But the angel of his life came to his aid. Although their happiness was delayed, and Wordsworth's purposes remained unformed a year or two longer, the watchful love of his sister came as a soothing balm, and her dominant influence as a healing virtue. Friends blamed, but the sister confided, and encouraged her brother's desire to become a poet. Writing to a friend she says:
"William … has a sort of violence of affection—if I may so term it—which demonstrates itself every moment of the day, when the objects of his affection are present with him, in a thousand almost imperceptible attentions to their wishes, in a sort of restless watchfulness which I know not how to describe, a tenderness that never sleeps, and, at the same time, such a delicacy of manner as I have observed in few men." And again, "I am willing to allow that half the virtues with which I fancy him endowed are the creation of my love; but surely I may be excused! He was never afraid of comforting his sister; he never left her in anger; he always met her with joy; he preferred her society to every other pleasure—or, rather, when we were so happy as to be within each other's reach, he had no other pleasure when we were compelled to be divided."
What prevented now the carrying out of their long-formed project of living together was, unfortunately, their want of means. Without a profession for the brother, they appear to have been almost without income. But Providence gave what fortune withheld. The legacy of £900 bequeathed to Wordsworth by a friend whom he had nursed, and who recognised his genius, at length removed the cause which had kept the brother and sister apart. With scanty means, but overflowing love, they faced the world and conquered fate. The late Bishop of Lincoln, alluding to this period, says of Dorothy: "She was endowed with tender sensibility, with an exquisite perception of beauty, with a retentive recollection of what she saw, with a felicitous tact in discerning, and admirable skill in delineating natural objects with graphic accuracy and vivid gracefulness. She weaned him from contemporary politics, and won him to beauty and truth."
Wordsworth himself, the most reliable informant as to what his sister did for him and was to him, says:
Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk
With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge
From indiscriminate laughter, nor sit down
In reconcilement with an utter waste
Of intellect….
Then it was—