"He expatiated much to me one day," says Mr. Aubrey de Vere, "as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature had been described by one of the most justly popular of England's modern poets--one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect. 'He took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most--a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain-ash waving its red berries. He went home and wove the whole together into a poetical description.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed, with a flashing eye and impassioned voice: 'But Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and notebook at home, fixed his eye as he walked with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had passed by, he should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated; that which remained--the picture surviving in his mind--would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so in a large part by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental; a true eye for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.'" How many a phrase of Wordsworth's rises in the mind in illustration of this power! Phrases which embody in a single picture, or a single image,--it may be the vivid wildness of the flowery coppice, of-- Flaunting summer, when he throws His soul into the briar-rose,-- or the melancholy stillness of the declining year,-- Where floats O'er twilight fields the autumnal gossamer; or--as in the words which to the sensitive Charles Lamb seemed too terrible for art--the irresponsive blankness of the universe-- The broad open eye of the solitary sky-- beneath which mortal hearts must make what merriment they may. Or take those typical stanzas in _Peter Bell_, which so long were accounted among Wordsworth's leading absurdities. In vain through, every changeful year Did Nature lead him as before; A primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more. In vain, through water, earth, and air, The soul of happy sound was spread, When Peter, on some April morn, Beneath the broom or budding thorn. Made the warm earth his lazy bed. At noon, when by the forest's edge He lay beneath the branches high, The soft blue sky did never melt Into his heart,--he never felt The witchery of the soft blue sky!