Chapter 6

‘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 morepleasure 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 arrayedAgainst an equal host that wore the plaid,Shepherds and herdsmen. Like a whirlwind cameThe Highlanders; the slaughter spread like flame;And Garry, thundering down his mountain road,Was stopped, and could not breathe beneath the loadOf the dead bodies! ’Twas a day of shameFor them whom precept, and the pedantryOf 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 ofMontrose, 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 Teviotby 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 foundMary in perfect health. JoannaHutchinson 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 showerOf beauty is thy earthly dower!Twice seven consenting years have shedTheir 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 makeA murmur near the silent lake;This little bay, a quiet road,That holds in shelter thy abode;In truth together ye do seemLike something fashioned in a dream;Such forms as from their covert peepWhen 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 thequiet 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 alittleone, 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 instancehe 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, whocouldrecognise 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 amiableof 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 whileThy 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 deepWas 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 smileOn 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 beholdA 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.

“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 whileThy 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 deepWas 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 smileOn 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 beholdA 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 stationof 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 hisearlier lifeor thegrowth 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. Thisaffecting 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 anyman then living. The critics, however, could not let him alone, could not see the manifest beauties of his poetry, orwouldnot 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 sowide 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? Theworldwillknow 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 offeredto 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 respecthim 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 mightbe 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,thereit 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 windowsAnd 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 threewatery 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 calledEwsmere, 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’sarbiter 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 beautifulspecimen 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 feeteleven 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 whichSouthey, 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 thecorpsof 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 nosleep 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 drewhis 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 wassubjective—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 essentiallyobjective,—a reflex of the outward nature, heightened by the fiery colouring of his imagination. Wordsworth had a contempt for books, or, at all events, formostbooks,—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 traditionof 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 itcould 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 chaosthrough 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 noaccount 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:—

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