It has long been known that the journals of George Ticknor contain a most interesting series of impressions of the later Wordsworth, gathered during Ticknor's two visits to Europe in 1819 and 1835–38. Ticknor's description of the aging poet, his family and friends, his way of life, his poetry, and his opinions, while it is certainly not blindly adulatory, serves as an agreeable antidote to the rather astringent and far more widely known description by another travelling American, Emerson. The relations between Ticknor and Wordsworth are of interest not only to students of the two men individually, but also to anyone who is curious about the literary connections between the two cultures, for “the friendly daily intercourse of Wordsworth and Ticknor, a prominent and influential man of letters in America, was undoubtedly also a means of promoting in this country an interest in the poet and his work.”