ey had a conversation, of which Wordsworth took notes. The
respectable old poet, who was passing the evening of his days by the
chimney-corner, Darby and Joan like, with his respectable Muse, seems
to have been rather bewildered by the apparition of a living genius.
The record is of value now chiefly for the insight it gives us into
Wordsworth's mind. Among other things he said, 'that it was the
province of a great poet to raise people up to his own level, not to
descend to theirs',--memorable words, the more memorable that a
literary life of sixty years was in keeping with them.

It would be instructive to know what were Wordsworth's studies during
his winter in Goslar. De Quincey's statement is mere conjecture. It
may be guessed fairly enough that he would seek an entrance to the
German language by the easy path of the ballad, a course likely to
confirm him in his theories as to the language of poetry. The
Spinozism with which he has been not unjustly charged was certainly
not due to any German influence, for it appears unmistakably in the
_Lines composed at Tintern Abbey_ in July 1798. It is more likely to
have been derived from his talks with Coleridge in 1797. When Emerson
visited him in 1833, he spoke with loathing of _Wilhelm Meister_, a
part of which he had read in Carlyle's translation apparently. There
was some affectation in this, it should seem, for he had read
Smollett. On the whole, it may be fairly concluded that the help of
Germany in the development of his genius may be reckoned as very
small, though there is certainly a marked resemblance both in form and
sentiment between some of his earlier lyrics and those of Goethe. His
poem of the _Thorn_, though vastly more imaginative, may have been
suggested by Buerger's _Pfarrer's Tochter von Taubenhain_. The little
grave _drei Spannen lang_, in its conscientious measurement, certainly
recalls a famous couplet in the English poem.

After spending the winter at Goslar, Wordsworth and his sister
returned to England in the spring of 1799, and settled at Grasmere in
Westmorland. In 1800, the first edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_ being
exhausted, it was republished with the addition of another volume, Mr.
Longman paying L100 for the copyright of two editions. The book passed
to a second edition in 1802, and to a third in 1805. Wordsworth sent a
copy of it, with a manly letter, to Mr. Fox, particularly recommending
to his attention the poems _Michael_ and _The Bro