[264] Memoirs, ii. pp. 467-80.

* * * * *

(f) REMINISCENCES OF THE REV.  R.P.  GRAVES, M.A., FORMERLY OF WINDERMERE, NOW OF DUBLIN.

I remember Mr. Wordsworth saying that, at a particular stage of his mental progress, he used to be frequently so rapt into an unreal transcendental world of ideas that the external world seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he had to reconvince himself of its existence by clasping a tree, or something that happened to be near him.  I could not help connecting this fact with that obscure passage in his great Ode on the ‘Intimations of Immortality,’ in which he speaks of

          ’Those obstinate questionings
      Of sense and outward things;
      Fallings from us, vanishings: 
      Blank misgivings of a creature,
    Moving about in worlds not realised,’ &c.

I heard him once make the remark that it would be a good habit to watch closely the first involuntary thoughts upon waking in the morning, as indications of the real current of the moral being.

I was struck by what seemed to me a beautiful analogy, which I once heard him draw, and which was new to me—­that the individual characters of mankind showed themselves distinctively in childhood and youth, as those of trees in Spring; that of both, of trees in Summer and of human kind in middle life, they were then alike to a great degree merged in a dull uniformity; and that again, in Autumn and in declining age, there appeared afresh all their original and inherent variety brought out into view with deeper marking of character, with more vivid contrast, and with greater accession of interest and beauty.

He thought the charm of Robinson Crusoe mistakenly ascribed, as it commonly is done, to its naturalness.  Attaching a full value to the singular yet easily imagined and most picturesque circumstances of the adventurer’s position, to the admirable painting of the scenes, and to the knowledge displayed of the working of human feelings, he yet felt sure that the intense interest created by the story arose chiefly from the extraordinary energy and resource of the hero under his difficult circumstances, from their being so far beyond what it was natural to expect, or what would have been exhibited by the average of men; and that similarly the high pleasure derived from his successes and good fortunes arose from the peculiar source of these uncommon merits of his character.

I have heard him pronounce that the Tragedy of Othello, Plato’s records of the last scenes of the career of Socrates, and Isaac Walton’s Life of George Herbert, were in his opinion the most pathetic of human compositions.