e or speculative, and it could only have
been because he lived at the Lakes and was Coleridge's brother-in-law
that he was implicated with the two speculative poets at all. It has
been carelessly reported by Lake tourists that Southey was not beloved
among his neighbors, while Wordsworth was; and that therefore the latter
was the better man, in a social sense. It should be remembered that
Southey was a working man, and that the other two were not; and,
moreover, it should never be for a moment forgotten that Southey worked
double-tides to make up for Coleridge's idleness. While Coleridge was
dreaming and discoursing, Southey was toiling to maintain Coleridge's
wife and children. He had no time and no attention to spare for
wandering about and making himself at home with the neighbors. This
practice came naturally to Wordsworth; and a kind and valued neighbor he
was to all the peasants round. Many a time I have seen him in the road,
in Scotch bonnet and green spectacles, with a dozen children at his
heels and holding his cloak, while he cut ash-sticks for them from the
hedge, hearing all they had to say or talking to them. Southey, on the
other hand, took his constitutional walk at a fixed hour, often reading
as he went. Two families depended on him; and his duty of daily labor
was not only distinctive, but exclusive. He was always at work at home,
while Coleridge was doing nothing but talking, and Wordsworth was
abroad, without thinking whether he was at work or play. Seen from the
stand-point of conscience and of moral generosity, Southey's was the
noblest life of the three; and Coleridge's was, of course, nought.
I own, however, that, considering the tendency of the time to make
literature a trade, or at least a profession, I cannot help feeling
Wordsworth's to have been the most privileged life of them all. He had
not work enough to do; and his mode of life encouraged an excess of
egoism: but he bore all the necessary retribution of this in his latter
years; and the whole career leaves an impression of an airy freedom and
a natural course of contemplation, combined with social interest and
action, more healthy than the existence of either the delinquent or the
exemplary comrade with whom he was associated in the public view.

I have left my neighbors waiting long on the margin of Grasmere. That
was before I was born; but I could almost fancy I had seen them there.

I observed that Wordsworth's report of their trip wa