one. De Quincey's position, we think, was the only true one: that
Wordsworth's poetic creed was radically false,--a creed more honored in
the breach than the observance,--a creed good on paper only; that its
author, though professing, did in fact never follow it; that, with it,
he could never have been a great poet; and that, without it, he was
really great.

Wilson at Windermere, like Wilson at Oxford, was versatile, active,
Titanic, mysterious, and fascinating. An immense energy and momentum
marked the man; and a strange fitfulness, a lack of concentration, made
the sum total of results far too small. There was power; but much of it
was power wasted. He overflowed everywhere; his magnificent _physique_
often got the better of him; his boundless animal spirits fairly ran
riot with him; his poetic soul made him the fondest and closest of
Nature's wooers; his buoyant health lent an untold luxury to the mere
fact of existence; his huge muscles and tuneful nerves always hungered
for action, and bulged and thrilled joyously when face to face with
danger. He was exuberant, extravagant, enthusiastic, reckless,
stupendous, fantastic. It is only by the cumulation of epithets that one
can characterize a being so colossal in proportion, so many-sided in his
phases, so manifold in operation. He was a brilliant of the first water,
whose endless facets were forever gleaming, now here, now there, with a
gorgeous, but irregular light. No man could tell where to look for the
coming splendor. The glory dazzled all eyes, yet few saw their way the
clearer by such fitful flashes.

Wilson, in some of his phases, reminds us often of a great glorified
child, rejoicing in an eternal boyhood. He had the same impulse,
restlessness, glee, zest, and _abandon_. All sport was serious work with
him, and serious work was sport. No frolic ever came amiss, whatever