"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--