without comparison, the finest summer vision I ever beheld! All was brightness, tranquillity, and repose. Wordsworth was absorbed in it; he stood, with folded arms, in a reverie. Long time we observed the growth of the huge shadows over the vale. At length, mindful of our journey, we received from the poet, and his family, the proposal to walk with us to Ambleside. As we went, I sounded him with regard to Ossian. I was chagrined to find that he was denounced, as a disgusting imposture; the manners, and imagery, designated as false and unreal, condemned in toto, yet to the blind Bard himself, he had some relentings. He was evidently satisfied with the image of the aged Harper, left the last of his race, and giving his griefs to the echoes of the hills; but all beyond, -the touching tenderness, and beauty of the characters delineated, the lively description of mountain scenery, and the ethereal spirit of melancholy, which pervades those singular compositions, were abandoned without a sigh.

As we advanced, the sun sank, and a warm flush of bright carnation lighted up the sky around; it reminded me of the sunset scene in The Excursion, and I told Wordsworth so; he said he had never before seen so fine a one. Mrs Wordsworth fancied a lion rampant in the clouds, and contrasted the transient colours of those lovely skies, with the permanent repose of the ever-during crags, round which they floated. At the town we parted."

With this may be conjoined, the account given in Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, the second edition of which was published in 1819.

"In listening to Wordsworth, it is impossible to forget for a single moment that the author of The Excursion is before you. Poetry has been with him the pure sole business of life-he thinks of nothing else, and he speaks

of nothing else—and where is the man who hears him, that would for a moment wish it to be otherwise? The deep sonorous voice in which he pours forth his soul upon the secrets of his art-and those glimpses which he opens every now and then into that lowly life, whose mysteries have been his inspirations—the earnestness with which he details, the confidence which he feels in the heart that is submitted to his working-and the command with which he seeks to fasten to him every one capable of understanding his words-all these things are as they should be, in one that has lived the life of a hermit, partaking little in the pursuits, and knowing little of the habits of the men of the world. There is a noble simplicity in the warmth with which he discourses to all that approach him, on the subject of which he himself knows most, on which he feels most, and of which he is wise enough to know that every one must be most anxious to hear him speak. His poetry is the poetry of external nature and profound feeling, and such is the hold which these themes have taken of his intellect, that he seldom descends to the tone in which the ordinary conversation of men is pitched. Hour after hour his eloquence flows on, by his own simple fireside, or along the slopes of his own mountains, in the same strain as in his poems-

Of Man and Nature, and of human life,

His haunt and the main region of his song.

The large,

His enthusiasm is that of a secluded artist. dim, pensive eye, that dwells upon the ground, and the smile of placid abstraction, that clothes his tremulous, melancholy lips, complete a picture of solemn genius, to which, amid the concussions of common life, my mind reverts for repose."

In September 1819, Prince Leopold visited Lowther

* See Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, Letter LI. Vol. ii. p. 310-312.

Castle. Wordsworth was unable to accept an invitation to meet him there, but sent to Lord Lonsdale a letter, telling him of certain views which his Royal Highness should not fail to see, should he visit Keswick as well as Grasmere and Ambleside the view of Derwentwater from General Peachy's House upon the Island, and from Friar's Crag, and that from the Vicarage of Crosthwaite, so much prized by the poet Gray. And, as even better than the last, the view "from the neighbourhood of Ormathwaite, on the new road close under Skiddaw by Applethwaite, proceeding towards Bassenthwaite less than half a mile, and returning the same way. In the Vale of Grasmere, if there should be ten minutes to spare, when the Swan Inn is reached, inquire for a small hill called Butterlip How. It commands a panoramic view of this celebrated vale, proceed thence by the Church to rejoin the road leading to Ambleside by Rydal. The valley of Ambleside is, perhaps, nowhere better seen than from the terrace at Rydal Mount."

In the summer of 1820, Wordsworth, with his wife and sister, went up to London, on their way to the Continent. They went by Oxford, and were there on the 30th of May, the visit inspiring two sonnets on the city and its colleges. In one of them, referring to the High Street, he spoke of

The stream-like windings of that glorious street.

They went to London to attend the marriage of Mr Monkhouse, in the beginning of June. They stayed with Christopher Wordsworth at Lambeth Rectory, and spent nearly two months in the metropolis.

It was during an earlier visit that he had sat to Haydon, for the portrait of a reverential bystander, in his picture of "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem;" but this picture was only

completed, and exhibited for the first time, in 1820. Henry Crabb Robinson wrote of it: "The group of Wordsworth, Newton, and Voltaire is ill executed. The poet is a forlorn and haggard old man; the philosopher is a sleek, welldressed citizen of London; and Voltaire is merely an ugly Frenchman."

In 1820 Wordsworth published his River Duddon, a Series of Sonnets; appending to it a few other poems and his topographical description of the Lakes. On receiving copy, Charles Lamb wrote to Dorothy Wordsworth :—

DEAR MISS W.-. . . There can be none to whom the last volume of W. W. has come more welcome than to me. I have traced the Duddon in thought and with repetition along the banks (alas !) of the Sea-unpoetical name; it is always flowing and inurmuring and dashing in my ears. The story of Dion is divine—the genius of Plato falling on him like moonlight—the finest thing ever expressed. Then there is Elidure and Kirkstone Pass-the last not new to me-and let me add one of the sweetest of them all to me, The Longest Day. Loving all these as much as I can love poetry new to me, what could I wish or desire more or extravagantly in a new volume ? That I did not write to W. W. was simply that he was to come so soon, and that flattens letters. . . .Yours,

On the 2nd June, Crabb Robinson wrote:

C. L."

"I went to Lamb's, where Wordsworth and Mrs W. were. Lamb was in a good humour. He read some recent compositions, which Wordsworth cordially praised. He seemed to enjoy his society. Not much was said about his new volume of poems. But he himself spoke of Brownie's Cell, as his

favourite. It appears that he had heard of a recluse living in the island, when there himself, and afterwards of his being gone, no one knew whither, as the fact on which the poem is founded.*

Sunday 11th.-W. still lets me hope that I may have the opportunity of travelling with him. He was, however, more occupied about the new edition of Peter Bell. He has resolved to make some concessions to public taste, and has resolved to strike out several offensive passages, such as

Is it a party in a parlour, &c.,

which I had implored him to leave out, before the book first appeared. So the over-coarse expression, 'But I will bang your bones,' &c., &c. I never before saw W. so little opinionated, so willing to make sacrifices for the sake of popularity, as now. He is improved not a little by this in my mind.

21st. I called on Monkhouse. Wordsworth was very pleasant. Indeed, he is uniformly so now; and there is absolutely no pretence for what was always an exaggerated charge against him, that he can talk only of his own poetry, and loves only his own works. He is more indulgent than he used to be of the works of others, even rivals and contemporaries; and is more open to argument in favour of changes in his own works."

* The following is an interesting incident of this 2nd day of June 1820. Charles Lamb presented Wordsworth with a copy of the first editions of Paradise Regained and Lycidas (1677), with the following inscription :"C. Lamb, to the best knower of Milton, and therefore the worthiest occupant of this pleasant edition. June 2nd, 1820."-It may be added that in November 1820, when Wordsworth returned from the Continent, S. Rogers presented him with a copy of the second edition of Paradise Lost (1669), and wrote in the volume-"One of the most precious I can give, or you receive. It will acquire a new value by becoming yours."