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Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets; Coleridge Wordsworth and Sonrhey
Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets Coleridge Wordsworth and Sonrhey Author:Thomas De Quincey General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1862 Original Publisher: A. and Ch. Black Subjects: History / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It ha... more »s no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. In 1807 it was, at the beginning of winter, that I first saw William Wordsworth. I have already mentioned that I had introduced myself to his notice by letter as early as the spring of 1803. To this hour it has continued, I believe, a mystery to Wordsworth, why it was that I suffered an interval of four and a half years to slip away before availing myself of the standing invitation with which I had been honoured to the poet's house. Very probably he accounted for this delay by supposing that the new-born liberty of an Oxford life, with its multiplied enjoyments, acting upon a boy just emancipated from the restraints of a school, and, in one hour, elevated into what we Oxonians so proudly and so exclusively denominate" a man," might have tempted me into pursuits alien from the pure intellectual passions which had so powerfully mastered my youthful heart some years before. Extinguished such a passion could not be; nor could he think, if remembering the fervour with which I had expressed it, the sort of " nympholepsy" which had seized upon me, and which, in some imperfect way, I had avowed with reference to the very lakes and mountains amongst which the scenery of this most original poetry had chiefly grown up and moved. The very names of the ancient hills -- Fair-field, Seat Sandal, Helvellyn, Blencathara, Glaramara ; the names of the sequestered glens -- such as Borrowdale, Martinda...« less