The travellers saw more of this girl, and Miss Wordsworth's opinion
was confirmed. But to Wordsworth his glimpse of her became a
veritable romance. He commemorated it in his poem of _The Highland
Girl_, soon after his return from Scotland; he narrated it once more
in his poem of _The Three Cottage Girls_, written nearly twenty
years afterwards; and "the sort of prophecy," he says in 1843,
"with which the verses conclude, has, through God's goodness, been
realized; and now, approaching the close of my seventy-third year, I
have a most vivid remembrance of her, and the beautiful objects with
which she was surrounded." Nay, more; he has elsewhere informed us,
with some naivete, that the first few lines of his exquisite poem to
his wife, _She was a phantom of delight_, were originally composed
as a description of this Highland maid, who would seem almost to
have formed for him ever afterwards a kind of type and image of
loveliness.
That such a meeting as this should have formed so long-remembered an
incident in the poet's life will appear, perhaps, equally ridiculous
to the philosopher and to the man of the world. The one would have
given less, the other would have demanded more.
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