A lonely place, “a pond, by which an old man was, far from all house or home:”  not stood, nor sat, but was—­the figure presented in the most naked simplicity possible.  This feeling of spirituality or supernaturalness is again referred to as being strong in my mind in this passage.  How came he here? thought I, or what can he be doing?  I then describe him, whether ill or well is not for me to judge with perfect confidence; but this I can confidently affirm, that though I believe God has given me a strong imagination, I cannot conceive a figure more impressive than that of an old man like this, the survivor of a wife and ten children, travelling alone among the mountains and all lonely places, carrying with him his own fortitude and the necessities which an unjust state of society has laid upon him.  You speak of his speech as tedious.  Everything is tedious when one does not read with the feelings of the author.  “The Thorn” is tedious to hundreds; and so is the “Idiot Boy” to hundreds.  It is in the character of the old man to tell his story, which an impatient reader must feel tedious.  But, good heavens! such a figure, in such a place; a pious, self-respecting, miserably infirm and pleased old man telling such a tale!

     ’Your feelings upon the “Mother and the Boy, with the Butterfly,”
     were not indifferent:  it was an affair of whole continents of moral
     sympathy.’

     ’I am for the most part uncertain about my success in altering
     poems; but in this case,’ speaking of an insertion, ’I am sure I
     have produced a great improvement.’[44]

[44] Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 166—­174.

(h) OF THE PRINCIPLES OF POETRY AND HIS OWN POEMS.

Letter to (afterwards) Professor John Wilson [’Christopher North’].

To ——.

MY DEAR SIR,

Had it not been for a very amiable modesty you could not have imagined that your letter could give me any offence.  It was on many accounts highly grateful to me.  I was pleased to find that I had given so much pleasure to an ingenuous and able mind, and I further considered the enjoyment which you had had from my Poems as an earnest that others might be delighted with them in the same, or a like manner.  It is plain from your letter that the pleasure which I have given you has not been blind or unthinking; you have studied the poems, and prove that you have entered into the spirit of them.  They have not given you a cheap or vulgar pleasure; therefore, I feel that you are entitled to my kindest thanks for having done some violence to your natural diffidence in the communication which you have made to me.