of the rest of his face. Chantrey's bust wants the marking
traits; but he was teazed into making it regular and heavy: Haydon's head
of him, introduced into the _Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem_, is the
most like his drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down and
talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing accents
in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the
northern _burr_, like the crust on wine. He instantly began to make havoc
of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and said triumphantly that
"his marriage with experience had not been so unproductive as Mr.
Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good things of this life." He
had been to see the _Castle Spectre_ by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and
described it very well. He said "it fitted the taste of the audience like
a glove." This _ad captandum_ merit was however by no means a
recommendation of it, according to the severe principles of the new
school, which reject rather than court popular effect. Wordsworth, looking
out of the low, latticed window, said, "How beautifully the sun sets on
that yellow bank!" I thought within myself, "With what eyes these poets
see nature!" and ever after, when I saw the sun-set stream upon the
objects facing it, conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr.
Wordsworth for having made one for me! We went over to All-Foxden again
the day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter Bell in the
open air; and the comment upon it by his face and voice was very different
from that of some later critics! Whatever might be thought of the poem,
"his face was as a book where men might read strange matters," and he
announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There is a _chaunt_ in
the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a spell
upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived
themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment.
Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more
equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be termed more _dramatic_,
the other more _lyrical_. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to
compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling
branches of a copse wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could)
walking up and down a strait gravel-walk, or in some spot where the
continuity of his verse met with no colla