Such, then, were the circumstances of Southey at the time of De Quincy’s visit, and it must be owned that they were very comfortable, for a poet. Wordsworth came on the day after De Quincy’s arrival, and it was evident that the two poets were not on the most friendly terms; not that there was any outward sign of this,--on the contrary, there were all the exteriors of hospitality and good feeling on both sides; but De Quincy saw that the spiritual link between them was not complete, but broken; that, indeed, they did not understand, or fully sympathise with each other. Their minds and habits were different--I had almost said totally different. Wordsworth lived on the mountain top, composed there, and drew his inspiration direct from Nature; Southey lived in his magnificent library, and was inspired more by books than by natural objects.--Wordsworth’s library consisted of two or three hundred volumes, mostly torn and dilapidated; many were odd volumes; they were ill bound--not bound--or put in boards. Leaves were often wanting, and their place supplied occasionally by manuscript. These books “occupied a little homely book-case, fixed into one of two hollow recesses, formed on each side of the fireplace by the projection of the chimney into the little solitary room up stairs, which he had already described as his ‘half kitchen, half parlour.’.... Southey’s collection occupied a separate room--the largest, and every way the most agreeable in the house.” Wordsworth’s poetry was _subjective_--referred chiefly to the inner life of man; and his dealings with Nature had a special reference to this inner life, his imagery being the mere vehicle of his thought. Southey’s poetry, on the contrary, was essentially _objective_,--a reflex of the outward nature, heightened by the fiery colouring of his imagination. Wordsworth had a contempt for books, or, at all events, for _most_ books,--whilst Southey’s library, as De Quincy says, was his estate. Wordsworth would toss books about like tennis balls; and to let him into your library, quoth Southey, “is like letting a bear into a tulip-garden.” De Quincy relates, that Wordsworth being one morning at breakfast with him at Grasmere, took a handsome volume of Burke’s from his book-case, and began very leisurely to cut the leaves with a knife smeared all over with butter. Now tastes and habits such as those which marked the two poets could not unite them very closely together; at all events, not at this time; although they were subsequently, and in later years, upon terms of close intimacy and friendship. Upon the present occasion, however,--that is to say, during De Quincy’s visit to Southey--the two poets managed very well together, and the evening was passed agreeably enough. Next morning they discussed politics, and to the horror of De Quincy, who was then a young man, and took no interest in the passing movements of nations, and had always heard the French