nothing but successive courses of
apple-dumplings served up. It was not even _toujours perdrix_!

Mr. Wordsworth, in his person, is above the middle size, with marked
features, and an air somewhat stately and Quixotic. He reminds one of some
of Holbein's heads, grave, saturnine, with a slight indication of sly
humour, kept under by the manners of the age or by the pretensions of the
person. He has a peculiar sweetness in his smile, and great depth and
manliness and a rugged harmony, in the tones of his voice. His manner of
reading his own poetry is particularly imposing; and in his favourite
passages his eye beams with preternatural lustre, and the meaning labours
slowly up from his swelling breast. No one who has seen him at these
moments could go away with an impression that he was a "man of no mark or
likelihood." Perhaps the comment of his face and voice is necessary to
convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may not be intelligible,
but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is clear that he is either mad or
inspired. In company, even in a _tete-a-tete_, Mr. Wordsworth is often
silent, indolent, and reserved. If he is become verbose and oracular of
late years, he was not so in his better days. He threw out a bold or an
indifferent remark without either effort or pretension, and relapsed into
musing again. He shone most (because he seemed most roused and animated)
in reciting his own poetry, or in talking about it. He sometimes gave
striking views of his feelings and trains of association in composing
certain passages; or if one did not always understand his distinctions,
still there was no want of interest--there was a latent meaning worth
inquiring into, like a vein of ore that one cannot exactly hit upon at the
moment, but of which there are sure indications. His standard of poetry is
high and severe, almost to exclusiveness. He admits of nothing below,
scarcely of any thing above himself. It is fine to hear him talk of the
way in which certain subjects should have been treated by eminent poets,
according to his notions of the art. Thus he finds fault with Dryden's
description of Bacchus in the _Alexander's Feast_, as if he were a mere
good-looking youth, or boon companion--

"Flushed with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face"--

instead of representing the God returning from the conquest of India,
crowned with vine-leaves, and drawn by panthers, and followed by troops
of satyrs, of wild men and a