Goldsmith
was evidently his model in the Descriptive Sketches and the Evening
Walk. I speak of them as originally printed.
[328] Prelude, Book III. He studied Italian also at Cambridge, his
teacher, whose name was Isola, had formerly taught the poet Gray. It
may be pretty certainly inferred, however, that his first systematic
study of English poetry was due to the copy of Andersen's British
Poets, left with him by his sailor brother John on setting out for
his last voyage in 1805.
[329] Prelude, Book VII. Written before 1805, and referring to a
still earlier date. "Wordsworth went in powder, and with cocked hat
under his arm, to the Marchioness of Stafford's rout." (Southey to
Miss Barker, May, 1806.)
[330] This was probably one reason for the long suppression of Miss
Wordsworth's journal, which she had evidently prepared for
publication as early as 1805.
[331] Crabb Robinson, I. 250, Am. Ed.
[332] Wordsworth's purity afterwards grew sensitive almost to
prudery. The late Mr. Clough told me that he heard him at Dr.
Arnold's table denounce the first line in Keats's Ode to a Grecian
Urn as indecent, and Haydon records that when he saw the group of
Cupid and Psyche he exclaimed, "The dev-ils!"
[333] The whole passage is omitted in the revised edition.
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