It was thus that Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to Mrs Marshall:

"GRASMERE, March 16, 1805.

"... It does me good to weep for him, and it does me good to find that others weep, and I bless them for it. It is with me, when I write, as when I am walking out in this vale, once so full of joy; I can turn to no object that does not remind me of our loss. I see nothing that he would not have loved and enjoyed. . . . My consolations rather come to me in gusts of feeling than are the quiet growth of my mind. I know it will not always be SO. The time will come when the light of the setting sun upon these mountain tops will be as heretofore a pure joy; not the same gladness, that can never be, but yet a joy even more tender. It will soothe me to know how happy he would have been could he have seen the same beautiful spectacle. . . . He was taken away in the freshness of his manhood: pure he was, and innocent as a child. Never human being was more thoroughly modest, and his courage I need not speak of. He was seen speaking with apparent cheerfulness to the first mate a few minutes before the ship went down;' and when nothing more could be done, he said, 'the will of God be done.' I have no doubt when he felt that it was out of his power to save his life he was as calm as before, if some thought of what we should endure did not awaken a pang. . . He loved solitude, and he rejoiced in society. He would wander alone amongst these hills with his fishing-rod, or led on by the mere pleasure of walking, for many hours; or he would walk with W. or me, or both of us, and was continually pointing out—with a gladness which is seldom seen but in very young people— something which perhaps would have escaped our observation; for he had so fine an eye that no distinction was unnoticed by him, and so tender a feeling that he never noticed

anything in vain.

During

Many a time has he called out to me at evening to look at the moon or stars, or a cloudy sky, or this vale in the quiet moonlight; but the stars and moon were his chief delight. He made of them his companions when at sea, and was never tired of those thoughts which the silence of the night fed in him. Then he was so happy by the fireside. Any little business of the house interested him. He loved our cottage. He helped us to furnish it, and to make the garden. Trees are growing now which he planted. He stayed with us till the 29th of September, having come to us about the end of January. that time Mary Hutchinson, now Mary Wordsworth, stayed with us six weeks. John used to walk with her everywhere, and they were exceedingly attached to each other; and so my poor sister mourns with us, not merely because we have lost one who was so dear to William and me, but from tender love to John and an intimate knowledge of him. Her hopes as well as ours were fixed on John. . . . I can think of nothing but of our departed brother, yet I am very tranquil to-day. I honour him, and love him, and glory in his memory.

CHAPTER XVIII

FRAGMENTS OF VERSE: CORRESPONDENCE.

NUMEROUS fragments of verse, more or less unfinished, occur in the Grasmere Journals, written by Dorothy Wordsworth. One of these, which is broken up into irregular fragments, and very incomplete, is evidently part of the material which was written about the old Cumbrian shepherd Michael, the successive alterations of which are so faithfully recorded elsewhere in the Journal (see pp. 274-278, and compare vol. ii., p. 144). It has a special topographical interest, from its description of Helvellyn and its spring, the fountain of the mists, and the stones on the summit. On other grounds there is much in this fragment that gives it a title to rank with the published poem of Michael, and passages in The Excursion and The Prelude. On the outside leather cover

of the MS. book there is written, "May to Dec. 1802."
The following lines come first:—

"There is a shapeless crowd of unhewn stones
That lie together, some in heaps, and some
In lines, that seem to keep themselves alive
In the last dotage of a dying form.

At least so seems it to a man who stands
In such a lonely place."

These are followed by a few lines, some of which were afterwards used in The Prelude (see book vii., vol. iii., p. 280):

Of the same objects, melted and reduced
To one identity, by differences

That have no law, no meaning, and no end,
Shall he feel yearning to those lifeless forms,
And shall we think that Nature is less kind
To those, who all day long, through a long life,
Have walked within her sight? It cannot be.

Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, William
Wordsworth.

Sat. Eve., 20 past 6, May 29."

Other fragments follow less worthy of preservation. Then the passage, which occurs in the xiii. book of The Prelude, beginning

"There are who think that strong affection, love,”

(see vol. vii., p. 382), with one or two variations from the final text, which were not improvements.

Five lines on Helvellyn, afterwards included in the Musings near Aquapendente (see vol. viii., p. 36), come next.

The fragments referring to Michael are written down, probably just as the brother dictated them to his sister, and would be—if not unintelligible-certainly without any literary connection or unity, were they printed in the order in which they occur. I have, therefore, slightly transposed them to give something like continuity to the whole. It remains, of course, a torso. He says

"I will relate a tale for those who love

To lie beside the lonely mountain brooks,

And hear the voices of the winds and flowers.

It befell

At the first falling of the autumnal snows,
Old Michael and his son one day went forth
In search of a stray sheep. It was the time

When from the heights our shepherds drive their flocks

To gather all their mountain family
Into the homestalls, ere they send them back
There to defend themselves the winter long.
Old Michael for this purpose had driven down
His flock into the vale, but as it chanced,
A single sheep was wanting. They had sought
The straggler during all the previous day
All over their own pastures, and beyond.
And now at sunrise, sallying forth again,
Far did they go that morning: with their search
Beginning towards the south, where from Dove Crag
(Ill home for bird so gentle), they looked down
On Deep-dale-head, and Brother's water (named
From those two Brothers that were drowned therein);
Thence northward did they pass by Arthur's seat,
And Fairfield's highest summit, on the right
Leaving St Sunday's Crag, to Grisdale tarn
They shot, and over that cloud-loving hill,
Seat-Sandal, a fond lover of the clouds;
Thence up Helvellyn, a superior mount,
With prospect underneath of Striding edge,
And Grisdale's houseless vale, along the brink
Of sheep-cot-cove, and those two other coves,
Huge skeletons of crags which from the coast
Of old Helvellyn spread their arms abroad
And make a stormy harbour for the winds.
Far went these shepherds in their devious quest,
From mountain ridges peeping as they passed
Down into every nook;

and many a sheep
On height or bottom * did they see, in flocks
Or single. And although it needs must seem
Hard to believe, yet could they well discern

* Bottom is a common Cumbrian word for valley.