefore, to poetry, it will be seen that he was not indifferent to the passing events which were writing their history in the blood of nations. Speaking of his “Convention of Cintra,” in a letter to Southey, he says, “My detestation, I may say abhorrence, of that event, is not at all diminished by your account of it. Bonaparte had committed a capital blunder in supposing that when he had intimidated the Sovereigns of Europe, he had conquered the several nations. Yet it was natural for a wiser than he was to have fallen into this mistake; for the old despotisms had deprived the body of the people of all practical knowledge in the management, and of necessity of all interest in the course of affairs. The French themselves were astonished at the apathy and ignorance of the people whom they had supposed they had utterly subdued, when they had taken their fortresses, scattered their armies, entered their capital cities, and struck their cabinets with dismay. There was no hope for the deliverance of Europe till the nations had suffered enough to be driven to a passionate recollection of all that was honourable in their past history, and to make appeal to the principles of universal and everlasting justice. These sentiments the authors of that Convention most unfeelingly violated; and as to the principals, they seemed to be as little aware even of the existence of such powers, for powers emphatically may they be called, as the tyrant himself. As far, therefore, as these men could, they put an extinguisher upon the star that was then rising! It is in vain to say that after the first burst of indignation was over, the Portuguese themselves were reconciled to the event, and rejoiced in their deliverance. We may infer from that, the horror which they must have felt in the presence of their oppressors; and we may see in it to what a state of helplessness their bad government had reduced them. Our duty was to have treated them with respect, as the representatives of suffering humanity, beyond what they were likely to look for themselves, and as deserving greatly, in common with their Spanish brethren, for having been the first to rise against that tremendous oppression, and to show how, and how only, it could be put an end to.” The poet apologises for the seeming inconsistency of his conduct in opposing the war against France at its commencement, and in urging the necessity of it in the later affairs of Spain and Portugal, by showing that he, and those who thought with him, “proved that they kept their eyes steadily fixed upon principles; for though there was a shifting or transfer of hostility in their minds, as far as regarded persons, they only combated the same enemy opposed to them under a different shape; and that enemy was the spirit of selfish tyranny and lawless ambition.”

So far, then, the “Essay on the Convention of Cintra.” Coleridge’s prose work, “The Friend,” was a serial, composed of papers upon various subjects, written mostly by Coleridge himself, with occasional assistance from Wordsworth, Professor Wilson, and others. In the seventeenth number of “The Friend,” the latter writer, in a letter to the Editor, speaks of Wordsworth as a “great teacher,” and a “mighty voice not poured out in vain.” “There are hearts,” he says, “that have received into their inmost depths all its varying tones; and even now there are many to whom the name of Wordsworth calls up the recollection of their weakness and the consciousness of their strength.” The letter was signed “Mathetes,” and might be called a warning voice to the young upon the illusions and popular fallacies of the age. It insisted likewise upon the dues belonging to antiquity; combated the notion that human nature is gradually advancing to perfection, and that the present time is wiser than the past. “Mathetes” maintained that reliance on contemporary judgment had grown into contempt for antiquity, and argued that the youth of his time could only be rescued from this perilous condition by the warning voice of some contemporary teacher; and that this teacher he imagined Wordsworth to be.

Wordsworth replied, in numbers seventeen and twenty, acknowledging that we are too apt to value contemporary opinion, to the neglect of antiquity; but denying that the doctrine of progress is injurious; and exhorting the young to rely upon themselves, and their own independent efforts; cherishing along with this, an abiding sense of personal responsibility. I cannot, however, analyse the fine treatise which follows, and must refer the reader to the treatise itself; merely adding, that a sounder or more philosophical discourse—so practical withal—has rarely been written. An “Essay on Epitaphs,” was subsequently written by Wordsworth in “The Friend,” February 22nd, 1810, and was afterwards republished by him, as a note to “The Excursion.” Wordsworth regarded epitaphs as holy memorials, and censured the epigramatic efforts of Pope, and other writers of this species of composition. A bad man, he says, should have no epitaph; and that which the poet wrote over his own child, in the churchyard of Grasmere, may be instanced as illustrating his own idea of what epitaphs should be.

In the year 1810, Wordsworth wrote an introduction to, and edited the text of, a folio volume entitled, “Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire;” by the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson, which were afterwards printed in his volume of “Sonnets on the River Duddon,” and still later, as a separate publication. This introduction and text consisted of a description of the Lake Country, which is finer than anything of the kind existing, if we except the delicate and beautiful picture-writing of Gray, the poet, who visited this district in October 1767. And here end the chief incidents in the personal and literary life of Wordsworth, up to the time of his removal to Rydal Mount.