ge which Wordsworth had first lived in at Grasmere.
Coleridge, born the most golden genius of them all, came to and fro
in those fruitless unhappy wanderings which consumed a life that once
promised to be so rich in blessing and in glory. In later years Dr.
Arnold built a house at Fox How, attracted by the Wordsworths and the
scenery; and other lesser lights came into the neighbourhood. "Our
intercourse with the Wordsworths," Arnold wrote on the occasion of his
first visit in 1832, "was one of the brightest spots of all; nothing
could exceed their friendliness, and my almost daily walks with him
were things not to be forgotten. Once and once only we had a good
fight about the Reform Bill during a walk up Greenhead Ghyll to see
the unfinished sheep-fold, recorded in _Michael_. But I am sure that
our political disagreement did not at all interfere with our enjoyment
of each other's society; for I think that in the great principles of
things we agreed very entirely." It ought to be possible, for that
matter, for magnanimous men, even if they do not agree in the great
principles of things, to keep pleasant terms with one another for more
than one afternoon's walk. Many pilgrims came, and the poet seems to
have received them with cheerful equanimity. Emerson called upon him
in 1833, and found him plain, elderly, whitehaired, not prepossessing.
"He led me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel walk in
which thousands of his lines were composed. He had just returned from
Staffa, and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave,
and was composing a fourth when he was called in to see me. He said,
'If you are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear
these lines.' I gladly assented, and he recollected himself for a few
moments, and then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the
three entire sonnets with great animation. This recitation was so
unlooked for and surprising--he, 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. He never
was in haste to publish; partly because he corrected a good deal....
He preferred such of his poems as touched the affections to any
others; for whatever is didactic--what theories of society, and so
on-