The veracity and the ideality which are so signally combined in Wordsworth’s poetic descriptions of Nature, made themselves at least as much felt whenever Nature was the theme of his discourse.  In his intense reverence for Nature he regarded all poetical delineations of her with an exacting severity; and if the descriptions were not true, and true in a twofold sense, the more skilfully executed they were, the more was his indignation roused by what he deemed a pretence and a deceit.  An untrue description of Nature was to him a profaneness, a heavenly message sophisticated and falsely delivered.  He expatiated much to me one day, as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature had been described by one of the most justly popular of England’s modern poets—­one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect.  ’He took pains,’ Wordsworth said; ’he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most—­a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain ash waving its red berries.  He went home, and wove the whole together into a poetical description.’  After a pause, Wordsworth resumed with a flashing eye and impassioned voice, ’But Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms!  He should have left his pencil and note-book at home; fixed his eye, as he walked, with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy.  Then, after several days had passed by, he should have interrogated his memory as to the scene.  He would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated.  That which remained—­the picture surviving in his mind—­would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so, in a large part, by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic.  In every scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental.  A true eye for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.’  On the same occasion he remarked, ’Scott misquoted in one of his novels my lines on Yarrow.  He makes me write,

    “The swans on sweet St. Mary’s lake
    Float double, swans and shadow;”

but I wrote

    “The swan on still St. Mary’s lake.”

Never could I have written “swans” in the plural.  The scene when I saw it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness:  there was one swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan, its own white image in the water.  It was for that reason that I recorded the Swan and the Shadow.  Had there been many swans and many shadows, they would have implied nothing as regards the character of the scene; and I should have said nothing about them.’  He proceeded