of Dame Anne Tyson in 1788;
and I had the good fortune to meet a lady in the village street who
conducted me at once to the room which the lad occupied while he was a
scholar under the Rev. William Taylor, whom he loved and venerated so
much. I went into the chamber which he afterwards described in The
Prelude, where he

"Had lain awake on summer nights to watch
The moon in splendor couched among the leaves
Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood";

and I visited many of the beautiful spots which tradition points out as
the favorite haunts of his childhood.

It was true Lake-country weather when I knocked at Wordsworth's cottage
door, three years before he died, and found myself shaking hands with
the poet at the threshold. His daughter Dora had been dead only a few
months, and the sorrow that had so recently fallen upon the house was
still dominant there. I thought there was something prophet-like in the
tones of his voice, as well as in his whole appearance, and there was a
noble tranquillity about him that almost awed one, at first, into
silence. As the day was cold and wet, he proposed we should sit down
together in the only room in the house where there was a fire, and he
led the way to what seemed a common sitting or dining room. It was a
plain apartment, the rafters visible, and no attempt at decoration
noticeable. Mrs. Wordsworth sat knitting at the fireside, and she rose
with a sweet expression of courtesy and welcome as we entered the
apartment. As I had just left Paris, which was in a state of commotion,
Wordsworth was eager in his inquiries about the state of things on the
other side of the Channel. As our talk ran in the direction of French
revolutions, he soon became eloquent and vehement, as one can easily
imagine, on such a theme. There was a deep and solemn meaning in all he
had to say about France, which I recall now with added interest. The
subject deeply moved him, of course, and he sat looking into the fire,
discoursing in a low monotone, sometimes quite forgetful that he was not
alone and soliloquizing. I noticed that Mrs. Wordsworth listened as if
she were hearing him speak for the first time in her life, and the work
on which she was engaged lay idle in her lap, while she watched intently
every movement of her husband's face. I also was absorbed in the man and
in his speech. I thought of the long years he had lived in communion
with nature in that lonely but lovely region. The