ny
poet since the Elizabethan age. There was in his nature a veracity,
which, had it not been combined with an idealising imagination not less
remarkable, would to many have appeared prosaic; yet, had he not
possessed that characteristic, the products of his imagination would
have lacked reality. They might still have enunciated a deep and sound
philosophy; but they would have been divested of that human interest
which belongs to them in a yet higher degree. All the little incidents
of the neighbourhood were to him important.

The veracity and the ideality which are so signally combined in
Wordsworth's poetic descriptions of Nature, made themselves at least as
much felt whenever Nature was the theme of his discourse. In his intense
reverence for Nature he regarded all poetical delineations of her with
an exacting severity; and if the descriptions were not true, and true in
a twofold sense, the more skilfully executed they were, the more was his
indignation roused by what he deemed a pretence and a deceit. An untrue
description of Nature was to him a profaneness, a heavenly message
sophisticated and falsely delivered. He expatiated much to me one day,
as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature
had been described by one of the most justly popular of England's modern
poets--one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect. 'He
took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and
note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most--a river rippling
over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a
mountain ash waving its red berries. He went home, and wove the whole
together into a poetical description.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed
with a flashing eye and impassioned voice, 'But Nature does not permit
an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil
and note-book at home; fixed his eye, as he walked, with a reverent
attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that
could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he
should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have
discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him,
much was also most wisely obliterated. That which remained--the picture
surviving in his mind--would have presented the ideal and essential
truth of the scene, and done so, in a large part, by discarding much
which, though in itself striking,