When she is, far from these wild places,
Encircled by familiar faces."
Writing of Dora Wordsworth, Miss Coleridge says:—"There is truth in the sketch of Dora—poetic truth, though such as none but a poetic father would have seen. She was unique in her sweetness and goodness. I mean that her character was most peculiar—a compound of vehemence of feeling and gentleness, sharpness and lovingness, which is not often seen."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
FRIENDS.—TOUR ON CONTINENT.
Some reference more special than hitherto should be made to the more outer influences which entered into the life of Miss Wordsworth. Although so bound up in her brother, her life presented many sides, and her sympathies, as will have been seen, were by no means limited in their operation to the household circle. Her brother's friends were hers. Probably few have been more independent of outside friendships, and of society, than the family at Rydal; and at the same time few have been blessed with such genial and cultured associates.
We have seen how close had, for many years, been the companionship with Coleridge, whom Lamb has called "an archangel a little damaged"—Coleridge, the incomprehensible, versatile genius, poet, philosopher, theologian, metaphysician, and critic—of whom it has recently been said that "even in the dilapidation of his powers, due chiefly, if you will, to his own unthrifty management of them, we might, making proper deductions, apply to him what Mark Antony says of the dead Cæsar:—
'He was the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of time.'"