Yesterdays with Authors

se to sit for it, at the request of Moxon, his publisher, and his friends in England always considered it a perfect likeness of the poet. After the head was engraved, the

n of the great poet, and she used all her successful influence in my behalf.

ged in the house of Dame Anne Tyson in 1788; and I had the good fortune to meet a lady in the village street who conducted me at once to the room which the lad occupied

ke on summer

endor couched a

that near our

spots which tradition points out as

, and she rose with a sweet expression of courtesy and welcome as we entered the apartment. As I had just left Paris, which was in a state of commotion, Wordsworth was eager in his inquiries about the state of things on the other side of the Channel. As our talk ran in the direction of French revolutions, he soon became eloquent and vehement, as one can easily imagine, on such a theme. There was a deep and solemn meaning in all he had to say about France, which I recall now with added interest. The subject deeply moved him, of course, and he sat looking into the fire, discoursing in a low monotone, sometimes quite forgetful that he was not alone and soliloquizing. I noticed that Mrs. Wordsworth listened as if she were hearing him speak for the first time in her life, and the work on which she was engaged lay idl

nd love him too." "Do you hear that, Mary?" he eagerly inquired, turning round to Mrs. Wordsworth. "Yes, William, and no wonder, for he was one to be loved everywhere," she quickly answer

eness. The painter's daughter, who accompanied her father, made a marked impression on Wordsworth, and both he and his wife joined in the question, "Are all the girls in America a

o, as we all sat there together, that when children they had "practised reading and spelling under the same old dame at Penrith," and that they had always been lovers. There sat the woman, now gray-haired and bent, to whom the poet had addressed those

on did pass,

ay was welcom

and as beaut

, as being a t

ch I noticed she did frequently, the

I thought he did not praise easily those whose names are indissolubly connected with his own in the history of literature. It was languid praise, at least, and I observed he hesitated for mild terms which he could apply to names almost as great as his own. I believe a duplicate of the portrait which Inman had painted for Reed hung in the room; at any rate a picture of himself was there, and he seemed to regard it with veneration as we stood before it. As we moved about the apartment, Mrs. Wordsworth quietly followed us, and listened as eagerly as I did to everything her husband had

ild, who dwel

ound, applyi

ns of a smooth

very grand from the poet's own lips. He repeated some fifty lines, and I could not help thinking afterwards, when I came to hear Tennyson read his own poetry, that the younger Laureate had ca

e I choose. He was then nearly eighty, but he seemed hale and quite as able to walk up and down the hills as ever. He always led back the conversation that day to his own writings, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to do so. All his most celebrated poems seemed to live in his memory, and it was easy to start him off by quoting the first line of any of his pieces. Speaking of the vastness of London, he quoted the whole of his sonnet describing the great city, as seen in the morning from Westminster Bridge. When I parted with him at the foot of Rydal Hill, he gave me

ittle figures seemed to accompany me, and childish voices filled the air as I trudged through the wet grass. My small ghostly companions seemed to carry in their little hands quaint-looking dog's-eared books, some of them covered with cloth of various colors. None of these phantom children looked to be over six ye

e matter? wha

at ails youn

B-- b

heard of

C-- pi

are you, th

are two

e maiden

r! we ar

o was laid in St. John's Churchyard after they took him out of the pond, near the mill-stream

ing fast, the sta

and kept saying over and over their "spirit ditties of no tone" till I r

headstone. Afterwards we went into the old church and sat down in the poet's pew. "They are all dead and gone now," sighed the gray-heade

MIT

Fortune, what

b me of free

ut the window

rora shows her b

r my constant

awns, by living

nerves and fin

s to the great

, virtue, naught

OM