Studies in Literature | Page 5

Means were found for
supporting the modest home out of two or three small windfalls
bequeathed by friends or relatives, and by the time that children had
begun to come Wordsworth was raised to affluence by obtaining the
post of distributor of stamps for Westmoreland and part of Cumberland.
His life was happily devoid of striking external incident. Its essential
part lay in meditation and composition.
He was surrounded by friends. Southey had made a home for himself
and his beloved library a few miles over the hills, at Keswick. De
Quincey, with his clever brains and shallow character, took up his
abode in the cottage which Wordsworth had first lived in at Grasmere.
Coleridge, born the most golden genius of them all, came to and fro in
those fruitless unhappy wanderings which consumed a life that once
promised to be so rich in blessing and in glory. In later years Dr.
Arnold built a house at Fox How, attracted by the Wordsworths and the
scenery; and other lesser lights came into the neighbourhood. "Our

intercourse with the Wordsworths," Arnold wrote on the occasion of
his first visit in 1832, "was one of the brightest spots of all; nothing
could exceed their friendliness, and my almost daily walks with him
were things not to be forgotten. Once and once only we had a good
fight about the Reform Bill during a walk up Greenhead Ghyll to see
the unfinished sheep-fold, recorded in Michael. But I am sure that our
political disagreement did not at all interfere with our enjoyment of
each other's society; for I think that in the great principles of things we
agreed very entirely." It ought to be possible, for that matter, for
magnanimous men, even if they do not agree in the great principles of
things, to keep pleasant terms with one another for more than one
afternoon's walk. Many pilgrims came, and the poet seems to have
received them with cheerful equanimity. Emerson called upon him in
1833, and found him plain, elderly, whitehaired, not prepossessing. "He
led me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel walk in which
thousands of his lines were composed. He had just returned from Staffa,
and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave, and
was composing a fourth when he was called in to see me. He said, 'If
you are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear these
lines.' I gladly assented, and he recollected himself for a few moments,
and then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the three entire
sonnets with great animation. This recitation was so unlooked for and
surprising--he, the old Wordsworth, standing apart, and reciting to me
in a garden-walk, like a schoolboy declaiming--that I at first was near
to laugh; but recollecting myself, that I had come thus far to see a poet,
and he was chanting poems to me, I saw that he was right and I was
wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear. He never was in haste to
publish; partly because he corrected a good deal.... He preferred such of
his poems as touched the affections to any others; for whatever is
didactic--what theories of society, and so on--might perish quickly, but
whatever combined a truth with an affection was good to-day and good
for ever" (_English Traits_, ch. i.).
Wordsworth was far too wise to encourage the pilgrims to turn into
abiding sojourners in his chosen land. Clough has described how, when
he was a lad of eighteen (1837), with a mild surprise he heard the
venerable poet correct the tendency to exaggerate the importance of
flowers and fields, lakes, waterfalls, and scenery. "People come to the

Lakes," said Wordsworth, "and are charmed with a particular spot, and
build a house, and find themselves discontented, forgetting that these
things are only the sauce and garnish of life."
In spite of a certain hardness and stiffness, Wordsworth must have been
an admirable companion for anybody capable of true elevation of mind.
The unfortunate Haydon says, with his usual accent of enthusiasm,
after a saunter at Hampstead, "Never did any man so beguile the time
as Wordsworth. His purity of heart, his kindness, his soundness of
principle, his information, his knowledge, and the intense and eager
feelings with which he pours forth all he knows, affect, interest, and
enchant one" (_Autobiog._ i. 298, 384). The diary of Crabb Robinson,
the correspondence of Charles Lamb, the delightful autobiography of
Mrs. Fletcher, and much less delightfully the autobiography of Harriet
Martineau, all help us to realise by many a trait Wordsworth's daily
walk and conversation. Of all the glimpses that we get, from these and
many other sources, none are more pleasing than those of the
intercourse between Wordsworth and Scott. They