valleys. This morning (new year's day) you were awakened early by the minstrels playing under the eaves, 'Honour to Mr Wordsworth!' 'Honour to Mrs Wordsworth!' and so to each member of the household by name, servants included, each at his own window. These customs bind us together as a family, and are as beneficial as they are delightful. May they never disappear!

In my Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood, I do not profess to give a literal representation of the state of the affections and of the moral being in childhood. I record my own feelings at that time-my absolute spirituality, my 'all-soulness,' if I may so speak. At that time I could not believe that I should lie down quietly in the grave, and that my body would moulder into dust.”

The last extract from the Bishop of Lincoln's Reminiscences suggests the following from the Rev. R. Perceval Graves, now of Dublin.

"I remember Mr Wordsworth saying that, at a particular stage of his mental progress, he used to be frequently so rapt into an unreal transcendental world of ideas that the external world seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he had to reconvince himself of its existence by clasping a tree, or something that happened to be near him. I could not help connecting this fact with that obscure passage in his great Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, in which he speaks of

Those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things, &c.

I heard him once make the remark that it would be a good habit to watch closely the first involuntary thoughts upon waking in the morning, as indications of the real current of the moral being.

I was struck by what seemed to me a beautiful analogy,

which I once heard him draw, and which was new to methat the individual characters of mankind showed themselves distinctly in childhood and youth, as those of trees in spring; that of both, of trees in summer and of human kind in middle life, they were then alike to a great degree merged in a dull uniformity; and that again, in autumn and in declining age, there appeared afresh all their original and inherent variety brought out into view with deeper marking of character, with more vivid contrast, and with great accession of interest and beauty.

He thought the charm of Robinson Crusoe mistakenly ascribed, as it commonly is done, to its naturalness. Attaching a full value to the singular yet easily imagined and most picturesque circumstances of the adventurer's position, to the admirable painting of the scenes, and to the knowledge displayed of the working of human feelings, he yet felt sure that the intense interest created by the story arose chiefly from the extraordinary energy and resource of the hero under his difficult circumstances, from their being so far beyond what it was natural to expect, or what would have been exhibited by the average of men; and that similarly the high pleasure derived from his successes and good fortunes arose from the peculiar source of these uncommon merits of his character.

I have heard him pronounce that the Tragedy of Othello, Plato's record of the last scenes of the career of Socrates, and Isaac Walton's Life of George Herbert, were in his opinion the most pathetic of human compositions.

In a walk one day, after stopping, according to his custom, to claim admiration for some happy aspect of the landscape, or beautiful composition on a smaller scale of natural objects,caught by him at the precisely best point of view in the midst of his conversation on other subjects,—he added, good humouredly, that there were three callings, for success in which

nature had furnished him with qualifications-the callings of poet, landscape-gardener, and critic of pictures and works of art. On hearing this I could not but remember how his qualifications for the second were proved by the surprising variety of natural beauties he managed to display to their best advantage, in the very circumscribed limits of the garden at Rydal Mount, an invisible hand of art everywhere working' (to use his own exquisite expression) in the very spirit of nature,' and how many there were who have owed the charm of their grounds and gardens to direction sought from his well-known taste and feeling. As to works of art, his criticism was not that of one versed in the history of the schools, but, always proceeding upon first principles, the prima philosophia,' as he called it; and it was, as it appeared to me, of the highest order.

He was a very great admirer of Virgil, not so much as a creative poet, but as the most consummate master of language, that, perhaps, ever existed. From him, and Horace who was an especial favourite, and Lucretius, he used to quote much."

Three extracts from Mr Barron Field's MS. Memoirs may follow the above reminiscences.

Referring to Coleridge's ballad of The Three Graves, written, Coleridge tells us, about 1793, and first published in the sixth number of The Friend (September 21, 1809), the subject of which was suggested by Wordsworth, Mr Field says:

"Mr Wordsworth one day said to me, 'It is not enough for a poet to possess power of mind, he must also have knowledge of the heart, and this can only be gained by time and tranquil leisure. No great poem has been written by a young man, or by an unhappy one. It was dear Coleridge's constant infelicity that prevented him from

being the poet that Nature had given him the power to be. He had always too much personal and domestic discontent to paint the sorrows of mankind. He could not

afford to suffer

With those whom he saw suffer.

I gave him the subject of his Three Graves, but he made it too shocking and painful, and not sufficiently softened by any healing views. Not being able to dwell on natural woes, he took to the supernatural, and hence his Ancient Mariner and Christabel, in which he shows great poetical power; but these have not the hold on the heart which Nature gives, and will never be popular poems, like those of Goldsmith or Burns.'

In another part of his Memoirs, Mr Field wrote that Wordsworth attributed the want of success of the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads "to the unintelligibleness of The Ancient Mariner, and to the want of a Preface;" while S. T. C. attributed the failure of the second edition to "the paradoxicalness of the Preface!"

Wordsworth, reading over this, added the following pencil note on Field's remark:-" My observation on The Ancient Mariner applied only to the first edition, when the Preface had not appeared."

Field made a lengthy quotation from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, vol. i. page 72, &c., of the edition of 1817, and Wordsworth wrote in pencil opposite to it :

"In the foregoing there is frequent reference to what is called Mr Wordsworth's theory, and his preface. I will mention that I never cared a straw about the theory-and the preface was written at the request of Mr Coleridge, out of sheer good nature. I recollect the very spot, a deserted quarry in the Vale of Grasmere, where he pressed

the thing upon me; and but for that, it would never have been thought of. I should have written many things, like the Essay upon Epitaphs, out of kindness to him, in The Friend, but he always put me off by saying, 'You must wait till my principles are laid down, and then I shall be happy to have your contributions.' But the principles never were laid down, and the work fell to the ground.''

APPENDIX II.

REMINISCENCES BY MR ELLIS YARNALL,
PHILADELPHIA.

THE following reminiscences by Mr Ellis Yarnall, Philadelphia, were embodied many years ago in a letter to Professor Henry Reed of Philadelphia, and contain interesting details of a visit which Mr Yarnall paid to Rydal Mount in August 1849. They were sent to the Bishop of Lincoln in 1850, and printed—with a good many omissions in the Memoirs of that year. Mr Yarnall has kindly copied for me all the omitted passages of his original letter; and I now include some of these, while omitting a few of the passages printed in 1850.

"It was about noon on the 18th of August, 1849, that I set out with my friends, from their house near Bowness, to ride to Ambleside.

It was half-past one when we reached Ambleside, where I left Mr and Mrs B., and walked on alone to Rydal Mount. I was full of eager expectations as I thought how soon I should, perhaps, be in the presence of Wordsworth-that after long years of waiting, of distant reverential admiration and love, I was, as I hoped, to be favoured with a personal