In return for his letter of admiration and sympathy, he received an invitation to the Grasmere valley.  More than once he set forth to avail himself of it; but when within a few miles, the shyness under which in those days he suffered overpowered his purpose, and he turned back.  After having achieved the meeting, however, he soon announced his intention of settling in the valley; and he did so, putting his wife and children eventually into the cottage which the Wordsworths had now outgrown and left.  There was little in him to interest or attach a family of regular domestic habits, like the Wordsworths, given to active employment, sensible thrift, and neighborly sympathy.  It was universally known that a great poem of Wordsworth’s was reserved for posthumous publication, and kept under lock and key meantime.  De Quincey had so remarkable a memory that he carried off by means of it the finest passage of the poem,—­or that which the author considered so; and he published that passage in a magazine article, in which he gave a detailed account of the Wordsworths’ household, connections, and friends, with an analysis of their characters and an exhibition of their faults.  This was in 1838, a dozen years before the poet’s death.  The point of interest is,—­How did the wronged family endure the wrong?  They were quiet about it,—­that is, sensible and dignified; but Wordsworth was more.  A friend of his and mine was talking with him over the fire, just when De Quincey’s disclosures were making the most noise, and mentioned the subject.  Wordsworth begged to be spared hearing anything about them, saying that the man had long passed away from the family life and mind, and he did not wish to disturb himself about what could not be remedied.  My friend acquiesced, saying, “Well, I will tell you only one thing that he says, and then we will talk of something else.  He says your wife is too good for you.”  The old man’s dim eyes lighted up instantly, and he started from his seat, and flung himself against the mantel-piece, with his back to the fire, as he cried with loud enthusiasm, “And that’s true!  There he is right!”

It was by his written disclosures only that De Quincey could do much mischief; for it was scarcely possible to be prejudiced by anything he could say.  The whole man was grotesque; and it must have been a singular image that his neighbors in the valley preserved in their memory.  A frail-looking, diminutive man, with narrow chest and round shoulders and features like those of a dying patient, walking with his hands behind him, his hat on the back of his head, and his broad lower lip projected, as if he had something on his tongue that wanted listening to,—­such was his aspect; and if one joined company with him, the strangeness grew from moment to moment.  His voice and its modulations were a perfect treat.  As for what he had to say, it was everything from odd comment on a passing trifle, eloquent enunciation of some truth, or pregnant remark on some lofty subject,