might set forth the lessons of his experience. The material was
fitting. The story of these three Books has something of the severity,
the self-control, the inexorable necessity of classic tragedy, and
like classic tragedy it has a noble end. The dregs and sour sediment
that reaction from exaggerated hope is so apt to stir in poor natures
had no place here. The French Revolution made the one crisis in
Wordsworth's mental history, the one heavy assault on his continence
of soul, and when he emerged from it all his greatness remained to
him. After a long spell of depression, bewilderment, mortification,
and sore disappointment, the old faith in new shapes was given back.

"Nature's self,
By all varieties of human love
Assisted, led me back through opening day
To those sweet counsels between head and heart
Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace,
Which, through the later sinkings of this cause,
Hath still upheld me and upholds me now."

It was six years after his return from France before Wordsworth
finally settled down in the scenes with which his name and the power
of his genius were to be for ever associated. During this interval it
was that two great sources of personal influence were opened to him.
He entered upon that close and beloved companionship with his sister,
which remained unbroken to the end of their days; and he first made
the acquaintance of Coleridge. The character of Dorothy Wordsworth has
long taken its place in the gallery of admirable and devoted women who
have inspired the work and the thoughts of great men. "She is a woman,
indeed," said Coleridge, "in mind I mean, and heart; for her person is
such that if you expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her