had passed off, grew more and more liberal with advancing years.
I do not mean that he verged towards the Reformers,--but that he became
more enlarged, tolerant, and generally sympathetic in his political
views and temper. It thus happened that society at a distance took up
a wholly wrong impression of the two men,--supposing Southey to be an
ill-conditioned bigot, and Wordsworth a serene philosopher, far above
being disturbed by troubles in daily life, or paying any attention to
party-politics. He showed some of his ever-growing liberality, by the
way, in speaking of this matter of temper. In old age, he said that the
world certainly does get on in minor morals: that when he was young
"everybody had a temper"; whereas now no such thing is allowed;
amiability is the rule; and an imperfect temper is an offence and a
misfortune of a distinctive character.

Among the letters which now and then arrived from strangers, in the
early days of Wordsworth's fame, was one which might have come from
Coleridge, if they had never met. It was full of admiration and
sympathy, expressed as such feelings would be by a man whose analytical
and speculative faculties predominated over all the rest. The writer
was, indeed, in those days, marvellously like Coleridge,--subtile in
analysis to excess, of gorgeous imagination, bewitching discourse, fine
scholarship, with a magnificent power of promising and utter incapacity
in performing, and with the same habit of intemperance in opium. By
his own account, his "disease was to meditate too much and observe too
little." I need hardly explain that this was De Quincey; and when I have
said that, I need hardly explain further that advancing time and closer
acquaintance made the likeness to Coleridge bear a smaller and smaller
proportion to the whole character of the man.

In return for his letter of admiration and sympathy, he received an
invitation to the Grasmere valley. More than once he set forth to avail
himself of it; but when within a few miles, the shyness under which in
those days he suffered overpowered his purpose, and he turned back.
After having achieved the meeting, however, he soon announced his
intention of settling in the valley; and he did so, putting his wife
and children eventually into the cottage which the Wordsworths had now
outgrown and left. There was little in him to interest or attach a
family of regular domestic habits, like the Wordsworths, given to active
employment, se