Schiller could have been our Wordsworth, had he had more faith in himself than in the old Greeks and Romans.  Our Ruckert would come the nearest to him, had he not also sought consolation and home under Eastern roses, away from his poor Fatherland.  Few poets have the courage to be just what they are.  Wordsworth had it; and as we gladly listen to great men, even in those moments when they are not inspired, but, like other mortals, quietly cherish their thoughts, and patiently wait the moment that will disclose new glimpses into the infinite, so have I also listened gladly to Wordsworth himself, in his poems, which contain nothing more than any one might have said.  The greatest poets allow themselves rest.  In Homer we often read a hundred verses without a single beauty, and just so in Dante; while Pindar, whom all admire so much, drives me to distraction with his ecstacies.  What would I not give to spend one summer on the lakes; visit with Wordsworth all the places to which he has given names; greet all the trees which he has saved from the axe; and only once watch a far-off sunset with him, which he describes as only Turner could have painted.”

It was a peculiarity of hers that her voice never dropped at the close of her talk, as with most people; on the contrary, it rose and always ended, as it were, in the broken seventh chord.  She always talked up, never down, to people.  The melody of her sentences resembled that of the child when it says:  “Can’t I, father?” There was something beseeching in her tones, and it was well-nigh impossible to gainsay her.

“Wordsworth,” said I, “is a dear poet, and a still dearer man to me, and as one often has a more beautiful, wide-spread, and stirring outlook from a little hill which he ascends without effort, than when he has clambered up Mont Blanc with difficulty and weariness, so it seems to me with Wordsworth’s poetry.  At first, he often appeared commonplace to me, and I have frequently laid down his poems unable to understand how the best minds of England to-day can cherish such an admiration for him.  The conviction has grown upon me that no poet whom his nation, or the intellectual aristocracy of his people, recognize as a poet, should remain unenjoyed by us, whatever his language.  Admiration is an art which we must learn.  Many Germans say Racine does not please them.  The Englishman says, ‘I do not understand Goethe.’  The Frenchman says Shakespeare is a boor.  What does all this amount to?  Nothing more than the child who says it likes a waltz better than a symphony of Beethoven’s.  The art consists in discovering and understanding what each nation admires in its great men.  He who seeks beauty will eventually find it, and discover that the Persians are not entirely deceived in their Hafiz, nor the Hindoos in their Kalidasa.  We cannot understand a great man all at once.  It takes strength, effort, and perseverance, and it is singular that what pleases us at first sight seldom captivates us any length of time.