choly of imperfect satisfaction, as if you had wronged the feeling with which, in what preceded it, you had resolved never to visit it, and as if the Muse had determined, in the most delicate manner, to make you, and scarce make you, feel it. Else, it is far superior to the other, which has but one exquisite verse in it, the last but one, or the last two; this is all fine, except perhaps that that of 'studious ease and generous cares,' has a little tinge of the less romantic about it. The Farmer of Tilsbury Vale is a charming counterpart to Poor Susan, with the addition of that delicacy towards aberrations from the strict path, which is so fine in the 'Old Thief and the Boy by his side,' which always brings water into my eyes. Perhaps it is the worse for being a repetition; 'Susan' stood for the representative of poor Rus in urbe. There was quite enough to stamp the moral of the thing never to be forgotten; 'bright volumes of vapour,' &c. The last verse of Susan was to be got rid of, at all events. It threw a kind of dubiety upon Susan's moral conduct. Susan is a servant maid. I see her trundling her mop, and contemplating the whirling phenomenon through blurred optics; but to term her 'a poor outcast seems as much as to say that poor Susan was no better than she should be, which I trust was not what you meant to express. Robin Goodfellow supports himself without that stick of a moral which you have thrown away; but how I can be brought in felo de omittendo for that ending to the Boy-builders is a mystery. I can't say positively now, -I only know that no line oftener or readier occurs than that 'Light-hearted boys, I will build up a Giant with you.' It comes naturally, with a warm holiday, and the freshness of the blood. It is a perfect summer amulet, that I tie round my legs to quicken their motion when I go out a-maying. (N.B.) I don't often go out a-maying;—must is the tense with me now. Do you take the pun? Young

II.

Romilly is divine; the reasons of his mother's grief being remediless. I never saw parental love carried up so high, towering above the other loves. Shakespeare had done something for the filial, in Cordelia, and, by implication, for the fatherly too, in Lear's resentment; he left it for you to explore the depths of the maternal heart. I get stupid, and flat, and flattering; what's the use of telling you what good things you have written, or-I hope I may add that I know them to be good? Apropos-when I first opened upon the just-mentioned poem, in a careless tone, I said to Mary, as if putting a riddle, What is good for a bootless bene?' To which, with infinite presence of mind (as the jest-book has it), she answered, 'A shoeless pea.' It was the first joke she ever made. Joke the second I make. You distinguish well, in your old preface, between the verses of Dr Johnson, of the Man in the Strand,' and those from 'The Babes in the Wood.' I was thinking, whether taking your own glorious lines

And from the love which was in her soul
For her youthful Romilly;

which, by the love I bear my own soul, I think have no parallel in any, the best old ballads, and just altering them to

And from the great respect she felt
For Sir Samuel Romilly,"

would not have explained the boundaries of prose expression and poetic feeling, nearly as well. Excuse my levity on such an occasion. I never felt deeply in my life if that poem did not make me feel, both lately and when I read it in MS. No alderman ever longed after a haunch of buck venison more than I for a spiritual taste of that White Doe you promise. I am sure it is superlative, or will be when drest, i.e., printed. All things read raw to me in MS.; to compare magna parvis, I cannot endure my own writings

The only one which I think would not very

But I am not I like both that The account of

in that state. much win upon me in print is Peter Bell. certain. You ask me about your preface. and the supplement without an exception. what you mean by imagination is very valuable to me. It will help me to like some things in poetry better, which is a little humiliating in me to confess. I thought I could not be instructed in that science (I mean the critical), as I once heard old obscene, beastly Peter Pindar, in a dispute on Milton, say he thought that if he had reason to value himself upon one thing more than another, it was in knowing what good verse was. Who looked over your proof-sheets and left ordebo in that line of Virgil? . Yours, dear W., and all yours,

C. LAMB."

Short extracts from other two of Lamb's letters, though belonging to the year 1816, may find their most appropriate place as a sequel to the above.

DEAR WORDSWORTH,-Thanks for the books you have given me, and for all the books you mean to give me. I will bind up the Political Sonnets and Ode according to your suggestion. I have not bound the poems yet. I wait till people have done borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain and chain them to my shelves, more Bodleiano, and people may come and read them at chain's length. For of those who borrow, some read slow; some mean to read but don't read; and some neither read nor mean to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of their sagacity.

Tell Mrs W. her postscripts are always agreeable. They are so legible too. Your manual-graphy is terrible, dark

* The Letters of Charles Lamb, vol. i. p. 302.

as Lycophron.

Likelihood,' for instance, in thus typified.

I should not wonder if the constant making out of such paragraphs is the cause of that weakness in Mrs W.'s eyes, as she is tenderly pleased to express it. Dorothy, I hear, has mounted spectacles; so you have deoculated two of your dearest relations in life. Well, God bless you, and continue to give you power to write with a finger of power upon our hearts what you fail to impress, in corresponding lucidness, upon our outward eyesight!

-Adieu,

C. LAMB."

"ACCOUNTANT'S OFFICE, April 26, 1816.*

DEAR W.,-. . . Coleridge is absent but four miles, and the neighbourhood of such a man is as exciting as the presence of fifty ordinary persons. 'Tis enough to be within the whiff and wind of his genius for us not to possess our souls in quiet. If I lived with him, or the Author of The Excursion, I should, in a very little time, lose my own identity, and be dragged along in the current of other people's thoughts, hampered in a net. . . . C. LAMB."

Most of the letters written by Wordsworth in 1815 throw light on the literary works he had in hand, on his efforts in behalf of his friends, and on his opinions upon contemporary events.

On the 17th February 1815, he wrote thus to Mr Gillies, the friend whose acquaintance he had made in Scotland three years before:

"RYDAL MOUNT, Feb. 17, 1815.*

MY DEAR SIR,-. . . One of my engagements has been the writing of an additional preface and a supplementary essay to my poems. I have ordered Longman to send the

*The Letters of Charles Lamb, vol. i., pp. 305-6.

+ Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, by R. P. Gillies, vol. ii., pp. 154-157.

book to you as soon as printed..

You will find a few hits at certain celebrated names of Scotland—I do not mean persons now living,—which may give great offence; yet not much, I think, to you... I confess I much prefer the classical model of Dr Beattie to the insupportable slovenliness, and neglect of syntax and grammar, by which Hogg's writings are disfigured.

You advert in your notes to certain stores of Highland character, incident, and manners, which have been but slightly touched upon. Would it not be well to collect these as materials for a poetic story, which, if you would set yourself to work in good earnest, I am confident you could execute with effect? Let me recommend this to you, or to compose a romance founded on some one of the many works of this kind that exist, as Wieland has done in his 'Oberon;' not that I should advise such a subject as he has chosen. You have an ear, and you have a command of diction, a fluency of style, and I wish, as your friend, that you would engage in some literary labour that would carry you out of yourself, and be the means of delighting the well-judging part of the world. In what I said upon the setting down thoughts in prose, I only meant briefly as memoranda to prevent their being lost. It is unaccountable to me how men could ever proceed as Racine (and Alfieri, I believe,) used to do, first writing their plays in prose, and afterwards turning them into verse. It may answer with so slavish a language and so enslaved a taste as the French have, but with us it is not to be thought of.

Let me know if you continue in the mind of trying the effect of Westmoreland air upon your spirits. Mr Wilson has a charming little cottage at Elleray, which, perhaps, he is not likely to make use of; but this you would find very lonely; and it is several miles distant from us. I fear there would be some difficulty in getting