ill give but a single testimony.
William Jordan says:--

"On his visits to town the recluse of Rydal Mount was quite a
different creature. To me it was demonstrated, by his conduct under
every circumstance, that De Quincey had done him gross injustice in
the character he loosely threw upon him in public, namely, 'that he
was not generous or self-denying, . . . and that he was slovenly
and regardless in dress.' I must protest that there was no warrant
for this caricature; but on the contrary, that it bore no feature
of resemblance to the slight degree of eccentricity discoverable in
Cumberland, and was utterly contradicted by the life in London. In
the mixed society of the great Babylon, Mr. Wordsworth was facile
and courteous; dressed like a gentleman, and with his tall
commanding figure no mean type of the superior order, well-trained
by education, and accustomed to good manners. Shall I reveal that
he was often sportive, and could even go the length of strong
expressions, in the off-hand mirth of his observations and
criticisms?"

Wordsworth had the fondness of many poets for reading his poetry to his
friends, and even of reciting it like a schoolboy. When Emerson visited
him he was already an old man, and it struck the philosopher so oddly,
as he tells us in his "English Traits," to see "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."

Another story is told of his being in a large company, and seeing for
the first time a new novel by Scott, with a motto taken from his poems;
and of his going immediately and getting the poem, and reading it entire
to the assembled company, who were waiting for the reading of the new
novel.

Literary biography is full of such anecdotes as these, going to show his
absorption in himself, and his comparative indifference to the works of
others; but they prove at most only a trifling weakness in a great man's
character; such weaknesses being so common as to cause no surprise to
those familiar with the lives of men of genius. He was a strong man,
massive in his individuality, full of profound feeling and deep
spirituality, and dominated by a powerf