affections. I am solacing
myself with Wordsworth. Do you know, I shall become a thorough convert
to him. Much of his poetry is delicious, and I perfectly adore his
philosophy. To me he seems the purest, the most elevated, and the most
Christian of poets. I delight in his deep and tender piety, and his
spirit of exquisite sympathy with whatever is lovely and grand in the
breathing universe around us. (Vol. i. p. 86.)

* * * * *

(_m_) ANECDOTE OF CRABBE.

FROM 'DIARY OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.'

Talking of Wordsworth, he [W.] told Anne a story, the object of which,
as she understood it, was to show that Crabbe had no imagination.
Crabbe, Sir George Beaumont, and Wordsworth were sitting together in
Murray's room in Albemarle-street. Sir George, after sealing a letter,
blew out the candle which had enabled him to do so, and exchanging a
look with Wordsworth, began to admire in silence the undulating thread
of smoke which slowly arose from the expiring wick, when Crabbe put on
the extinguisher. Anne laughed at the instance, and inquired if the
taper was wax; and being answered in the negative, seemed to think that
there was no call on Mr. Crabbe to sacrifice his sense of smell to their
admiration of beautiful and evanescent forms. In two other men I should
have said, 'Why, it is affectations,' with Sir Hugh Evans ['Merry Wives
of Windsor,' act i. scene 1]; but Sir George is the man in the world
most void of affectation; and then he is an exquisite painter, and no
doubt saw where the _incident_ would have succeeded in painting. The
error is not in you yourself receiving deep impressions from slight
hints, but in supposing that precisely the same sort of impression must
arise in the mind of men otherwise of kindred feeling, or that the
common-place folk of the world can derive such inductions at any time or
under any circumstances.[275]

* * * * *

(_n_) LATER OPINION OF LOUD BROUGHAM.

I am just come from breakfasting with Henry Taylor to meet Wordsworth;
the same party as when he had Southey--Mill, Elliot, Charles Villiers.
Wordsworth may be bordering on sixty; hard-featured, brown, wrinkled,
with prominent teeth and a few scattered gray hairs, but nevertheless
not a disagreeable countenance; and very cheerful, merry, courteous, and
talkative, much more so than I should have expected from the grave and
didactic character of his writings. He held forth