'And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old;'
and then noticed the sweet-flowing lines which followed, and with regard to which he had no doubt the unmusical line before had been inserted.
'Paradise Regained' he thought the most perfect in execution of anything written by Milton; that and the 'Merchant of Venice,' in language, he thought were almost faultless: with the exception of some little straining in some of the speeches about the caskets, he said, they were perfect, the genuine English expressions of the ideas of their own great minds. Thomson he spoke of as a real poet, though it appeared less in his 'Seasons' than in his other poems. He had wanted some judicious adviser to correct his taste; but every person he had to deal with only served to injure it. He had, however, a true love and feeling for Nature, and a greater share of poetical imagination, as distinguished from dramatic, than any man between Milton and him. As he stood looking at Ambleside, seen across the valley, embosomed in wood, and separated from us at sufficient distance, he quoted from Thomson's 'Hymn on Solitude,' and suggested the addition, or rather insertion, of a line at the close, where he speaks of glancing at London from Norwood. The line, he said, should have given something of a more favourable impression:
'Ambition——[242] and pleasure vain.'
October 14th, Foxhow.—We have had a delightful day to-day. The weather being fine, Wordsworth agreed to go with us into Easedale; so we got three ponies, for Mary and Madge, and Fred and Alley, alternately, and walked from Grasmere, he trudging[243] before, with his green gauze shade over his eyes, and in his plaid jacket and waistcoat. First, he turned aside at a little farm-house, and took us into a swelling field, to look down on the tumbling stream which bounded it, and which we saw precipitated at a distance, in a broad white sheet, from the mountain. A beautiful water-break of the same stream was before us at our feet, and he noticed the connection which it formed in the landscape with the distant waterfall. Then, as he mused for an instant, he said, 'I have often thought what a solemn thing it would be, if we could have brought to our mind, at once, all the scenes of distress and misery, which any spot, however beautiful and calm before us, has been witness to since the beginning. That water-break, with the glassy, quiet pool beneath it, that looks so lovely, and presents no images to the mind but of peace,—there, I remember, the only son of his father, a poor man, who lived yonder, was drowned. He missed him, came to search, and saw his body dead in the pool.' We pursued our way up the stream, not a very easy way for the horses, near to the waterfall before mentioned, and so gradually up to the Tarn. Oh, what a scene! The day one of the softest and brightest in autumn; the lights various; the mountains in the richest colouring, fern covering them with reddish gold in great part; here and there, trees in every variety of autumn foliage; and the rock itself of a kind of lilac tint; the outlines of the mountains very fine; the Tarn, which might almost be called a lake for size and abundance of water, with no culture, or trees, or habitation around it, here and there a great rock stretching into it like a promontory, and high mountains surrounding it on three sides, on two of them almost precipitate; on the fourth side, it is more open, and on this the stream, crossed by four great stepping-stones, runs out of it, and descends into Grasmere vale and lake. He pointed out the precipitous mountain at the head of the Tarn, and told us an incident of his sister and himself coming from Langdale, which lies on the other side. He having for some reason parted, she encountered a fog, and was bewildered. At last, she sat down and waited; in a short time it began to clear; she could see that a valley was before her. In time, she saw the backs of cattle feeding, which emerged from the darkness, and at last the Tarn; and then found she had stopped providentially, and was sitting nearly on the edge of the precipice. Our return was somewhat more perilous for the riders than the ascent; but we accomplished it safely, and, in our return, turned in Butterlip How, a circular, soft, green hill, surrounded with oak trees, at the head of Grasmere. It is about twenty acres, and belongs to a London banker, purchased, as I suppose, with a view to building on it. It is a lovely spot for a house, with delicious views of the lake and church, Easedale, Helm Crag, &c. I have seen no place, I think, on which I should so much like to build my retreat.
October 16th.—Since church, we have taken our last walk with Wordsworth. M. was mounted on Dora W.'s pony. He led us up on Loughrigg, round to the Tarn, by the back of Loughrigg to the foot of Grasmere Lake, and so home by this side of Rydal; the weather warm and fine, and a lovely walk it was. The views of the mountains, Langdale Way, the Tarn itself and its banks, and the views on Grasmere and Rydal Waters, are almost beyond anything I have seen, even in this country.
He and Mrs. W. came this evening to bid us farewell. We parted with great, I believe mutual, regret; certainly they have been kind to us in a way and degree which seemed unequivocally to testify good liking to us, and them it is impossible not to love. The more I have seen of Wordsworth, the more I admire him as a poet and as a man. He has the finest and most discriminating feeling for the beauties of Nature that I ever witnessed; he expresses himself in glowing and yet manly language about them. There is much simplicity in his character, much naïveté, but it is all generous and highly moral.[244]