amid such heavy features. The habit of taking opium was but an outward expression of the transports and depressions to which he was inly prone. In him glided up in the silence, equally vivid, the Christabel, the Geraldine. Through his various mind
“Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.”
He was one of those with whom
“The meteor offspring of the brain
“ Unnourished wane,
“Faith asks her daily bread,
“ And fancy must be fed.”
And when this was denied,
“Came a restless state, ’twixt yea and nay,
“ His faith was fixed, his heart all ebb and flow;
“Or like a bark, in some half-sheltered bay,
“ Above its anchor driving to and fro.”
Thus we cannot wonder that he, with all his vast mental resources and noble aims, should have been the bard elect to sing of Dejection, and that the pages of his prose works should be blistered by more painful records of personal and social experiences, than we find in almost any from a mind able to invoke the aid of divine philosophy, a mind touched by humble piety. But Wordsworth, who so early knew, and sought, and found the life and the work he wanted, whose wide and equable thought flows on like a river through the plain, whose verse seemed to come daily like the dew to rest upon the flowers of home affections, we should think he might always have been with his friend, as he describes two who had grown up together,
| “Each other’s advocate, each other’s stay, |
| “ And strangers to content, if long apart, |
| “Or more divided than a sportive pair |
