talk.

He says: 'If I go away without them I am a bird who has struggled himself from off a bird-lime twig, and then finds a string round his leg pulling him back.' My brother has written to advise him to bring the boys to us.

I hope my brother's letter will make him determine to come with them here, and that I shall have to tell you that they are here before the end of this week.

You were very kind in transcribing the passage from Pascal. . . . It is a beautiful It is a beautiful passage-indeed very beautiful; but there is always a something wanting to the fulness of my satisfaction in the expression of all elevated sentiments in the French language; and I cannot but think, simple as the conception is, and suitable as is the expression, that if Pascal had been an Englishman, having the same exalted spirit of piety and the same genius, and had written in English, there would have been more of dignity in the language of the sentences you have quoted, and they would have been more impressive. There is a richness and strength in the language of our own great writers that I could never perceive in the French; but I have not read much in French, except poetry and common light reading such as everybody reads, so I have little right to suppose myself a judge.

William has written two other poems, which you will see when they are printed. He composes frequently in the grove, and Mr Gray is going to put him up a bench under the hollies. We have not yet received a sheet from the printer. William and I went to Grace Dieu last week. We were enchanted with the little valley, and its rocks, and the rocks of Charnwood upon the hill, on which we rested for a long time. Adieu, my dear friend. . . . Yours ever, DOROTHY WORDSWORTH."

On December 22nd she wrote again as follows:

"MY DEAR FRIEND,-We are in expectation every moment of poor Coleridge and his son Hartley. They were to leave Kendal on Wednesday, and if they had come as quickly as my brother and Miss H., they would have been here last night. C. says that Mrs Coleridge intends removing southward in the spring, and is to meet him in London with Derwent, who till that time is to stay with her. . . . He writes calmly and in better spirits. Mrs C. had been outrageous; but for the last two or three days she had become more quiet, and appeared to be tolerably reconciled to his arrangements. I had a letter from her last week-a strange letter! She wrote just as if all things were going on as usual, and we knew nothing of the intentions of Coleridge. She gives but a very gloomy account of Coleridge's health, but this in her old way, without the least feeling or sense of his sufferings. I do think, indeed, that the state of his health will absolutely prevent him from lecturing. It is a sad pity that he did not formally decline accepting the proposal, as I believe his heart was never in it, and nothing but the dreamy and miserable state of his mind (which prevented him from doing anything) kept him from saying that he would not lecture. . . ."

The Memorials of Coleorton must be referred to for the letter to Lady Beaumont on the laying out of the winter garden at the Hall, a letter which Wordsworth called "the longest he ever wrote in his life."* It is an extremely in

teresting letter in its minute details.

He depicts an almost

ideal garden-variety and unity combined, in a way in which they have perhaps never been actually carried out; but to this day the winter garden of Coleorton remains a monument of Wordsworth's insight into the principles of Art as applied to landscape gardening. The same insight was seen in his criticism of Uvedale Price's domain at Foxley, in the sug

* See Memorials, vol. i., pp. 191-209.

gestions he made about the laying out of the grounds at Foxhowe and Lancrigg, and in the terrace walks and winding paths at his own residence of Rydal Mount.

On the 23rd December Dorothy wrote again to Lady Beaumont :

Coleridge and his son Hartley arrived on Sunday after- 1 noon. My dear Lady Beaumont, the pleasure of welcoming him to your house mingled with our joy, and I think I never was more happy in my life than when we had had him an hour by the fireside: for his looks were much more like his own old self, and though we only talked of common things, and of our friends, we perceived that he was contented in his mind, and had settled things at home to his satisfaction. He has been tolerably well and cheerful ever since, and has begun with his books. Hartley, poor boy is very happy, and looks uncommonly well. . . . I long to know your opinion and Sir George's of my brother's plan of the winter garden. Coleridge (as we females are also) is much delighted with it, only he doubts about the fountain, and he thinks it is possible that an intermingling of birch trees somewhere, on account of the richness of the colour of the naked twigs in winter, might be an advantage; I may add also from myself, that we have often stood for half an hour together at Grasmere, on a still morning, to look at the raindrops or hoar-frost glittering in sunshine upon the birch twigs; the purple colour and the sparkling drops produce most enchanting effect. . . God bless you, my kind good friend. We shall drink a health to you on Christmas Day. You may remember that it is my birthday; but in my inner heart it is never a day of jollity.—Believe me, ever yours, D. WORDSWORTH."

Early in January 1807, the Prelude was read aloud by Wordsworth to Coleridge at Coleorton, and this led to

Coleridge's writing one of the most pathetic of all his poems, to which he prefixed the following :—

To William Wordsworth. Composed for the greater part on the same night after the finishing of his recitation of the poem in thirteen books, on the growth of his own mind."

It is fortunate that Coleridge sent a copy of the poem in MS. to Sir George Beaumont in January 1807, and that this copy still exists, as it differs in some very important points from the text afterwards adopted by Coleridge himself. In the latter text the poem begins

Friend of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good!

In the first MS. it began—

O Friend! O Teacher! God's great gift to me!

He described the poem read to him as

Such sense of wings uplifting, that its might
Scatter'd and quell'd me, till my thoughts became
A bodily tumult; and thy faithful hopes,
Thy hopes of me, dear friend! by me unfelt!
Were troublous to me, almost as a voice,
Familiar once, and more than musical;
As a dear woman's voice to one cast forth,
A wanderer with a worn-out heart forlorn,
'Mid strangers pining with untended wounds.
O friend! too well thou know'st of what sad years
The long suppression had benumbed my soul,
That, even as life returns upon the drown'd,
The usual joy awoke a throng of pains-
Keen pangs of Love, awakening, as a babe,
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart!

And fears self-willed, that shunn'd the eye of hope,
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain ;
And all, which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had rear'd, and all
Commune with THEE had open'd out-but flowers
Strew'd on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!

In silence listening, like a devout child,
My soul lay passive; by the various strain
Driven as in surges now, beneath the stars,
With momentary stars of her own birth,
Fair constellated foam, still darting off
Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,

Outspread and bright, yea swelling to the moon.
And when-O Friend! my comforter! my guide!
Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength !
Thy long-sustained song finally closed,

And thy deep voice had ceased-yet thou thyself
Wert still before mine eyes, and round us both
That happy vision of beloved faces—
(All whom, I deepliest love-in one room all!)
Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close,
I sate, my being blended in one thought,
(Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?)
Absorb'd; yet hanging still upon the sound—
And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.

When this poem was sent to the press by Coleridge in