r, 'Ellen' for example, in 'The Excursion;' and they must
have told their stories well, for he said his principle had been to give
the oral part as nearly as he could in the very words of the speakers,
where he narrated a real story, dropping, of course, all vulgarisms or
provincialisms, and borrowing sometimes a Bible turn of expression:
these former were mere accidents, not essential to the truth in
representing how the human heart and passions worked; and to give these
last faithfully was his object. If he was to have any name hereafter,
his hope was on this, and he did think he had in some instances
succeeded;[238] that the sale of his poems increased among the classes
below the middle; and he had had, constantly, statements made to him of
the effect produced in reading 'Michael' and other such of his poems. I
added my testimony of being unable to read it aloud without interruption
from my own feelings. 'She was a phantom of delight' he said was written
on 'his dear wife,' of whom he spoke in the sweetest manner; a manner
full of the warmest love and admiration, yet with delicacy and reserve.
He very much and repeatedly regretted that my uncle had written so
little verse; he thought him so eminently qualified, by his very nice
ear, his great skill in metre, and his wonderful power and happiness of
expression. He attributed, in part, his writing so little, to the
extreme care and labour which he applied in elaborating his metres. He
said, that when he was intent on a new experiment in metre, the time and
labour he bestowed were inconceivable; that he was quite an epicure in
sound. Latterly he thought he had so much acquired the habit of
analysing his feelings, and making them matter for a theory or argument,
that he had rather dimmed his delight in the beauties of nature and
injured his poetical powers. He said he had no idea how 'Christabelle'
was to have been finished, and he did not think my uncle had ever
conceived, in his own mind, any definite plan for it; that the poem had
been composed while they were in habits of daily intercourse, and almost
in his presence, and when there was the most unreserved intercourse
between them as to all their literary projects and productions, and he
had never heard from him any plan for finishing it. Not that he doubted
my uncle's _sincerity_ in his subsequent assertions to the contrary;
because, he said, schemes of this sort passed rapidly and vividly
through his mind, and so imp