e, 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 those 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 or 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 ten children, travelling alone among the mountains and all
lonely places, carrying with him his own fortitude and 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" to hundreds. It is in the
character of the old man to tell his story, which an impatient
reader must feel tedious. But, good heavens! such a figure, in such
a place; a pious, self-respecting, miserably infirm and pleased old
man telling such a tale!

'Your feelings upon the "Mother and the Boy, with the Butterfly,"
were not indifferent: it was an affair of whole continents of moral
sympathy.'

'I am for the most part uncertain about my success in _altering_
poems; but in this case,' speaking of an insertion