he comprehension of those who fancy
that Wordsworth lacks passion, merely because in him passion is neither
declamatory nor, latently, sensual. He was a man of strong affections,
strong enough on one sorrowful occasion to withdraw him for a time from
poetry.[270]

[270] 'For us the stream of fiction ceased to flow' (Dedicatory Stanzas
to 'The White Doe of Rylstone').

Referring once to two young children of his who had died about forty
years previously, he described the details of their illnesses with an
exactness and an impetuosity of troubled excitement, such as might have
been expected if the bereavement had taken place but a few weeks before.
The lapse of time appeared to have left the sorrow submerged indeed, but
still in all its first freshness. Yet I afterwards heard that at the
time of the illness, at least in the case of one of the two children, it
was impossible to rouse his attention to the danger. He chanced to be
then under the immediate spell of one of those fits of poetic
inspiration which descended on him like a cloud. Till the cloud had
drifted he could see nothing beyond. Under the level of the calm there
was, however, the precinct of the storm. It expressed itself rarely but
vehemently, partaking sometimes of the character both of indignation and
sorrow. All at once the trouble would pass away, and his countenance
bask in its habitual calm, like a cloudless summer sky. His indignation
flamed out vehemently when he heard of a base action. 'I could kick such
a man across England with my naked foot,' I heard him exclaim on such an
occasion. The more impassioned part of his nature connected itself
especially with his political feelings. He regarded his own intellect as
one which united some of the faculties which belong to the statesman
with those which belong to the poet; and public affairs interested him
not less deeply than poetry. It was as patriot, not poet, that he
ventured to claim fellowship with Dante.[271] He did not accept the term
'Reformer,' because it implied an organic change in our institutions,
and this he deemed both needless and dangerous; but he used to say that
while he was a decided Conservative, he remembered that to preserve our
institutions we must be ever improving them. He was, indeed, from first
to last, preeminently a patriot, an impassioned as well as a thoughtful
one. Yet his political sympathies were not with his own country only,
but with the progress of Humanity. Till di