poetry, an _entire_ purity. In
his noble "Laodamia" they are chiefly majesty and pathos.' A few weeks
afterwards I chanced to take from the library shelves a volume of
Wordsworth, and it opened on 'Laodamia.' Some strong, calm hand seemed
to have been laid on my head, and bound me to the spot, till I had come
to the end. As I read, a new world, hitherto unimagined, opened itself
out, stretching far away into serene infinitudes. The region was one to
me unknown, but the harmony of the picture attested its reality. Above
and around were indeed

[273] _A Song of Faith, Devout Exercises, and Sonnets_ (Pickering). The
Dedication closed thus: 'I may at least hope to be named hereafter among
the friends of Wordsworth.'

'An ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams;'

and when I reached the line,

'Calm pleasures there abide--majestic pains,'

I felt that no tenants less stately could walk in so lordly a precinct.
I had been translated into another planet of song--one with larger
movements and a longer year. A wider conception of poetry had become
mine, and the Byronian enthusiasm fell from me like a bond that is
broken by being outgrown. The incident illustrates poetry in one of its
many characters, that of 'the deliverer.' The ready sympathies and
inexperienced imagination of youth make it surrender itself easily
despite its better aspirations, or in consequence of them, to a false
greatness; and the true greatness, once revealed, sets it free. As early
as 1824 Walter Savage Landor, in his 'Imaginary Conversation' between
Southey and Porson, had pronounced Wordsworth's 'Laodamia' to be 'a
composition such as Sophocles might have exulted to own, and a part of
which might have been heard with shouts of rapture in the regions he
describes'--the Elysian Fields.

Wordsworth frequently spoke of death, as if it were the taking of a new
degree in the University of Life. 'I should like,' he remarked to a
young lady, 'to visit Italy again before I move to another planet.' He
sometimes made a mistake in assuming that others were equally
philosophical. We were once breakfasting at the house of Mr. Rogers,
when Wordsworth, after gazing attentively round the room with a
benignant and complacent expression, turned to our host, and wishing to
compliment him, said, 'Mr. Rogers, I never see this house, so perfect in
its taste, so exquisite in all its arrangements, and decorated with
such well-c