tion. In the notes you have quoted two lines of mine from memory, and your memory, admirable as it is, has here failed you. The passage stands with you

The swans in (or on) sweet St Mary's lake.

The proper reading is

The swan on still St Mary's lake.

I mention this in order that the correction may be made in a future edition.

I had a peep at your edition of Dryden. I had not time to read the notes, which would have interested me much, namely the historical and illustrative ones; but some of the critical introductions I read, and am not surprised at the opinions they contain, but rather surprised at them coming from you, who in your infancy and childhood, must have had so many of the strains of Nature-Poetry resounding in your ears. One passage in one of your notes I was grieved to see; not the language of praise applied to things which, according to my feelings, do not deserve it, but hard censure unjustly passed upon a great man, I mean Hayward, the dramatist. Only read (not to speak of any of his other things) his Woman killed with kindness. There is an exquisite strain of pathos in many parts of that play, which Dryden not only was utterly incapable of producing, but of feeling when produced. The praise which has been given to Otway, Hayward is far better entitled to. He does not indeed write like a poet, but his scenes are, many of them, as pathetic as any that have been produced since the days of Euripides. -My dear Scott, most truly yours,

W. WORDSWORTH."

As I only became aware of the existence of Wordsworth's MSS. at Abbotsford after the preceding pages had gone to press, I may here insert, though slightly out of their chrono

logical place, portions of other letters written to Scott from Coleorton.

"COLEORTON, November 10, 1806.

MY DEAR SCOTT,- Here I am, with my whole family, a flight of 160 miles south,

for six months, about the

end of which time we shall return to Grasmere. I hope to

have a sight of the last primroses.

You see therefore that

I cannot profit by your friendly invitation to take up abode with you for any part of the ensuing winter.

Your second copy of the Minstrel I gave away.

It

was a beautiful book, but when I wished for another copy it was for one of a pocket size. Any poetry which I like, I wish for in that size, to which no doubt you will one day. descend.

I am going to the press with a volume * which I publish with great reluctance; but the day when my long work will be finished seems further and further off. . . . It would look like affectation if I were to say how indifferent I am to its present reception; but I have a true pleasure in saying to you that I put some value upon it, and hope that it will one day or other be thought well of by the public. By the by you will not be displeased to find that you and I have (as I understand) fallen upon the same subject, the melancholy catastrophe of the dog in the coves of Helvellyn. What a happy day we had together there. I often think of it with delight."

"COLEORTON, January 20, 1807.

Could you furnish me, by application to any of your Gaelic friends, a phrase in that language which would take its place in the following verse of eight syllables, and have the following meaning ?--

* The Poems of 1806.

The above is part of a little poem which I have written on a Highland story told me by an eye-witness.

"2nd March 1807.

I am very glad to hear that Flodden Field is to be

CHAPTER XXII.

ALLAN BANK, AND COLERIDGE.

BEFORE they finally left Coleorton William and Mary Wordsworth went up to London for a month, in the spring of 1807; Dorothy remaining in Leicestershire with Sarah Hutchinson and the children. They went back to Coleorton in the early summer, accompanied by Sir Walter Scott; and the entire household seem to have left the Midlands, and returned to Grasmere at the beginning of autumn, in the same year. I incline to think that Wordsworth visited the Craven district of Yorkshire, during the late summer of 1807, on his way from Coleorton to Westmoreland. In the advertisement to The White Doe, he tells us that he visited the country that surrounds Bolton Abbey during that summer; and it is unlikely that he went to it from Coleorton, and returned there again. Shortly after his arrival at Grasmere in autumn he went with Mrs Wordsworth on a visit to his birthplace, Cockermouth.

On their return to Grasmere, Dorothy wrote to her friend Mrs Marshall, who had been in Scotland, taking nearly the same route as the Wordsworths did in 1803. Referring to that memorable tour she said:

"September 1807.

We did not ascend Ben Lomond, but I would have liked to have done it very much; although it is not particularly a pleasure to me to see those places with which I am familiar reduced as on a map below me. I think there is no sensa

tion more elevating to the heart, and to the imagination than what we take in, in viewing distant mountains, plains, hills, valleys, towns, or seas from some superior eminence. I do not wonder that you were disappointed with Glencroe, passing it on a sunny morning, and with expectations of something tremendous or terrible. It may be sublime under certain accidents of weather, but can never, I think, be tremendous or terrible; and I think the glen itself is unjustly treated, when such epithets are used in describing it. It is a wild and solitary spot, where you feel that you are in Scotland; black cattle were the only living things, except birds and sheep, that we saw in travelling through it. . . .

The effect of the first view of Inveraray (in combination with the broad expanse of water, fishing-boats, hills, and distant mountains, and afterwards with the castle and bridges) is very impressive and beautiful. The sun was shining on the water when we first came in view of this prospect; and it made a distinct impression upon my mind of festive gaiety which I shall never forget. Loch Tay, though a very pretty place to live beside, is (except at Killin and Taymouth) an insipid scene to visit. It is greatly inferior in beauty to all our lakes, and not equal in grandeur, I think, to the most insignificant of them. I cannot agree with you in admiring the cathedral at Melrose more than the chapel at Roslin. As far as it goes, as a whole, the chapel at Roslin appeared to me to be perfection, most beautiful in form, and of entire simplicity. Melrose has no doubt been a much grander place; but, as a whole, at present it produces little effect. The minute sculpture is excessively beautiful; but oh! how much more delight have I in the remembrance of Bolton in its retired valley, and the venerable Kirkstall.

William and Mary spent twelve days at Ullswater, and returned with Sir George and Lady Beaumont, who stayed