calm of his writings was the result of no coldness of temperament
but of a deliberate philosophy. The pregnant force of his language
in dealing with those dearest to him--his wife, his sister, his
brother--is proof enough of this. The frequent allusions in his
correspondence to the physical exhaustion brought on by the act of
poetical composition indicate a frame which, though made robust by
exercise and temperance, was by nature excitable rather than strong.
And even in the direction in which we should least have expected it,
there is reason to believe that there were capacities of feeling in
him which never broke from his control. "Had I been a writer of
love-poetry," he is reported to have said, "it would have been
natural to me to write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly
have been approved by my principles, and which might have been
undesirable for the reader."

Wordsworth's paternal feelings, at any rate, were, as has been said,
exceptionally strong; and the impossibility of remaining in a house
filled with sorrowful memories rendered him doubly anxious to obtain
a permanent home. "The house which I have for some time occupied," he
writes to Lord Lonsdale, in January 1813, "is the Parsonage of
Grasmere. It stands close by the churchyard, and I have found it
absolutely necessary that we should quit a place which, by recalling
to our minds at every moment the losses we have sustained in the
course of the last year, would grievously retard our progress
towards that tranquillity which it is our duty to aim at." It
happened that Rydal Mount became vacant at this moment, and in the
spring of 1813 the Wordsworths migrated to this their favourite and
last abode.

Rydal Mount has probably been oftener described than any other