When I first read No. 1, of the “Lake Reminiscences,” by De Quincy, in “Tait’s Magazine,” I could scarcely believe what I read; and nothing would have convinced me of its truth, short of the authority which announced it. I had looked upon Wordsworth as a kind-hearted, generous, and unselfish man; noble, friendly, and without the vanity which has so often blurred the fair page of a great man’s nature. I was sorry to find that I was mistaken in this estimate of the poet; and that he, like me, and all the rest of us, had faults and failings manifold. De Quincy’s own account of his first visit to Wordsworth, the deep reverence with which he regarded him, and the overwhelming feelings which beset him on the occasion, is very affecting; and contrasted with the poet’s subsequent treatment of him, his wanton throwing away of that noble and affectionate heart, and his total disregard of the high intellectual homage which De Quincy offered to him, is still more affecting, and full, likewise, of pain and sorrow. Whilst he was a student at Oxford, De Quincy twice visited the Lake Country, on purpose to pay his respects to Wordsworth; and once, he says, he went forward from Coniston to the very gorge of Hammerscar, “from which the whole vale of Grasmere suddenly breaks upon the view in a style of almost theatrical surprise, with its lovely valley stretching in the distance, the lake lying immediately below, with its solemn boat-like island, of five acres in size, seemingly floating on its surface; its exquisite outline on the opposite shore, revealing all its little bays, and wild sylvan margin, feathered to the edge with wild flowers and ferns! “In one quarter a little wood, stretching for about half a mile towards the outlet of the lake, more directly in opposition to the spectator; a few green fields: and beyond them, just two bow-shots from the water, a little white cottage gleaming from the midst of trees, with a vast and seemingly never-ending series of ascents, rising above it to the height of more than three thousand feet. That little cottage was Wordsworth’s, from the time of his marriage, until 1808. Afterwards, for many a year, it was mine. Catching one glimpse of this loveliest of landscapes, I retreated, like a guilty thing, for fear I might be surprised by Wordsworth, and then returned faint-hearted to Coniston, and so to Oxford, _re infecta_.--This was in 1806. And thus, from mere excess of nervous distrust in my own powers for sustaining a conversation with Wordsworth, I had for nearly five years shrunk from a meeting for which, beyond all things under heaven, I longed.”