ontemporaries were there also), he sat dealing forth his eloquent but
hardly catholic judgments. In his "fathers house," there were not "many
mansions." He was as skeptical on the merits of all kinds of poetry but
one, as Richardson was on those of the novels of Fielding.

Under the study in which my visitor and I were sitting was an archway,
leading to a nursery-ground; a cart happened to go through it while I
was inquiring whether he would take any refreshment; and he uttered, in
so lofty a voice, the words, "Any thing which is _going forward_," that
I felt inclined to ask him whether he would take a piece of the cart.
Lamb would certainly have done it. But this was a levity which would
neither have been so proper on my part, after so short an acquaintance,
nor very intelligible perhaps, in any sense of the word, to the serious
poet. There are good-humored warrants for smiling, which lie deeper even
than Mr. Wordsworth's thoughts for tears.

I did not see this distinguished person again till thirty years
afterward; when, I should venture to say, his manner was greatly
superior to what it was in the former instance; indeed, quite natural
and noble, with a cheerful air of animal as well as spiritual
confidence; a gallant bearing, curiously reminding one of a certain
illustrious duke, as I have seen him walking some dozen years ago by a
lady's side, with no unbecoming oblivion of his time of life. I
observed, also, that he no longer committed himself in scornful
criticisms, or, indeed, in any criticisms whatever, at least as far as I
knew. He had found out that he could, at least, afford to be silent.
Indeed, he spoke very little of any thing.

Walter Scott said, that the eyes of Burns were the finest he ever saw. I
can not say the same of Mr. Wordsworth; that is, not in the sense of the
beautiful, or even of the profound. But certainly I never beheld eyes
that looked so inspired or supernatural. They were like fires half
burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acrid fixture of regard, and
seated at the further end of two caverns. One might imagine Ezekiel or
Isaiah to have had such eyes.

* * * * *

Charles Lamb had a head worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as
ever beat in human bosom, and limbs very fragile to sustain it. There
was a caricature of him sold in the shops, which pretended to be a
likeness. Procter went into the shop in a passion, and asked the man
what he meant