would have said he was a usually taciturn man, glad to unlock himself
to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered itself. His
face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of
it not bland or benevolent, so much as close, impregnable, and hard;
a man _multa tacere loquive paratus_, in a world where he had
experienced no lack of contradictions as he strode along! The eyes
were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet clearness; there
was enough of brow, and well shaped; rather too much of cheek
('horse-face,' I have heard satirists say), face of squarish shape and
decidedly longish, as I think the head itself was (its 'length' going
horizontal); he was large-boned, lean, but still firm-knit, tall, and
strong-looking when he stood; a right good old steel-gray figure, with
rustic simplicity and dignity about him, and a vivacious _strength_
looking through him which might have suited one of those old
steel-gray _Markgrafs_ [Graf = _Grau_,'Steel-gray'] whom Henry the
Fowler set up to ward the 'marches,' and do battle with the intrusive
heathen, in a stalwart and judicious manner."

Whoever might be his friends within an easy walk, or dwelling afar,
the poet knew how to live his own life. The three fine sonnets headed
_Personal Talk_, so well known, so warmly accepted in our better
hours, so easily forgotten in hours not so good between pleasant
levities and grinding preoccupations, show us how little his
neighbours had to do with the poet's genial seasons of "smooth
passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought."

For those days Wordsworth was a considerable traveller. Between 1820
and 1837 he made long tours abroad, to Switzerland, to Holland, to
Belgium, to Italy. In other years he visited Wales, Scotland,
and Ireland. He was no mechanical tourist, admiring to order and