ABSTRACT
In 1840 Wordsworth, after reading the three-volume Life of the Quaker philanthropist William Allen, his own friend and Davy’s, contrasted the two in a way unfavourable to Davy, saying that with all his intellectual power and extensive knowledge Davy was a sensualist, and a slave of rank and worldly station. In 1826, on returning to London, Davy complained to Ayrton Paris of palpitation of the heart, and of an affection of the throat which made him fear the disease of which his father had died at the age of forty-eight. Davy never wearied of the pineta, the great stretches of pine groves, and he longed for Poole to see them. He said Poole must know the trees from Claude Lorrain’s landscapes; he must imagine a circle of twenty miles of great fan-shaped pines, green sunny lawns, and little knolls of underwood, with large junipers of the Adriatic in front and the Apennines still covered with snow behind.
