sonorous and musical voice,
the ballad of _Betty Foy_. I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I
saw touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in the
_Thorn_, the _Mad Mother_, and the _Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman_, I
felt that deeper power and pathos which have been since acknowledged,

"In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,"

as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style and a
new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me something of the effect
that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome
breath of Spring,

"While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed."

Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice
sounded high

"Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,"

as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall, gleaming
in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not prone enough
to belief in the traditional superstitions of the place, and that there
was a something corporeal, a _matter-of-fact-ness_, a clinging to the
palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. His genius
was not a spirit that descended to him through the air; it sprung out of
the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, on which
the gold-finch sang. He said, however (if I remember right), that this
objection must be confined to his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic
poetry had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed
to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition,
rather than by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at
Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree to
his friend's description of him, but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like.
He was quaintly dressed (according to the _costume_ of that unconstrained
period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was
something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell.
There was a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in
his eye (as if he saw something in objects more than the outward
appearance) an intense high narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed
by strong purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter
about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, stately
expression