From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed.

And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence.

There have certainly been, even in our own age, greater poets than Wordsworth; but poetry of deeper and loftier feeling could not have done for me at that time what his did.

I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation.

Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in, the common feelings and common destiny of human beings.