But enough, he is my brother; why should I describe him? I
shall be launching again into panegyric."
The brother's language to his sister is equally affectionate.
"How much do I wish," he writes in 1793, "that each emotion of
pleasure or pain that visits your heart should excite a similar
pleasure or a similar pain within me, by that sympathy which will
almost identify us when we have stolen to our little cottage.... I
will write to my uncle, and tell him that I cannot think of going
anywhere before I have been with you. Whatever answer he gives me, I
certainly will make a point of once more mingling my transports with
yours. Alas! My dear sister, how soon must this happiness expire;
yet there are moments worth ages."
And again: in the same year he writes, "Oh, my dear, dear sister!
With what transport shall I again meet you! With what rapture shall
I again wear out the day in your sight!... I see you in a moment
running, or rather flying, to my arms."
Wordsworth was in all things fortunate, but in nothing more
fortunate than in this, that so unique a companion should have been
ready to devote herself to him with an affection wholly free from
egotism or jealousy, an affection that yearned only to satisfy his
subtlest needs, and to transfuse all that was best in herself into
his larger being.
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