han
Wordsworth has given in his sonnet on a portrait of his dear friend
Isabel:

We gaze, nor grieve to think that we must die.
But that the precious love this friend hath sown
Within our hearts, the love whose flower hath blown
Bright as if heaven were ever in its eye,
Will pass so soon from human memory;
And not by strangers to our blood alone,
But by our best descendants be unknown,
Unthought of this may surely claim a sigh.
Yet, blessed Art, we yield not to dejection,
Thou against time so feelingly dost strive:
Where'er, preserved in this most true reflection,
An image of her soul is kept alive,
Some lingering fragrance of the pure affection,
Whose flower with us will vanish, must survive.

Charming had many qualities especially fitting him for friendships
with women. His sensitive delicacy of refinement, disinterested
justice, tender magnanimity, earnest culture of every thing beautiful
and true, immaculate purity of soul, and burning ideal enthusiasm,
made him feel most joyfully at home with women of enlarged
sympathies, well-trained minds, and noble aspirations. He was too
shrinking, fastidious, devout, to enjoy intercourse with the rough,
hard average of society.

His diffidence, depression, and loneliness, were soothed and
alleviated, his noblest powers inspired, by affectionate communion
with several of the choicest women of his time. "To them," his
biographer says, "he could freely unveil his native enthusiasm, his
fine perceptions of fitness, his love of beauty in nature and art,
his romantic longings for a pure-toned society, his glorious hopes of
humanity. And his profound reverence for the nature and duty of women
gave that charm of unaffected courtesy to his manner, look, and tone,
which won them freely to exchange their cherished thoughts as with an
equal." The following extract from one of his letters to a woman,
whose solemn depth of soul and mind, and wondrous range of
acquirements and experience rank her with the very greatest of her
sex, Harriet Martineau, is an exceedingly interesting revelation:

"MY DEAR FRIEND, I thought I had spoken my last word to you on this
side the Atlantic; but I have this moment received your letter, and
must write a line of acknowledgment. I know, from my own experience,
that there are those who need the encouragement of praise. There are
more than is thought who feel the burden of human imperfection too
sorely, and who receive strength from approbation. Happy