habits_, _he had
noan_; niver knew him with a pot i' his hand, or a pipe i' his mouth.
But he was a great skater, for a' that--noan better in these parts--why,
he could cut his own naame upo' the ice, could Mr. Wudsworth.' Skating
seems to have been Wordsworth's one form of amusement. He was 'over
feckless i' his hands'--could not drive or ride--'not a bit of fish in
him,' and 'nowt of a mountaineer.' But he could skate. The rapture of
the time when, as a boy, on Esthwaite's frozen lake, he had

wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home, and, shod with steel,
Had hissed along the polished ice,

was continued, Mr. Rawnsley tells us, into manhood's later day; and Mr.
Rawnsley found many proofs that the skill the poet had gained, when

Not seldom from the uproar he retired,
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideways, leaving the tumultuous throng
To cut across the reflex of a star,

was of such a kind as to astonish the natives among whom he dwelt. The
recollection of a fall he once had, when his skate caught on a stone,
still lingers in the district. A boy had been sent to sweep the snow
from the White Moss Tarn for him. 'Did Mr. Wudsworth gie ye owt?' he was
asked, when he returned from his labour. 'Na, but I seed him tumlle,
though!' was the answer. 'He was a ter'ble girt skater, was Wudsworth
now,' says one of Mr. Rawnsley's informants; 'he would put one hand i'
his breast (he wore a frill shirt i' them days), and t' other hand i' his
waistband, same as shepherds does to keep their hands warm, and he would
stand up straight and sway and swing away grandly.'

Of his poetry they did not think much, and whatever was good in it they
ascribed to his wife, his sister, and Hartley Coleridge. He wrote
poetry, they said, 'because he couldn't help it--because it was his
hobby'--for sheer love, and not for money. They could not understand his
doing work 'for nowt,' and held his occupation in somewhat light esteem
because it did not bring in 'a deal o' brass to the pocket.' 'Did you
ever read his poetry, or see any books about in the farmhouses?' asked
Mr. Rawnsley. The answer was curious: 'Ay, ay, time or two. But ya're
weel aware there's potry and potry. There's potry wi' a li'le bit
pleasant in it, and potry sic as a man can laugh at or the childer
understand, and some as takes a deal of mastery to make out what's said