ation was a thing of the past. The last day of real
enjoyment at Abbotsford--for when Sir Walter returned to it to die, it
was but to catch once more the outlines of its walls, the rustle of
its woods, and the gleam of its waters, through senses already
darkened to all less familiar and less fascinating visions--was the
22nd September, 1831. On the 21st, Wordsworth had come to bid his old
friend adieu, and on the 22nd--the last day at home--they spent the
morning together in a visit to Newark. It was a day to deepen alike in
Scott and in Wordsworth whatever of sympathy either of them had with
the very different genius of the other, and that it had this result in
Wordsworth's case, we know from the very beautiful poem,--"Yarrow
Revisited,"--and the sonnet which the occasion also produced. And even
Scott, who was so little of a Wordsworthian, who enjoyed Johnson's
stately but formal verse, and Crabbe's vivid Dutch painting, more than
he enjoyed the poetry of the transcendental school, must have recurred
that day with more than usual emotion to his favourite Wordsworthian
poem. Soon after his wife's death, he had remarked in his diary how
finely "the effect of grief upon persons who like myself are highly
susceptible of humour" had been "touched by Wordsworth in the
character of the merry village teacher, Matthew, whom Jeffrey
profanely calls a half-crazy, sentimental person."[59] And long before
this time, during the brightest period of his life, Scott had made the
old Antiquary of his novel quote the same poem of Wordsworth's, in a
passage where the period of life at which he had now arrived is
anticipated with singular pathos and force. "It is at such moments as
these," says Mr. Oldbuck, "that we feel the changes of time. The same
objects are before us--those inanimate things which we have gazed on
in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming
manhood--they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them
in cold, unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our
pursuits, our feelings,--changed in our form, our limbs, and our
strength,--can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather
look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves as beings
separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who
appealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of
sobriety, did not claim a judge so different as if he had appealed
from Philip in his youth to Philip in his o