a-year, he wanted to make it five; and would go to the West Indies; but he died on the passage of sea-sickness, and obstinacy in taking an emetic.”
I said to him, “You are accused of owing a great deal to Wordsworth. Certainly there are some stanzas in the Third Canto of ‘Childe Harold’ that smell strongly of the Lakes: for instance—
‘I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me;—and to me
High mountains are a feeling!’”
“Very possibly,” replied he. “Shelley, when I was in Switzerland, used to dose me with Wordsworth physic even to nausea: and I do remember then reading some things of his with pleasure. He had once a feeling of Nature, which he carried almost to a deification of it:—that’s why Shelley liked his poetry.
“It is satisfactory to reflect, that where a man becomes a hireling and loses his mental independence, he loses also
